I've followed Jonathan Haidt for decades. I follow his Heterodox Academy. And his heterodox thinking. The importance of the multiplicity of ideas.
At the podcast here, Jon talks to Shankar Vedantam of the "Hidden Brain" podcast.
A couple of key messages:
It's important to have both progressives and conservative voices in a society. Both Republican and Democrats; both Labour and Conservative; both Liberal and Labor.
The damage done to teenagers, especially girls, by social media. Started around 2010-2012. IOW about five minutes ago. But it's a very serious epidemic of harm, including self-harm. Suicide rates among young women have grown sharply.
A Smartphone is like a cuckoo bird, like our Koel. It enters the nest and pushes everything else out. It takes over.
He has proposed solutions including no Smartphones for children and no phones in classrooms.
A little more than a decade ago, researchers began tracking an alarming trend: a dramatic uptick in anxiety and depression among young Americans. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, like many other researchers, says the increase is related to our use of social media and devices. But he believes it's also deeper than that — connected to our deepest moral beliefs and how they shape the way we view the world. He says there are simple steps we can take to improve the mental health of kids growing up in the smartphone era. The Podcast
