Many of us are old enough to remember when the first phones went mobile, the big fat bricks we all carried around if you had some money, to the beepers that we had on our belts. Then came the Nokia phone. Then the rise of the flip phone. You thought you were so cool. It made everyone reachable. It was convenient. Then came the crackberry, I mean, Blackberry, which changed the game, right? But we didn't have a lot of video then. Not even two decades after the cell phones made their debut, though, a revolution took place. The release of the iPhone. The dawn of the smartphone, the late 2000s, was about to change the communication game yet again. To the amazement of us all. But now, fast forward another 20 years or so. The ubiquity of the smartphone is yielding undesiable results, and we all know it. Teens raised on screen suffer from depression, anxiety, short attention spans, social deprivation. Can this genie be put back in the bottle? Do you see it as the big problem that I do, and perhaps most of your neighbors do? Ever the Optimist, our next guest says, Yes, but it will take serious collective actions from parents, from schools, from governments, from neighbors.

Please welcome John Hyte. He's a professor at NYU's Business School of Communications. It's a business school, I should say, not a communications, a psychologist and best-selling author of this book, The Anxious Generation: The Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Professor, great to see you.Thanks, Brian. Great to see you.Unbelievable job on your book. Such buzz What does about it, first off, what makes the smartphone bring in depression and anxiety?

It's not the phone itself. It's the way that we used it once we got a series of technological additions. The original smartphone was great. I bought one in 2008. It had all kinds of tools on it. But then you get the front-facing camera. Now you get kids taking pictures themselves. You get high-speed internet. Now it's not just about texting, it's about video and consuming a lot of video. Then you get Instagram, which was the first major one designed only to be used on phones. In 2010, most kids had flip phones. In 2015, they were mostly on smartphones, on Instagram. When that happens, they're no longer interacting with each other directly. Almost everything is now running through the phone, and that's what messes up child development.

Physically, the word development is really... It's physical. It's not just developing your emotional. You're not ready for a lot of this stuff.

Well, that's right. Puberty is an incredibly important period in life. It's a period when the brain is literally rewiring rewiring at the fastest rate since you were two or three years old. So the brain is rewiring as you're trying to figure out, who am I? How do things work here? What do I do? How do I become an adult? All those things we're supposed to learn from those who are a little older than us, who are good role models, and our brain is wide open to learning. That's exactly when we give kids smartphones these days, around 10 or 11, beginning of puberty, and we let random weirdos on the internet be the source of all of their information as their brain is frantically trying to rewire.

You have four norms you want people to maybe implement. This is a man of action. He doesn't just point out the problems. He has solutions. No smartphones before high school. Why?

Because it's having the internet in your pocket, which is so unbelievably distracting. That's what we have to delay as long as we can. I'm suggesting that we just get it entirely out of elementary and middle school. That line between middle school and high school is a nice dividing line. Just delay smartphones till high school. You can give your kid a flip phone or you can give them an Apple Watch because I understand the need to text, that's okay. We don't want them to have the internet with them 24/7.

Right, so no social media. The difference between the internet and social media. No social media before 16. That's right.

Once kids are getting, let's say they get their first smartphone when they're in ninth grade, but they're not ready to just stick their head in the toilet bowl of social media and just keep flushing, flushing, flushing, give them at least a couple of years, let them get a little further through puberty before we immerse them in that.

Get your school to go phone free.

Oh, that one is so important, so easy to do. This is the one that's going to happen this year in 2024. Most schools say they ban phones. What they mean is, Oh, we have a rule. You're not allowed to use your phone during class, which is ridiculous because the kids just learn how to hide it. You have to lock the phones up in the morning when they arrive in a phone locker or a Yonder pouch, give them back at the end of the day. That's the only way to get their attention off of the virtual world and onto their teachers and each other.

All right, this is the one needs the most explanation. More independence, more responsibility. Let them walk to school. Let them do chores. Let them have a job. This is so vital.

Because that's what normal human childhood is. It's practice at life on a little level to prepare the skills, to learn the skills you'll need as an adult. In the 1990s, we took a lot of that away from them. We overprotected kids. Anyone who is over 40 members, playing outside, getting into trouble, getting lost, finding your way back. Those are essential experiences in childhood. Kids have to have them in order to learn to become independent.

You have this routine graph. There were more broken bones in previous generations. You might think that's bad, but in a way, it's good. It shows kids taking risks.

That's right, because it's especially the teenage boys. That's where you get the big change. Teenage boys used to sometimes break their arms because they were doing things, they were taking risks. Now a teenage boy is less likely to break his arm than his father or grandfather.

Just so you know, this is not just to make better kids. If we want a country of entrepreneurs, of risk-takers, of future Navy Seals, people with a sense of purpose, you'll pull back from this technology and you can control it, you make the decisions. Also on TikTok, you're for ban.

Oh, my goodness. Tiktok is the worst of the worst in terms of its effects on the kids. It's the most influential, and it is insane to me that this company must answer to the Chinese Communist Party, according to Chinese law, as I understand it.

All right, listen, the book is so important, and you offer solutions, and you are optimistic. We can get a hold of this. Professor, thanks so much. Congratulations. Thanks so much, Brian. All right, just a quick note. I'm going to be on stage talking about everything in history, everything in the news, and having some fun. History, liberty, and laughs. I'm going to be stopping in Henderson, Nevada. It's going to be April 27th. I want you to be there. Go to briankilmead. Com. Of course, the last one, Teddy and Booker T.

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