Great book for anyone with teens. We’re going to look back at endless scrolling & social apps as cancerous. So many quotes:

• "My central claim in this book is that these two trends-overprotection  the real world and underprotection in the virtual world-are the major  reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.  A FEW NOTES ABOUT TERMINOLOGY. WHEN I TALK ABOUT THE "REAL  world," I am referring to relationships and social interactions characterized by four features that have been typical for millions of years: 1. They are embodied, meaning that we use our bodies to communicate, we are conscious of the bodies of others, and we respond to the bodies of others both consciously and unconsciously.  They are synchronous, which means they are happening at the same  time, with subtle cues about timing and turn taking.  3. They involve primarily one-to-one or one-to-several communication,  with only one interaction happening at a given moment.  4. They take place within communities that have a high bar for entry  and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships  and repair rifts when they happen.  In contrast, when I talk about the "virtual world," I am referring to  relationships and interactions characterized by four features that have  been typical for just a few decades:  1. They are disembodied, meaning that no body is needed, just(AIs).  They are heavily asynchronous, happening via text-based posts and  comments. (A video call is different; it is synchronous.)  3. They involve a substantial number of one-to-many communications,  broadcasting to a potentially vast audience. Multiple interactions be happening in parallel.  4. They take place within communities that have a low bar for entry  and exit, so people can block others or just quit when they are not  pleased. Communities tend to be short-lived, and relationships are often disposable."

  "… one out of every four teens said  that they were online “almost constantly." By 2022, that number had nearly doubled, to 46%.  These “almost constantly" numbers are startling and may be the key to explaining the sudden collapse of adolescent mental health. These extraordinarily high rates suggest that even when members of Gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world,  such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking with you, a substantial  portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious)  about events in the social metaverse. As the MIT professor Sherry Turkle  wrote in 2015 about life with smartphones, "We are forever elsewhere."33  This is a profound transformation of human consciousness and relation and it occurred, for American teens…"

• "Discover mode fosters learning and growth. If we want to help youngdiscover mode may be the most effective change we can make. Let me lay the differences between the modes as we might see them in a college Figure 3.1 shows what a student arriving at a university would like if her childhood (and her genes) gave her a brain whose default  setting was discover mode versus defend mode. It’s obvious that students in discover mode will profit and grow rapidly from the bountiful intellectual and social opportunities of a university. Students who spend most of their time in defend mode will learn less and grow less.  contrast explains the sudden change that happened on many college campuses around 2014. Figure 3.2 shows how the distribution of mental challenges changed as the first members of Gen Z arrived and the last members of the millennial generation began to graduate. The only disorders that rose rapidly were psychological disorders. Those disorders were overwhelmingly anxiety and depression.  Books, words, speakers, and ideas that caused little or no controversy in 2010 were, by 2015, said to be harmful, dangeror traumatizing. America’s residential universities are not perfect, they are among the safest, most welcoming and inclusive environments ever created for young adults. Yet campus culture changed around 2015, not just in the United States but also at British and Canadian to universities. How could such a big change happen SO quickly and internationally?"

• "They reduce interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience. Smartphones are like the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. The cuckoo egg hatches before the others, and the cuckooall of the food brought by the unsuspecting mother. Similarly, when a smartphone, tablet, or video game console lands in a child’s life, it will push out most other activities, at least partially. The child will spend hours each day sitting enthralled and motionless (except for one nger) while ignoring everything beyond the screen. (Of course, the same might be true of the parents as well, as the family sits “alone together.") "

• "Lembke says that “the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any  addictive substance are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and dysphoria."57  Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria; it refers to a generalized feeling of  discomfort or unease. This is basically what many teens say they feeland what parents and clinicians observe-when kids who are heavy users of social media or video games are separated from their phones  game consoles involuntarily. Symptoms of sadness, anxiety, andinternet gaming disorder."

• "He spent literally almost all his waking hours at home alternating blankly between screens-his phone, an infinite scroll of Whatsand Facebook messages, and his iPad, on which he watched blur of YouTube and porn. At moments, I could still see in him  races of the joyful little boy who sang "Viva Las Vegas," but it was  that person had broken into smaller, disconnected fragments.  struggled to stay with a topic of conversation for more than a  few minutes without jerking back to a screen or abruptly switchto another topic. He seemed to be whirring at the speed of napchat, somewhere where nothing still or serious could reach nim.¹ "

• "Americans have long used the term "failure to launch” to describe anyone who gets off track, doesn’t find employment, and ends up living back  with their parents for an indefinite period of time. Young men in their  late 20s are more likely to live with their parents (27% of them, in 2018),  compared with young women (17%).17 A more formal term is NEET, cre  ated by economists in the U.K. to refer to those between the ages of 16  and 24 who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Such young  people are said to be "economically inactive." NEETs in the U.K.18 and the  United States¹ are mostly men, once you exclude all those who are disabled or who are parents caring for their own children.  These young people are called hikikomori, a Japanese term that  means "pulling inward,"21 They live like hermits, emerging from their  mostly at odd hours when they are less likely to see anyone, includng family members. In some families, parents leave food for them by their doors. They calm their anxieties by staying inside, but the longer they  stay in, the less competent they become in the outside world, fueling their  anxiety about the outside world. They are are trapped.  For many years, the psychiatric community treated hikikomori as a  uniquely Japanese condition 22 But in recent years, some young  America and elsewhere are behaving like hikikomori."

• "In every society, you’ll find that people istinguish between those they feel close to and those who are more distant; that’s the horizontal dimension, the x axis in figure 8.1. Then there are those who are higher in rank or social status and who are owed deference by those who are lower. That’s the vertical dimension of hierarchy, the y axis. Many languages force people to mark those two dimensions someone as vous or as tu.  But there’s another vertical dimension, shown as the z axis coming out of the page. I called it the divinity axis because so many cultures wroteselfish, or disgusting actions bring one downward, away from God and sometimes toward an anti-divinity such as the Devil. Whether or not God exists, people simply do perceive some people, places, actions, and objects to be sacred, pure, and elevating; other people, places, actions, and objects are disgusting, impure, and degrading (meaning, literally, "brought a step").  Thomas Jefferson offered a secular description of the z axis in 1771. a letter advising a relative on what books to buy for his library, Jeffer? urged the inclusion of novels and plays. He justified his advice by reflecting on the feelings one gets from great literature:  When any… act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doingof any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice."

• "Though researchers have not found evidence that prayer works to change outcomes in the world, such as curing a child of cancer, DeSteno found that there is abundant evidence that keeping up certain spiritual practices improves well-being. The mechanism often involves reducing self-focus and selfishness, which prepares a person to merge or be open to something beyond the self. When communities engage in these practices together, and especially when they move together synchrony, they increase cohesion and trust, which means that they also reduce anomie and loneliness."

• "First, Émile Durkheim showed that human beings move up and own between two levels: the profane and the sacred. The profane is  ordinary self-focused consciousness. The sacred is the realm of  the collective. Groups of individuals become a cohesive community  they engage in rituals that move them in and out of the realm  sacred together. The virtual world, in contrast, gives no structure to time or space and is entirely profane. This is one reason why virtual communities are not usually as satisfying or meaning-giving real-world communities.   Second, religious rituals always involve bodily movement with symbolic significance, often carried out synchronously with others. Eating together has a special power to bond people together. The virtual is, by definition, disembodied, and most of its activities are conducted asynchronously.  Third, many religions and spiritual practices use stillness, silence,  and meditation to calm the "jumping monkey" of ordinary  sciousness and open the heart to others, God, or enlightenment.  Meditation has been shown to promote well-being, even brief regular meditation in fully secular contexts. The phone-based life, in contrast, is a never-ending series of notifications, alerts, and distractions, fragmenting consciousness and training us to fill every oment of consciousness with something from our phones.  Fourth, a defining feature of spirituality is self-transcendence. There  a network of brain structures (the default mode network) that  becomes less active during moments of self-transcendence, as if it  were the neural basis of profane consciousness. Social media keeps  focus on the self, self-presentation, branding, and social standIt is almost perfectly designed to prevent self-transcendence. Fifth, most religions urge us to be less judgmental, but social media  encourages us to offer evaluations of others at a rate never before  possible in human history. Religions advise us to be slower to anger  quicker to forgive, but social media encourages the opposite.  Sixth, the grandeur of nature is among the most universal and easily  accessible routes to experiencing awe, an emotion that is closely  linked to spiritual practices and progress. A simple walk in a natural  setting can cause self-transcendence, especially if one pays close  attention and is not attending to a phone. Awe in nature may be  especially valuable for Gen Z because it counteracts the anxiety and  self-consciousness caused by a phone-based childhood.  There is a “God-shaped hole" in every human heart. Or, at least, many  people feel a yearning for meaning, connection, and spiritual elevaion. A phone-based life often fills that hole with trivial and degrading ontent. The ancients advised us to be more deliberate in choosing expose ourselves to."

(tags: attention technology family internet children addiction social disease childhood focus )

Great book, highly recommended. Quotes:

• "History is often imagined as a series of events, unfolding one after almost always results from a lengthy process – and the same could  be said for birth, or battle, or infection. Similarly, much of what  of individuals turns out to be the work of broad collaborations. We  love a narrative of the great individual whose life is shot through  with major events and who turns out to be either a villain or a hero,  but the world is inherently more complex than the narratives we  impose upon it, just as the reality of experience is inherently more  complex than the language we use to describe that reality."

• "I often think of these interdependent systems in the context of  own healthcare. Not long ago, I was walking in the backyard,  staring up at the night sky, when I happened to step on a nail that nail that  went right through my shoe and an inch into my foot. The next  morning, I drove on a good road to a clinic a few minutes from my  house, where I received a booster shot to eliminate the already small  chance that my mishap with the nail might result in tetanus. But in  order for this minor medical intervention to occur, so many systems  had to work in my favor: I needed healthcare access, of course-in  my case, a health insurance program that pays for basic preventative nurse who did my injection. I needed to live in a community with   of robust systems to work perfectly in concert with each other – a phenomenon that ought not be a luxury in our world of abundance, and yet still somehow is. "

(tags: history medicine science systems disease healthcare tuberculosis public-health )