Jonathan Haidt: The Three Terrible Ideas Weakening Gen Z and Damaging Universities and Democracies

[PetraG]

What to protect your children from and what to let them experience?
This is a very good talk, given at a university to explain how and why diversity of opinion ought to be fostered at universities. Along the way, the speaker explains why he believes today’s college students, children raised after 1995 or so, are more likely to be with afflicted with anxiety and depression and less equipped to deal with those who upset them or that they don’t agree with.

He is talking about life on college campuses, but I agree with his diagnosis of how to raise children to be resilient and self-propelled college students.

If you want to cut to the chase of where he is going with this, go to 55:05… I’d say the talk really gets going at about 7:21; the parts before that are largely introductions and niceties.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

What are the three terrible ideas?

 

[PetraG]

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The idea that constantly trying to ensure that one enjoys safety from difficult things is beneficial while exposure to difficult things (or just anything not in the control of an adult!) is always damaging, rather than the idea that difficult things, handled in healthy ways, lead not just to survival but to increased resilience, increased self-confidence and greater freedom from anxiety.
2. Always trust your feelings. The idea that your emotions are a reliable master and guide, rather than a force in ourselves that is a good servant when we understand how our emotions work and how to master them.
3. The untruth of Us vs. Them, which views life as a battle between good people and evil people. This mistaken idea requires adherents to defend the idea that the people on “our side” have a monopoly on virtue and the people on the “other side” are full of bad motives and irretrievably bad characters, rather than seeing that all of us have both good and bad impulses within ourselves.

With regards to parenting, he says that children who are treated as fragile and in need of constant protection are particularly prone to the anxiety, depression and the self-image that they are incapable of coping with negative feedback or bad experiences without suffering permanent harm. These psychological issues are now rampant among high school and college students. He proposes that college campuses that teach their students to believe these untruths are doing them a great disservice, and that a person of college age who was raised with these false beliefs can learn to overcome them. He proposes that not only will they be happier, but they will be far better-equipped to help rebuild a society capable of productive political and societal debates and charitable group decision-making. (Plus, he suggests they may actually become someone that an employer would actually want to hire…)

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I was a young parent when Columbine happened and it haunted me—how much emotional battering can a kid take at the hands of peers before they snap?

 

[PetraG]

I was a young parent when Columbine happened and it haunted me—how much emotional battering can a kid take at the hands of peers before they snap?

If you read up on Columbine, I think you’ll find that the assailants were not typical “bullied teens.”
Besides, this fellow does not say bullying is OK. He said that children should be taught that not everything is bullying. Bullying is something that is more than a one-time instance of being a puke. Kids should be taught that most of the time when someone is being a puke, the puke and the people who take exception to his or her bout of pukiness can work it out, which is true. More to the point, the process of working out typical levels of childhood conflict is good for children to learn to handle on their own.

 

[Edmundus1581]

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The idea that constantly trying to ensure that one enjoys safety from difficult things is beneficial while exposure to difficult things (or just anything not in the control of an adult!) is always damaging, rather than the idea that difficult things, handled in healthy ways, lead not just to survival but to increased resilience, increased self-confidence and greater freedom from anxiety.
2. Always trust your feelings. The idea that your emotions are a reliable master and guide, rather than a force in ourselves that is a good servant when we understand how our emotions work and how to master them.
3. The untruth of Us vs. Them, which views life as a battle between good people and evil people. This mistaken idea requires adherents to defend the idea that the people on “our side” have a monopoly on virtue and the people on the “other side” are full of bad motives and irretrievably bad characters, rather than seeing that all of us have both good and bad impulses within ourselves.

Thanks for the summary.

This sounds very good to me.

 

[PetraG]

Thanks for the summary.

This sounds very good to me.

If you have time, he makes a good overall case and presentation.
He also raises the possibily that someone choosing a university could choose among places that have more this policy and less of the “terrible ideas” administrative policies. Different universities see these things in different ways, and he makes the case quite strongly that the places that expose students to opinions they don’t like and teach them that they are resilient instead of fragile will see more personal growth and less anxiety and depression among the students. (This is partly because students won’t suffer from so much fear of saying what they really think, a fear which is anxiety-producing.)

 

[Zach]

Thanks for reminding me about this and the good summary. There is also a book on this by Haidt and a co writer. I took it out of the library a while ago. Haidt’s The Righteous Mind is worth reading too.

 

[1ke]

Thanks for sharing the video, now I want the book!

 

[MamaJewel]

The gentleman stated that GenZ never learned how to deal with “normal, everyday stress”.

Umm, as an old fart in college, I beg to differ with him.

Unless he considers the lack of solid parental connections (ie. a mother and a father who interact with their progeny as their child, instead of as a burden to a relationship with a partner other than said child’s other parent) and (early) childhood exposure to subject matter that once was considered “adult content” as normal, then I say there is a reason these young people are depressed and anxious.

Childhood exposure to adult subject matter, whether it’s violence, catastrophe, sex, etc. induces depression and anxiety in young adults. The child mind and physical brain lack the ability to process that subject matter. Combine this with many children who grew up with divorced or lack of married parents, and society’s attitudes toward gender roles/ sexual identity, and depressed, anxious youth result.

The problem I see is the current lack of GenZ’s maturity toward understanding that the way society functioned when they were little actually was traumatizing to children, even if that wasn’t the intention of society. They will figure it out though in the next two decades.

Too many adult subjects are pushed onto children as if those matters should be normalized by kids, imho.

As smart phones and laptops became commonly used by youth, psychologists were stating it’s normal for 12 year olds to watch porn. This was 8 to 10 years ago. Sadly, the psychologists were not recognizing the type of fetish these kids were viewing. It wasn’t the standard Hugh Hefner stuff that grandpa and dad looked at in the past. Instead, it was/is full on kink that makes healthy adults cringe. 50 Shades is G rated compared to the crap many GenZs were exposed to via technology at the touch of a screen.

I grew up in sick dysfunction, but the lack of healthy family bonds and the constant exposure to adult themes that today’s youth are exposed to make me believe that our society is in a flat-spin toward destruction.

Somebody needs to protect our children.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Childhood exposure to adult subject matter, whether it’s violence, catastrophe, sex, etc. induces depression and anxiety in young adults. The child mind and physical brain lack the ability to process that subject matter. Combine this with many children who grew up with divorced or lack of married parents, and society’s attitudes toward gender roles/ sexual identity, and depressed, anxious youth result.

Excellent point.

Our kids are so much more prosperous and so much more unhappy.

My grandparents’ generation came of age during the Great Depression. Had to pull in a few extra bucks to support the family and hand it over. One of my grandparents had to leave school to do this.

Not that they never made mistakes, but they had the advantage that people at least had a vision of what correct behavior was to anchor themselves to.

Our kiddos don’t even have that anchor. Parents tell them one thing, society and media and internet tell them something completely different.

 

[PetraG]

He actually said that this generation BOTH had overexposure to damaging materials–such as exposure to social media before they were at least late in high school–AND had helicopter parents who didn’t allow them to be exposed to everyday stressors that are appropriate to childhood, such as working out conflicts with their peers (when those conflicts don’t rise to the level of true bullying) or just playing on playgrounds where it is possible to hurt yourself if you work at it.

He pretty much says that middle schoolers, especially middle school girls, should not be on social media, as this is associated with a distressing rate of anxiety disorders and self-harm. It isn’t an either-or thing, then. It is both-and.

 

[Pai_Nosso]

Jonathan Haidt is a really great thinker and speaker iv always liked him.

 

[Zaccheus]

Besides, this fellow does not say bullying is OK. He said that children should be taught that not everything is bullying

This is a very good point.

 

[MamaJewel]

just playing on playgrounds where it is possible to hurt yourself if you work at it.

We definitely cannot blame this on the parents. It was the school systems that took away playground time and physical education for these kids because of liability costs and funding shortages. I’ve read articles written by pediatric occupational therapists who hold the professional opinion that many sensory processing issues can be tracked to early childhood and the fact that children no longer get to play in natural environments that encourage spatial movements (ie skinning cats, king of the mountain, tumbling in the grass, etc).

Now that I think of it, this lack of natural physical movement in across 3-D planes might be a contributing factor to the increased anxiety and depression in GenZ. Medical schools are noting that many of today’s resident surgeons lack certain fine motor skills needed to perform surgery. They were thinking it was due to cell phone use and the loss of sewing and other former skills once commonly seen in society, but it could be loss of playtime outside in nature.

Middle school girls have always been anxiety ridden, so I respect that it is wise for that age group to avoid social media. I am GenX and I remember when anorexia and bulimia were the methods of self-harm for female youth. We starved instead of cutting. Adults blamed media (TV and magazines) for encouraging unrealistic self-identity in girls. But GenX were firstwave home-alone latch key kids whose moms and dads worked. That age group was also the first to experience wide-spread divorce among parents and blended families because of divorce (rather than the loss of a parent).

I believe that there is an underlying sense of abandonment across these generations and GenZ is experiencing a heightened sense of that loss exacerbated by perceived threats all around them because of social media influence.

Poor babies! I feel for them, I really do.

 

[joyfulandactive]

I have 3 teens and not all of us are helicopter parents. Although my husband, God love him, would love to be. He would never let our teen daughters particularly ever leave the house or grow up if he had his way. His own parents are extremely fearful and paranoid and they are Babyboomers. So every generation has a mix of parenting styles. My mother in law was so worried, when her daughter left for college she went too and moved into the same house. This was in the early 1990s.

 

[PetraG]

We definitely cannot blame this on the parents. It was the school systems that took away playground time and physical education for these kids because of liability costs and funding shortages. I’ve read articles written by pediatric occupational therapists who hold the professional opinion that many sensory processing issues can be tracked to early childhood and the fact that children no longer get to play in natural environments that encourage spatial movements (ie skinning cats, king of the mountain, tumbling in the grass, etc).

Gen Z is the first generation to have exposure to social media while in middle school, because that didn’t exist when Gen X was in middle school. As for me, I belong to the generation that remembers riding in station wagons and pickups with our feet dangling over the tailgate. We drank out of garden hoses. We also had shorter organized sports seasons and more times during the year when we didn’t have anything scheduled. We didn’t know what antibacterial soap was. We had soap and we had dishwashing detergent and it isn’t as if people didn’t keep their kitchens clean, but we didn’t live in a time when there was E coli O157:H7, either.

Actually, I think that the amount of time children have in the care of their parents is sufficient to give them the kind of experience he is talking about. Schools cannot allow children to have time to play that is unsupervised. Parents can. People are so afraid of their child being kidnapped or molested, though, that they won’t let them out of their sight. This trend began in earnest in the 1990s. Utah passed a law that protected parents from charges of neglect for allowing their children to play without supervison. It says something that they felt a need to do this!!

He’s saying that constant protectiveness does not come without a cost. I think he’s right.

 

[PetraG]

I have 3 teens and not all of us are helicopter parents. Although my husband, God love him, would love to be. He would never let our teen daughters particularly ever leave the house or grow up if he had his way. His own parents are extremely fearful and paranoid and they are Babyboomers. So every generation has a mix of parenting styles. My mother in law was so worried, when her daughter left for college she went too and moved into the same house. This was in the early 1990s.

Yes. Our children are Gen Z, and we let them do things that no “decent” parent would allow.

When our boys were in about third or fourth grade, I told them that I wouldn’t hug them in public unless they hugged me, because they were getting to be men and they needed to be able to decide when the time was right to hug their mom in public. I think that is why I still get a lot of hugs from them in public, lol. They know I have thought of them as men and not little boys for a very long time. (I told them when they were 10 that if they wanted to be men by the time they were 16, they had better start practicing, because the habits of men are something that have to be learned and practiced, not something that just happens when a birthday rolls around. They knew that if they acted like men, I would see them as men. They do, and I do.)

I had an aunt who was very fearful, and her daughters picked up on that. One of them spent part of grade school afraid that she was going to have a heart attack if she ran too much, because her maternal grandfather had died of a heart attack. Luckily, though, they did grow beyond that. That was the point of this talk to college administrators: that is, that they did have a roll to play in the healthy transition of their students from seeing themselves as fragile to seeing themselves as resilient and capable.

 

[Zach]

Yeah it’s amazing we survived. In my case the 1970s. Driving without seat belts. All day long unsupervised sports, including tackle football on the frozen ground without helmets or pads and playing ice hockey on barely frozen ice without helmets or pads except for goalies. Sledding down steep bumpy hills swerving between oak trees. Skateboarding and bicycle riding without helmets for miles on busy streets day and night. Sleeping out all night at the park. Walking around barefoot and no sun screen in the summer. Diving off of cliffs into lakes. I’m not saying all these things are advisable or that safety and caution isn’t important but it can be taken too far.

 

[PetraG]

Yeah it’s amazing we survived. In my case the 1970s. Driving without seat belts. All day long unsupervised sports, including tackle football on the frozen ground without helmets or pads and playing ice hockey on barely frozen ice without helmets or pads except for goalies. Sledding down steep bumpy hills swerving between oak trees. Skateboarding and bicycle riding without helmets for miles on busy streets day and night. Sleeping out all night at the park. Walking around barefoot and no sun screen in the summer. Diving off of cliffs into lakes. I’m not saying all these things are advisable or that safety and caution isn’t important but it can be taken too far.

The sunburns could come back to bite us, but other than that it looks like we survived OK.
Yes, and I remember when people “got their bell rung” but nobody appreciated what could happen with a head injury.

There is a funny part in the video where the speaker contrasts current boring playgrounds with playgrounds of the 1970s or so, but then points out that only a lunatic would go back to the ones from the early 1900s which looked like death traps:
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Kind of like how no one wants to go back to women cooking over open fires with long dresses and full sleeves and the babies toddling around nearby…hey! Kid! Fire! Hurts, doesn’t it?!?