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How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back | Jonathan Haidt | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
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How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back | Jonathan Haidt | TED
How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back | Jonathan Haidt | TED
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0:04
So, to begin,
0:06
I invite you all to remember a time in
0:07
your life, a period in your life when
0:09
you felt fully integrated into a group.
0:12
Maybe you're on a sports team,
0:14
maybe you played in a band, or maybe
0:16
just had a great group of friends that
0:17
loved to hang out together.
0:19
Or maybe it was at work. Maybe you were
0:20
part of a team trying to do something
0:22
big and difficult under time pressure,
0:24
but you all pulled together.
0:26
Whatever it was, my question to you is
0:29
does that memory glow?
0:32
Do you look back on that as something
0:34
special and magical, that time in your
0:36
life?
0:37
The great biologist E.O. Wilson says
0:40
that humans aren't just social,
0:42
like like dogs and chimpanzees, we are
0:45
ultra-social, like bees and ants.
0:48
We have a massive division of labor,
0:50
and we love to do things that put us in
0:52
a mindset of one for all, all for one.
0:57
Yet our hives aren't made out of wax.
0:59
They're made out of shared culture and
1:01
shared experiences.
1:03
My talk today isn't really about bees
1:05
and ants. It's actually about technology
1:07
and childhood.
1:09
But let's see what we can see about
1:10
technology and childhood if we start
1:13
with this premise
1:14
that human beings are ultra-social
1:17
creatures with deep needs for community
1:20
and communion.
1:22
As a social psychologist who studies the
1:23
effects of of digital tech on young
1:26
people, what I see from this perspective
1:28
is very concerning.
1:30
I think it justifies a general sense of
1:33
wariness or skepticism about the
1:36
technologies that are pushing their way
1:38
into childhood today.
1:40
So, let's start with social media.
1:43
In the early 2010s, teens traded in
1:45
their flip phones for smartphones, and
1:47
the phone-based childhood began. Their
1:50
social lives moved on to social media.
1:52
At first we thought this would be fine,
1:54
maybe even better.
1:56
But quantity pushes out quality, and
1:59
they started spending a lot less time
2:00
with each other in person. And that's a
2:02
problem for our ultra-social species,
2:04
because a lot of our evolved bonding
2:07
mechanisms involve our bodies.
2:09
So, we connect with people, we bond with
2:11
people when we eat with them, when we
2:13
share food with them,
2:15
when we share laughter,
2:17
when we move together in synchrony, even
2:19
if it's just walking next to each other.
2:22
And we bond together when we touch.
2:25
But when everything moved online,
2:28
teens across the developed world lost
2:31
most of those bonding experiences.
2:34
Levels of loneliness and anxiety began
2:36
to rise almost immediately
2:38
in many countries simultaneously.
2:41
And this wasn't just a historical
2:43
correlation.
2:44
There are now multiple lines of evidence
2:47
showing that social media is causing
2:50
harm at an industrial scale.
2:53
One line is the dozens of experiments
2:56
showing that when you randomly assign
2:57
people, these are usually with adults,
2:59
young adults, when you randomly assign
3:00
people to greatly reduce their social
3:03
media use for at least a week,
3:05
their levels of anxiety and depression
3:07
go down. And one of those studies
3:10
was done by Meta.
3:13
But what I've learned in the last 2
3:14
years is that I grossly understated the
3:17
damage in the anxious generation,
3:20
because I focused on the mental health
3:22
outcomes.
3:24
That's where we have to That's data,
3:25
that's where we're doing the most work.
3:27
But I now believe that an even larger
3:29
damage is the diminishment of the human
3:32
capacity to pay sustained attention.
3:36
One-third of all American teens say that
3:38
they're on on a social media platform
3:41
almost constantly, just throughout the
3:44
day.
3:45
And the main thing they're doing on
3:46
those social media platforms is watching
3:48
very short videos.
3:50
Young people call it brain rot, which is
3:52
a funny term,
3:54
but it might really be true because the
3:57
adolescent brain is always
3:59
a brain that's being remodeled.
4:02
The neural network of a child has to
4:05
convert itself, has to rewire itself to
4:07
become the neural network of an adult.
4:11
And that rewiring process, the neurons
4:14
finding each other, that's shaped by
4:16
whatever you're doing every day.
4:20
And it's shaped by whatever everyone
4:22
else says is prestigious.
4:25
Which means that puberty is the worst
4:27
possible time for a human being to be on
4:31
social media.
4:33
For our ultra-social species,
4:35
that rewiring should be guided by huge
4:38
amounts of social interaction in the
4:40
real world, not by TikTok's algorithm.
4:44
>> [applause]
4:49
>> I imagine there's a lot of parents in
4:50
the audience.
4:52
So, here's the first principle of what
4:53
we might call techno-skepticism.
4:57
Protect brain development through
4:59
puberty.
5:00
That's why it's so important for
5:01
countries to follow Australia's example.
5:03
Let's just raise the age for opening
5:05
social media accounts to 16, as
5:07
Australia did.
5:09
All right, now let's look at EdTech.
5:11
Of course, there are good uses of
5:13
technology in education. My kids have
5:15
learned a lot from Khan Academy,
5:17
but I'm very concerned about what
5:18
happened when we started putting
5:20
computers and tablets on kids' desks.
5:23
This is the so-called one-to-one device
5:25
policies.
5:27
Computers and tablets are multi-function
5:29
entertainment systems.
5:31
If kids can get to the internet, they
5:34
will play video games
5:37
and watch short videos, watch YouTube
5:39
shorts, and even porn.
5:41
As soon as we brought in one-to-one
5:42
devices in the 2010s,
5:45
national test scores began dropping in
5:47
the USA. [clears throat]
5:48
And they dropped in many other
5:50
countries, especially in the countries
5:52
that most firmly embraced ed tech.
5:55
Now, I can't prove that these declines
5:57
were caused by the screens and the apps
5:59
that we put on kids' desks.
6:01
But consider this. Sweden led the world
6:04
in digitizing education in the 2010s.
6:06
They got rid of textbooks. They put a
6:08
device on every desk.
6:10
They even mandated that nursery schools
6:13
had to use tablets.
6:16
But after years of experience and years
6:18
of declining test scores,
6:20
Sweden reversed course.
6:22
In 2023, they announced that they're
6:24
going back to textbooks. They're pulling
6:26
out a lot of the devices. They're going
6:28
back to books and handwriting,
6:30
especially in the earlier grades. Their
6:32
top research institute, the Karolinska
6:34
Institute, issued a report backing the
6:36
government's position, saying there is
6:39
clear scientific evidence that digital
6:41
tools impair, rather than enhance,
6:44
student learning.
6:46
And consider this. Many of us professors
6:48
are banishing computers, laptops from
6:50
our classrooms. My students at NYU say
6:52
they learn a lot better when people
6:54
aren't on devices, when they don't have
6:56
a computer and the multitasking staring
6:58
them in the face. But if college
6:59
students can't learn that well when
7:01
there's a computer in front of them, how
7:03
do we expect the 8-year-olds to do it?
7:06
School is an intrinsically social
7:08
experience. Students are not learning
7:10
machines. They're ultra-social human
7:13
beings who need to connect with their
7:15
teachers and their fellow students.
7:18
They don't need to connect with more
7:20
screens.
7:22
So, here's the second principle of
7:23
techno-skepticism. Prioritize people and
7:26
books in education, not screens. We
7:29
should never have let laptops and
7:30
tablets spread through K-12 education
7:32
without extensive testing and evidence
7:36
of safety and efficacy. But we're about
7:39
to do the exact same mistake with AI.
7:44
Do you see the pattern here?
7:46
We let social media companies take over
7:48
our kids' social lives,
7:50
and they've harmed our kids' social
7:52
lives and their mental health.
7:55
We let EdTech companies take over our
7:56
kids' schools,
7:58
and they appear to be doing more harm
8:00
than good.
8:01
Now, AI companies are coming for their
8:03
relationships to be their friends, their
8:06
therapists, and even their sexual
8:08
partners.
8:11
What could go wrong?
8:14
We're already seeing massive cognitive
8:16
offloading and learning loss.
8:18
When students have access to AI, they
8:20
pass the critical thinking over to the
8:23
AI.
8:24
We're already seeing young people
8:26
becoming dependent on ChatGPT
8:28
to make their personal decisions and to
8:30
draft their texts and their emails.
8:33
And we're seeing a booming AI toy
8:35
market. Chatbots are being put into
8:37
dolls and teddy bears.
8:40
And these chatbots are super responsive
8:43
to the child. They're always there to
8:45
offer comfort, to be there for the
8:47
child. And of course, the parents are
8:49
often busy.
8:51
But if the chatbot is super responsive,
8:53
while the parents aren't as responsive,
8:55
the child's attachment system, which is
8:57
looking for who in my environment is the
8:59
person who responds to me,
9:01
may well imprint or focus on the
9:04
chatbot, which is going to compromise
9:06
their relationship with their own
9:07
parents.
9:09
So, here's the third principle of
9:10
techno-skepticism.
9:12
Just be wary of artificial relationships
9:14
for minors.
9:16
Give them nothing that conveys that it
9:18
understands the child
9:20
or that it cares,
9:22
because it doesn't.
9:25
There could be a role for AI therapists
9:26
someday,
9:28
but how about we require years of
9:30
testing
9:31
before we let anyone push it out into
9:33
childhood?
9:35
>> [applause]
9:40
>> All right. Now, I've just told you that
9:41
we need to greatly reduce the role of
9:43
these technologies in our kids' lives.
9:46
And some of you may be thinking, "Oh,
9:48
hold on a second.
9:49
I want my child to be successful in the
9:52
digital future and the digital
9:54
workplace.
9:55
So, why not give them a head start?"
9:59
Two reasons.
10:00
The first is that these technologies are
10:04
extremely easy to use.
10:06
Your kid doesn't need a 10-year head
10:08
start to master social media and AI.
10:13
And second,
10:15
because now we know that being a digital
10:18
native
10:19
does not confer an advantage.
10:22
For many kids, it's a curse because it
10:24
messes with a kid's attention systems
10:27
and their motivational systems.
10:30
It teaches them that there's always a
10:31
little bit of reward, always a little
10:33
bit of dopamine available just one swipe
10:36
away, and that undermines the ability to
10:39
do difficult or sustained cognitive work
10:42
like reading a book.
10:45
I teach a course at NYU called
10:47
Flourishing, and 2 years ago we were
10:49
talking about attention fragmentation,
10:51
and one of my students who's a very
10:53
heavy TikTok user, she said, "Yeah,
10:56
I take out a book,
10:58
I read a sentence, I get bored,
11:01
I go to TikTok."
11:03
So,
11:04
if we want our children to be successful
11:08
in the digital future,
11:09
we need to protect them from the damage
11:11
being done in the digital present.
11:15
>> [applause]
11:19
>> So, let's return to the hive.
11:22
What do we see when we look at
11:23
technology and childhood through this
11:25
lens?
11:27
When we start from the premise that
11:28
humans are ultra-social,
11:31
what we see is that these technologies
11:33
are being built
11:35
by people who don't understand that
11:36
premise.
11:39
They think of people as consumers with
11:40
social needs that can be satisfied by
11:43
machines.
11:44
They think it's good to free people from
11:46
dependence on other people.
11:48
Let's suppose, just for the sake of
11:49
argument,
11:51
let's suppose that they really can give
11:53
us excellent friends and excellent
11:56
romantic partners.
11:57
In fact, just yesterday at lunch, Esther
12:00
Perel told me she recently did her first
12:02
couples therapy with a mixed couple,
12:05
a human male and an AI female.
12:10
So,
12:12
is this liberation? Do we no longer have
12:14
to depend on other people to meet our
12:16
social needs? Would that make us happy
12:19
if we don't have to depend on others?
12:22
Absolutely not.
12:24
Because that would mean that nobody
12:25
depends on us.
12:28
Nobody is relying on us. We are not
12:31
important to anyone.
12:34
So, is this our fate?
12:37
Is there any way to stop this lonely
12:38
digital future?
12:41
Yes, there is.
12:44
When the Anxious Generation came out 2
12:46
years ago,
12:48
one of the main objections I got was
12:50
that I was too late. The technology's
12:52
here to stay, people said. You can't put
12:54
the genie back in the bottle.
12:57
But in the last few years, humanity has
12:59
mobilized, and we are putting the genie
13:02
back in the bottle.
13:04
>> [applause]
13:09
>> Mothers were the first to organize and
13:11
take action, but they were quickly
13:13
joined by fathers and by a lot of Gen Z
13:15
activist organizations, and also by many
13:19
governors and many heads of state.
13:22
Together, we're getting phones out of
13:24
schools around the world.
13:30
Teachers are so thrilled to get their
13:32
students back. And one of the things
13:34
that they tell us, almost it's the most
13:36
common thing we hear, we hear laughter
13:38
in the hallways again.
13:41
We're getting the age raised for social
13:43
media to 16. More than a dozen countries
13:46
have already committed to following
13:48
Australia's bold example. And we're
13:50
seeing parents letting go and trusting
13:52
their children
13:54
to ride bicycles with their friends
13:56
and to do errands so that they can feel
13:58
useful.
14:00
I'll give you one example.
14:02
A mom in Utah gave her 7-year-old son
14:04
the let grow challenge. That's where you
14:06
say to a kid, "What's something that you
14:08
think you can do on your own?" And her
14:10
son said, "I think I can go into a
14:12
Chick-fil-A restaurant and get us
14:14
lunch."
14:15
So she says, "Okay."
14:17
And in the video, you see the mother
14:18
sitting in the car.
14:20
And you see the kid coming out of the
14:21
store.
14:22
And he's got the bags. He's got this
14:24
huge smile. And he comes into the car.
14:26
And he says, "That was so fun."
14:31
And then the mom says, "Were you
14:33
nervous?"
14:34
And he says, "Yeah. My legs are still
14:37
shivering, but I want to do it again."
14:43
So these are the stories, these kinds of
14:45
stories. This is what most moves me and
14:47
what most thrills me. Because this
14:48
movement is not primarily about
14:50
technology. It's about reclaiming
14:52
childhood in the real world with real
14:55
people.
14:57
So what on earth do we do about the
14:58
robot teachers and all of the other
15:00
future waves of technology that are
15:01
going to push their way into childhood
15:03
without adequate safety testing?
15:06
It sometimes seems completely
15:07
overwhelming. So let me repeat the three
15:09
principles of techno-skepticism.
15:12
One, protect brain development through
15:15
puberty. Two, prioritize people and
15:18
books in education, not screens. Three,
15:21
beware of artificial relationships for
15:24
minors.
15:25
I think techno-skepticism is the right
15:27
attitude for people today, especially
15:30
for parents and legislators. Because
15:32
when it comes to children,
15:34
these companies have earned our
15:36
distrust.
15:38
Techno-skepticism means that from now
15:40
on, we put the burden of proof on them.
15:43
Let them prove that their products are
15:44
safe.
15:45
We treat them like any other maker of
15:47
potentially dangerous consumer products.
15:50
We make them prove that their products
15:52
are safe before they push them out into
15:54
the world. And we hold them responsible.
15:57
>> [applause]
16:02
>> We hold them responsible for their
16:04
safety lapses.
16:06
So, in conclusion,
16:08
human beings are ultra-social creatures
16:10
who need to matter to one another in
16:13
order to flourish.
16:14
We are so brilliant that we've invented
16:17
technologies that can replace us, that
16:19
can take us out of each other's lives.
16:22
But human connection is not optional.
16:25
It's who we are.
16:27
So, we're going to have to fight for a
16:28
future
16:30
in which our children can grow
16:32
into flourishing, connected adults.
16:36
Thank you.
16:38
>> [applause]
16:44
[applause]
16:46
>> Do you like disagree with anything I
16:47
said?
16:49
>> We agree in spirit 100% and that's where
16:53
my question is actually. And we we we
16:55
have talked about this in the past even
16:57
before TED. But how
17:01
how extreme would you go?
17:04
What would you say to someone that would
17:06
make the argument that, you know, even
17:07
put Khan Academy aside,
17:09
if a student is writing their paper, if
17:11
they're editing video, if they're doing
17:13
something creative and you know, they're
17:15
building some some skills in the
17:17
process. Isn't there some middle ground
17:19
that might be okay?
17:20
>> Well, it depends on the age. So, if
17:21
we're talking elementary school, I would
17:23
say no. I would say it's so clear kids
17:26
need to learn basic skills. They need to
17:27
develop the habit of books. There's all
17:28
this research on how print is better.
17:30
For elementary school, let's just get
17:31
rid of all the one-to-one devices, go
17:33
back to books and paper.
17:35
>> [applause]
17:36
>> The people who made this technology,
17:38
they choose a lot of them choose to send
17:39
their kids to schools that don't have
17:40
it. So, when talking about young kids, I
17:42
say just no. Like until it's proven
17:44
safe, no. But, I think we learned
17:46
something really interesting today. So,
17:47
that I I forget her name, that amazing
17:49
woman in in Africa who's giving
17:52
Okay. So, two So, no. No internet.
17:55
That's the key. And this I said to you
17:58
like years ago, I said, "Sal, if someone
18:00
would make a device that just had Khan
18:03
Academy, you could not go to YouTube.
18:05
You could not do anything. That would be
18:07
amazing."
18:08
>> Will you agree I'm raising money for
18:10
this? Anyone want to
18:12
Someone has to make this.
18:14
Do you I mean do you agree with that?
18:15
>> I was fishing for that all night. So,
18:16
yes. [laughter] Thank you. Thank you.
18:19
No, well well thank you so much,
18:20
Jonathan. A super important
18:21
conversation. Thank you.
18:22
>> Thank you, Sal.
18:24
>> [applause]
