1332: Screen Time | Skeptical Sunday

1332: Screen Time | Skeptical Sunday

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Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, skeptic, and comedian Michael Regilio, who has... You have a brand-new eye, kinda. You want to give us a couple lines about that? because that's not something you hear every day.

Michael Regilio: No, you don't. Uh, I was basically born blind in my right eye with a condition called keratoconus.

Uh, the story gets even weirder, because I had it severely from birth in my right eye and not at all in my left eye, which is so unheard of that when they finally diagnosed me when I was, like, 19 years old, because they didn't know what, what the heck it was when I was a kid, that, uh, when I went back to my eye doctor at Mass Eye and Ear in [00:01:00] Boston, there was a line of doctors down the hall leading to my doctor's office.

And when I got into the office, he's like, "Can my colleagues take a look at you?" Yeah. And one after another, all these doctors just lined up, are like, "What the heck?" And, uh, yeah, after a lifetime of basically being blind in my right eye, I got a cataract in my left eye. The surgeon said, "Hey, once we get this all taken care of, give me a shot at the other eye. I think a, a cornea transplant can give you vision."

Huh.

And I said, "You know what? Let's give it a sh- let's see what depth perce- this depth perception I've heard so much about." Yeah. What

Jordan Harbinger: is that called? Like, let's see what the stereoscopic vision people keep raving about feels like.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Wow. Give it a shot.

So I got the surgery. Don't recommend. The first week was crazy. I had no white of my eye. It was blood red and- Yeah ... nasty and, but here we are, uh, five weeks out, I think, and everything seems to be healing, and I am slowly, it takes about six months, but I have some vision- Wow ... in my [00:02:00] right eye. I'm starting to see things.

Jordan Harbinger: Science is crazy, man. I mean, this is just a, an amazing thing. When you s- by the way, you said surgery, I had the surgery, don't recommend. You just mean having someone cut your eye open sucks. You don't mean actually I don't rec- because you can see out of your eye, which is kind of a big deal. Like, I think,

Michael Regilio: yeah.

Yeah, it's a huge deal. Okay, I, we'll see how the, what the end result is. I, I may very well recommend the entire panoply of surgery and heal time, but, uh, the surgery itself was more than I was expecting.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a lot to have surgery on your eye. Yeah, it sounds crazy, and I'm so glad that this was able to be something you could take advantage of.

And I, normally, again, we don't talk about a ton of personal stuff on Skeptical Sunday, but I just thought, especially when it's not relevant to the topic at hand, but I thought, okay, screen time, now you can look at the screen with both eyes. I guess that's the nexus we're going with here in the episode.

Yeah, I wanted to give you a chance to share that because I just think it is quite incredible and amazing what science can do and that you've done that, and that's why you haven't been on the show for a while because [00:03:00] you have been recovering from that. I'm excited to see where this goes. It's really interesting that they can do that and kind of a miracle and just really, really happy for you.

And I'm just excited to see. Yes, literally. By the way, you could drive before with one eye? That sounds dangerous. Is it? Yeah, I'm not the only one. It is technically legal to drive with one eye. Okay. Has that ever caused a problem? because I just feel like if I closed one eye, I don't know. I don't want to try that experiment.

Yeah.

Michael Regilio: You know? I don't know. But for you it's different because you would be closing one eye and seeing half of what you normally see. Since birth, my brain has been learning to use one eye to create the full picture. Which led to a number of crazy things, bad posture, s- always sitting like a, my head always being tilted in weird ways because my brain was trying to make the half a picture into the whole picture, not knowing that it was missing information.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So eventually you just, your brain [00:04:00] maps the size of something that you would expect it to be with the distance it is, as opposed to using the stereoscopic part to measure it from two different points. Yeah, that makes some sense, but yeah, still maybe kind of a pain. And I, I've seen when you're reading and stuff like that, I've seen you do that, and I did notice before that you tilted your head strange.

I thought you just had glasses that needed updating. I didn't realize that you were actually blind in one eye for the really long time. Like, for the first couple years of knowing you, I was like, "Huh, you need to have those bifocals redone, bro." "Because you are, you look like, uh, one of those professors that has to do that squint where your nose hair comes out in order to read."

You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well- I've been told I look like a professor many times. Yeah. In fact, it's funny, I don't technically need glasses right now. Oh. And, uh, several people on the comedy scene have been like, "Dude, but your image."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. My dad is 84 or something like that, 83, and he just had cataract surgery, so you're in good company.

And he also had, I guess they [00:05:00] implant a lens in there because they're like, "Well, we're already taking this thing out. Let's put this other thing in." So he doesn't have glasses anymore at age 83, and he's like, "Yeah, I don't miss those." You know, they're always getting gross. I mean, wearing something on your, on your face all the time, they get gross, and they, you lose them, and you sit on them, and then you ge- you pick them up by the lenses, and you're like, "Dang it, now I've got to clean the..."

You know, it's a whole thing. It's maybe better not to have them. Your image, you know what, man? Fine. Go to Warby Parker and get some clear lenses or something like that and wear those on stage as a costume element of your personality. It's better not to need them, that's for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, on The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

And our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday. A rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you [00:06:00] may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as tipping and why it makes no sense, diet supplements, e-commerce scams, the lottery, ear candling, self-help cults, and more.

If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime, cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us on your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, screen time. It's not exactly a new concept for those of us old enough to remember when parents worried about how much television we were watching. "Turn off the boob tube," a parent would shout from the other room.

And you know, even back in the '80s, parents were concerned about how much time their kids spent staring at a screen, now that I think about it. And then, just like now, there were studies that implied too much TV is going to be bad for kids, too many cartoons are bad for kids, sitting too close to the TV is bad for kids.

Now the scientific stud- I think that part was actually true. Now the scientific studies and [00:07:00] experts are warning parents about the real dangers of a new kind of screen time, and it turns out it's not just the kids, it's us adults as well being told that we spend way too much time staring at our devices.

Now, I get a screen time report every week on my smartphone, but honestly I'm not even sure what most of it means. It just tells me that I'm spending too much time on Instagram or usually Reddit. If I listen to a podcast like the one you're listening to right now, does that count as screen time even if I'm really not looking at the screen and I'm just walking around with the phone in my pocket using that app?

I don't know. Which leads to the obvious question, what are we even talking about when we say screen time? This week comedian and skeptic Michael Rogelio is here to cut through the glare and find out whether screens are draining our lives or just our batteries.

Michael Regilio: Man, y- you really brought me back with that line, "Turn off the boob tube."

Yeah. My parents were obsessed with turning off the boob tube. I eventually started to wonder why we even had a boob tube in the first place. Yeah. It seemed like the only thing we ever did with it was turn it off. And that gets to [00:08:00] something really important, and that is that the fear of technology is not new.

It did not start with television. In fact, many of the fears people have today about the smartphone are almost identical to the fears people once had about the phone-phone, or I guess now we'd have to call that the dumb phone.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Okay, so people were worried that the phone, the regular phone, would destroy real human connection?

Michael Regilio: Yes, exactly. Critics argued that speaking to someone without physically being present was unnatural and would weaken social bonds. Many people believed that face-to-face conversation was morally and socially superior, and that the telephone encouraged emotional laziness. Ha. There were also fears it would spread misinformation and gossip.

Newspapers and clergy warned that the telephone would accelerate rumors and lies, allowing falsehoods to travel faster than the truth Maybe that sounds a little familiar.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, familiar. Wow, the, so the same hangups and maybe different devices in a slightly different scale.

Michael Regilio: Absolutely. So people were super freaked out about the telephone.

They thought it would collapse [00:09:00] social hierarchies and destroy privacy. Do you know what a party line

Jordan Harbinger: was? Those 1-900 numbers that teenagers called in the '90s when, and your parents found the bill and kicked your ass because it was like 3.99 a minute. That's where you got dumped into a line with 10 other pimply-faced kids and somebody was like, "I'm going swimming in my pool," and the other person's like, "Yeah, I'm just playing Atari with my brother.

What am I talking about

Michael Regilio: right now?" For one, yes, that is exactly what a party line was back in the '90s, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit I called a few times. Well,

Jordan Harbinger: they were fun, but they, again, you get in trouble because they're super expensive, and they're kind of praying that you don't know that they're two bucks a minute.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. They're praying that you go behind your parents' back- Yeah ... and stick them with the bill. And it probably was a pretty good business model. But no, we both have the right idea, but party lines go back way further than the 1990s, and they were not for socializing. They were actually a necessity. See, in the early days of the telephone, people used party lines, meaning multiple households shared the same connection.[00:10:00]

And people would get freaked out. Critics were warning that eavesdropping would become normal, which I'm guessing it probably did if you could hear what the neighbors were talking about on the phone. People claimed that the telephone would rot the brain and shorten attention spans. Some people argued that these new rapid disembodied conversations overstimulated the mind and made people impatient with slower forms of communication.

There was even an etiquette manual in 1902 that warned that communication by telephone should not be considered private. People worried about constant surveillance.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny that you- now that you mention this, my grandma had a party line. I remember my dad mentioned it because I picked up the phone once, I can't remember why, and I heard talking, and then I hung up, and I heard talking, and I hung up, and I heard talking.

I was like, "Dad, I hear talking. The phone's not working." He's like, "Oh, hang up. That's the neighbor across the street or next door or whatever. They're using the phone." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" It was like you could just pick up the phone and you would hear your neighbor if they [00:11:00] were using that line.

So that's, I think, what people were saying, oh, critics warned that eavesdropping would become normal. Not just you're eavesdropping on who's ever on the phone in your own house, but that if you were bored or nosy, you could silently and quietly pick up the phone in your own home and listen to your neighbors making calls.

So it was very weird, but it was cheaper than having your own phone line. And then sometime during the '90s, my dad went, "Can you believe the phone company made my mom," my grandma, "get rid of the party line, and they just gave her, her own landline for the exact same price?" Because they were like, "Holy crap, these old people in Detroit are still using party lines," and it's a billing nightmare, right?

Because you got to split the bill, but then someone's like, "Yeah, my neighbor's using the phone constantly, and I never do, and I'm not paying." So it just caused all kinds of annoying things. And I would imagine also it's tough for the government to, like, wiretap two people when one of them might be a criminal and the other person is totally innocent.

It's like, how do you handle that? So it's probably much easier for them technically, administratively, for all [00:12:00] kinds of reasons, to just give everybody their own phone line. So then she was like, "I got my own phone line for $15 a month," because it was literally like 15 bucks a month to share a phone line.

Wow. It was crazy cheap. I had no

Michael Regilio: idea that party lines like that were still around in the '90s. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Really old Detroit neighborhood, right? Detroit west side, you know, the street that has three 85-year-old white people left on it, and the rest of them are young families from wherever and l- or, like, basically it's Mexican town area now, and it was just like, you know, old f- old, super old white people.

And they weren't going to ... They, "I don't need my own phone line," she would say. "I don't make that many calls. Nobody calls me," which is kinda sad but true when you're an 85-year-old woman who knits all day. Like, you don't, probably really don't need your own phone line necessarily. Anyway, yeah, so this whole communication by telephone should not be considered private, constant surveillance, I mean, this- It kind of all sounds like any TED Talk you listened to a decade ago about modern technology.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. No, I mean, it's true. And people were super freaked out by this, the telephone. Many religious leaders [00:13:00] argued that the telephone encouraged idle chatter and temptation, especially between young men and women. Yeah. One Boston clergyman warned that young women using the telephone would be exposed to unseen male

Jordan Harbinger: voices.

He was close. It's more like unseen male breathing. But, uh, I- so the, yeah, the familiar fear that without rules women would spiral into moral chaos. Meanwhile, yeah, men were definitely using the phone to call women and then just go like, "What are you wearing?" Right? Yeah. That was one I got a few times, and I was like-

"Mom, it's for you." You got? "Mom, I think it's for you."

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Look, I don't know a single guy that just gets random nude photos sent to his phone, but every woman I know has received unsolicited, uh, Richard pics. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not sure that women were ever the problem in this equation. No. No. Look, besides the, the paranoia and the sexism of the era, there were some legit criticisms.

Mark Twain talked [00:14:00] about how intrusive the telephone was, and he warned it would shatter peace and quiet.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I guess he... Well, he had a point. Have you ever heard a, of course you have, a rotary phone ring? You could hear that thing, and I guess this is the point, if it was upstairs or downstairs, you could hear it through the whole house.

And you'd hear your neighbor's ringer if the windows were open, you'd think it was your own, because they all sounded the same. They were loud.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. No, I, I remember it well. You could, yeah, you could hear... I remember being out in the yard, and you could hear the phone ringing. But, uh, another criticism other than Mark Twain's that had a little merit was the idea that disembodied voices strip conversation of empathy and nuance, which is actually pretty undeniable.

Language experts will tell you that body language and microexpressions are a huge part of communication, and that is exactly one of the criticisms experts now have about screens.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah, I had no idea people's fears about the telephone would be echoed so closely by the smartphone, but here we are.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, and those concerns were echoes from generations [00:15:00] earlier about the printing press. Back then, critics argued that putting knowledge on paper itself would weaken the mind. You can find that complaint in texts from the 15th and 16th century.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, okay. I think I've heard this, but it's funny that people complained in printed text that printed text would weaken the mind.

I remember, was it, like, what... Some, one of these ancient Greeks, and w- maybe we'll talk about it in a minute, but he was kind of like, "Oh, reading is so bad for you," because you don't have to memorize everything.

Michael Regilio: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're absolutely going to get into that in about half a second, but I'll just point out that complaining about printed text is the 15th century version of complaining about the internet on the internet.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well, there you go.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. And you got it exactly right, and that person you're thinking of was none other than Socrates. Ah. Centuries earlier, he made the same complaint about writing itself. He warned that it would create the appearance of wisdom without the reality.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, but he put his money where his mouth was, because didn't he not- Write anything.

He j- so we, we only hear about him- Yeah ... through other people

Michael Regilio: kinda. Socrates never wrote down a single word. If it wasn't for that [00:16:00] pesky Plato writing down everything he said, Socrates would never have made it into Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Oh, man. And then no one from my generation would have ever have heard of him.

Jordan Harbinger: God, I loved that movie. That was just so s- my, by far my favorite movie from th- back then. It's funny that it's Keanu Reeves, too, and another guy whose career went nowhere, I guess. So being-

Michael Regilio: Alex

Jordan Harbinger: Winters. Yeah. Is that ... But you know that because he's the guy who was in that movie and then, like, Lost Boys, and then nothing else forever for some reason.

Michael Regilio: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, or I think it was called Lost Boys, the vampire one? Yeah. Oh, no, that was a great movie. It was, yeah. So being scared of new technology is not new, and it seems kind of innate in all of us. It, it makes you wonder how the guy with the first sharpened stick was received. Like, "Oh, you're going to draw pictographs?

Oh, this guy's trouble. Keep your kids away from him."

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, people probably saw his sharpened stick and were like, "Come on, Urk." Yeah. "It's too quick." "Takes the personal touch out of bludgeoning someone to death." Yeah. And look, in my research, I even found people writing about how [00:17:00] dangerous the bicycle was going to be, so we are just scared of new stuff.

I mean, I wonder what people must have thought of the newfangled elevator. So your screen time report

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Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. My friend Jason Feifer, he had a podcast about new technology back in the day. I don't think it exists anymore, but one of the episodes was about the elevator.

And you're right, people were like, "This is ridiculous. It's going to cause all kinds of problems." And then it was elevator [00:20:00] operators. "Could you believe they're going to let people operate this thing without any training? It's going to be so dangerous. People are going to be out of a job." And now it's like, oh, yeah, maybe those jobs just...

Maybe you don't need a guy sitting in the elevator all day long pushing the button or doing whatever. None of it made sense. In one sense, it seems to me that all the panic about the telephone, writing, bicycles, I still don't understand that one, or whatever it was, is fear of the unknown. Okay. And we as humans are adaptable.

We look at the new technology, we adapt it to our lives, and everything was fine. So this fear of smartphones and social media apps, does it, it run the risk of just being more of the same? I, but on the other hand, it is kinda different. It's not a moral panic. There's sociologists, psychologists, scientists who s- you know, people who actually study this stuff, and they're saying, "Hey, maybe we don't need to be comparing ourselves to a million people at once through this little device while we're laying in bed with our, snuggling with our kids."

Michael Regilio: Yeah. No, I mean, it's [00:21:00] true. It isn't the same as the moral panics of years past. And let's start with this. There are about five billion smartphones on planet Earth Roughly 62% of the human population has one. So if smartphones are affecting us negatively, this is not a fringe issue. This is a question worth asking.

So how are they affecting us, and why? And the first place to look is our happiness. Are we happier staring at screens 24/7? And when it comes to happiness, the data all starts with the U.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So are you saying when it comes to happiness, it's about the individual, or what do you mean?

Michael Regilio: What I'm saying is that when it comes to the happiness index, it's all about the U, or at least the shape of the letter U.

I'm talking about the shape plotted out on a graph. The U shape of happiness is one of the most consistent findings in social science. Across countries, cultures, income levels, you name it, the U shape shows up. Plot happiness across age, you get a big U.

Jordan Harbinger: So if I'm understanding [00:22:00] you correctly, happiness starts high, it dips for a while, and then it rises again so the graph looks like a U.

So basically a reverse bell curve. Is that

Michael Regilio: accurate? Yeah. No, bingo. Okay. Bingo. So let's start with the first high point on that graph, which would of course be youth. People tend to be happier when they are young. Their life isn't perfect, not absolutely carefree, but optimism does a lot of heavy lifting in youth.

People expect things to get better. Identity still feels open-ended. Even stress feels temporary. I know I was convinced I was going to be a rock star when I grew up, which made me an extremely happy teenager.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I don't remember what I wanted to be. I don't think I had... I think one of my sources of stress was I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

But I remember thinking I have all the time in the world to figure this out, so it doesn't even matter. I don't have to worry about it. And I'm going to live in all these different places, and I'm going to do all these different things. And it, it just, the, yeah, the world is your oyster The, the luxury back then is you go, "I can try this thing [00:23:00] for a year, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter because I have a year after that and a year after that and a year after..."

Like, you just have no real responsibilities, right? And then you go to college, and you're like, "I just have to sort of do whatever, float through this." Yeah, I mean, that's a different kind of life than I have now by,

Michael Regilio: by a lot. Yeah, absolutely. So the, I mean, youth is happy. Yeah. But then we hit midlife, and trust me, there is a reason that when you say midlife, the first word people think of is crisis because happiness declines through the 30s and 40s, and usually bottoms out somewhere between early 40s and early 50s.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I get it, man. Bills, first of all, career, you got kids going, and then your parents start aging, and I think for a lot of people... I'm fortunate that this isn't me, but I think for a lot of people, and I know a lot of these people, life doesn't work out the way you think it will. And I don't mean like, "Oh, you're not a rock star.

Boo-hoo." I mean, there's people who thought like, "Hey, at least I'll be upper middle class like my parents," and it's like, "Oh, that didn't work out either." Or like, "Oh, I didn't think [00:24:00] I would have gotten paralyzed in this tragic accident." You know? So the, there's people whose lives did not work out the way that they thought it would for a lot of people in ways that are particularly damaging.

And then yeah, then it comes the realization that we're only here for a blink of an eye, and poof, it's over and you're worm food, and that's not maybe- ... comforting for a lot of people. That's a

Michael Regilio: rather dark way to look at it. Yeah. Uh, which you're 46 years old- Yeah ... so we'll call that exhibit A for, uh, stress maxing out midlife.

You're not wrong. The good news is that after about 50, happiness starts to rise again and often keeps climbing into the 70s even as health declines. That

Jordan Harbinger: sounds counterintuitive. So as health declines, people stay happier? How, why?

Michael Regilio: I don't know. I mean, a few things seem to be going on. Let's start with expectation adjustment.

As people get older, they recalibrate what they want from life. Fewer grand fantasies, more appreciation for what they have. Emotional regulation also improves. People get better at avoiding unnecessary conflict and letting go of things that don't matter. And time [00:25:00] perspective shifts. When time starts to feel finite, people start to prioritize relationships and meaning over status and achievement.

Jordan Harbinger: And I think there's something else going on there, too. People who make it into older age, they're simply more resilient, man. They've been there. They've done that. There's a stabilizing effect, I think, that probably comes from having survived long enough to reach old age, and you've seen people come and go, and you're, you're one of the people who hasn't gone yet.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. But you will remember that I said the happiness reverse bell curve was a constant in sociological studies from around the world.

Jordan Harbinger: Was. Having read about this a bit, I can tell you right now it is that first high point of happiness that I think has changed, youth. So young people are seemingly more unhappy than ever, and many critics point to the device that seems to be super glued to their hand and plopped out about a foot in front of their face.

Michael Regilio: Yep. You're 100% right, and let's start at the very beginning, literally the beginning of life. There's not much debate when it comes to screen time for very young kids, and that is [00:26:00] because of how learning actually works. Before babies can talk or understand words, they are already fluent in faces, body language, microexpressions, the emotional feedback they get from the parents, the very thing that people thought talking on the telephone would rob us of.

A screen can't do that. Even educational apps for really young kids replace human interaction with bright lights and sparkly distractions that overstimulate. These are hardly replacement for a loving parent.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right. Isn't the rule no screen time at all before 18 months or something along those lines?

Michael Regilio: Yes. You are talking about the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, and you're mostly right. There is one small exception that they make. They say FaceTiming with grandma is fine, and that is probably because you can see grandma's face. She reacts to the baby, and the baby, uh, reacts back. That back and forth is the natural way humans learn.

So that's the way it is until 18 months of age. They say just pretty much no screen time at all. But then after 18 months, the recommendation is limited screen time between 18 and [00:27:00] 24 months, and even then, an adult should be present to explain what is happening and help make real world connections for the young person.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, my kids, I don't remember what age we let them start watching iPad. Probably too early, candidly, because we didn't really know about all this early on, but they weren't always interested in that stuff. My daughter is much more interested in it than my son. My son will watch those Mark Rober videos and stuff like that.

He likes science videos, or he'll be curious about something, and he'll be like, "Hey, how does a submarine go up and down in the water?" I'm like, "Okay, a video is a really good way to illustrate this. Somebody for sure has made a video for kids that explains submarines." So we let them watch that. But my daughter, she watches a wider variety of things, and she's four now, and this variety I don't always love.

Sure, she learns a ton from YouTube. She'll start using words that we didn't teach her. She'll tell us how things work, and she... But then other things we'll catch her watching, I'm like, "Okay, so this is people singing and dancing [00:28:00] or doing something stupid like throwing plastic things at each other, and it's not even in English."

So they're watching, I don't know, Russians or Indian kids, you know, saying things in a foreign language and not doing anything educational. They're, like, having a water fight. I just find it really tough to believe she's getting anything out of that, so we try to limit that stuff. But yeah, my son, you say, "Hey, no more iPad," and he's like, "Whatever."

But my daughter, depending on her mood, sometimes she really wants to watch that stuff, and it's a little disconcerting, right? Like when you take an iPad away from a kid and say, "Let's go play something," usually they're okay, but when they start reacting like a heroin addict that you've taken away their stash, that's highly concerning when they're that young.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. I can only imagine. Th- this gets exactly into what, uh, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. So they say for kids between two and five, no more than an hour a day of what they call sedentary recreational screen time, and that phrase definitely [00:29:00] matters, g- the, the sedentary recreational part, because that's what you're talking about.

It's not the educational, it's not the interactive. It's just the sitting there watching for the fun of watching. And a systemic review and meta-analysis in, uh, 2023 found that increased screens in early childhood is associated with poor cognitive and psychosocial outcomes. Not because screens are just straight brain poison, but because passive viewing replaces conversation, play, and sleep.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so what I'm curious about here is, this is sort of a chicken egg thing for me because, a- and again, I don't know the research, so I'm not saying that as fact. I'm just saying my question is, what comes first? Because okay, y- your kid watches a lot of iPad and oh, he has poorer cognitive and psychosocial outcomes than other kids.

Is that because he's watching too much iPad, or is he watching too much iPad because his mom is addicted to the phone and his dad works 14 hours a day, or [00:30:00] mom and dad both work 14 hours a day and when they get home, they're brain dead and they turn on their own phone and social media, or they stick the kid in a room alone because they've got to make dinner and co- and so the kid's watching.

So it's like, is it because of... Basically, I think what I'm saying here is, is the iPad causing the poorer psychosocial and cognitive outcome, or is that because the parents are disengaged from the parenting process for whatever reason, even if it's a really good reason, like they have to take care of people, elderly parents or the house or their own kids, and they're just not involved with that particular kid very often except on the weekends?

So, so you, you see what I'm saying? Like, is it the iPad causing it, or is it the fact that the parents are overstretched and too busy?

Michael Regilio: That is such a good point. That is a super sharp observation, and you're hitting on what researchers call the confounding variable problem, and it's definitely something they're trying to consider when looking at this data.

The honest answer from the research is probably both, like you just said, but it's genuinely hard to untangle. Some studies try to control for [00:31:00] parenting quality, socioeconomic factors, and home environment, but you can't perfectly isolate the screen variable from the parenting. So parenting is kind of an X factor.

Unless the researchers can go into the home 24 hours a day for some number of days and judge the parents, they just don't have an indication one way or the other of how much that's playing into it. But what is known is passive viewing replaces, like I said, important stuff, conversation, play, and sleep.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

So this is good to know because my daughter probably does watch, let's say, more than an hour, maybe it's an hour and a half, of just watching stuff. Some of it's educational, so maybe it's not all recreational, but let's say she watches that. But she plays really well at school. She sleeps really well at night.

She's always talking with people at school and here at home. So is that going to matter? That's the question. Yes, it's probably better if she's not watching, I don't know, kids buy things on Amazon and throw them at each other on YouTube, but is it going to cause the same kind of [00:32:00] problem? Maybe not. I don't know.

Or that's copium, or h- what, hopium from me, and this sounds a little bit like Professor Jonathan Haidt's argument in his book. He wrote a book called The Anxious Generation. That was episode 990 here on the show. He basically said that mammals have play-based childhood, and that play for children is one of the most important experiences for brain development and emotional growth, which is probably not a big surprise.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. In Professor Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation has done a lot to forward the notion that smartphones are really, really bad for childhood development He argues that once you remove play, social interactions, adventure, and what we used to just call childhood, you predictably get weaker language skills, shorter attention spans, and less social connection.

Jordan Harbinger: Which explains the collapse of happiness in youth. Uh, there's MRIs of children's brains that back all this stuff up, correct?

Michael Regilio: Yes. Most famously, there's Dr. John S. Hutton, who published a study that found that higher [00:33:00] screen time was associated with lower microstructural integrity of white matter tracts.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. There's no doubt in my mind you have no idea what any of those words mean.

Michael Regilio: And you would be correct, but having read about the study, I know that this is the part of the brain that supports language, literacy, and related cognitive networks.

Jordan Harbinger: Can I fairly say you don't ne- uh, necessarily know what that means?

And you'd be right again. Okay. But

Michael Regilio: I know this is affecting important stuff in kids' brains. Yes. I don't need to know exactly what all these scientific words mean, I just need to know that the people who study it definitely know what these words mean. Yes. For example, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, he has conducted research at Harvard Medical School.

He argues that our kids are the first generation in the past hundred years to be cognitively worse than we are. Cognitively worse, that... Is that

Jordan Harbinger: a nice way, is that a science-y way to say dumber? I

Michael Regilio: think that is what he is saying. Okay. He argues that this generation performs worse than the one before in areas like [00:34:00] attention, memory, working memory, creative thinking, divergent thinking, and critical thinking.

So for roughly the last hundred years, each generation has performed better than the previous one on cognitive tests. This appears to be the first generation to take a step backward, which makes it totally worth studying.

Jordan Harbinger: Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight with the data or with a scientist who knows his stuff here, but my own experience tells me that kids today are actually pretty great.

Yes, teenagers are constantly on their phones, but when you sit down and actually have conversations with young people, with teenagers, I don't have any in my immediate family, but I- I've done this before and it's obvious, it's so obvious that they are smart and they're navigating some pretty unique challenges.

I know this sounds weird, but what, let's say I go to New York, for example. I do a lot of walking around and I'll see these like young, sorta like punky looking kids that are local to Manhattan or, or maybe Bronx, Brooklyn, and they're at a convenience store and I'll be like, "Hey guys, you mind if I [00:35:00] ask you something?"

They'll be like, "What's up?" And I'll, I'll ask them a question like, "Do you know what's going on in the world today or do you mostly watch, you know, like Sneako stream?" And they're like, "Nah, screw that guy, da da da da." And then they'll tell me something like, "You know, here's what I'm concerned about in the world."

And they're like, "You know, I don't really care about gas prices because I don't have a car, but I know it affects other things in the world economy and I'm worried about getting a job." And I'm like, "How old are you?" And they're like, "I'm in 10th grade." And I'm just like, this kid has Junko jeans on and his pants are falling down and he's got a broccoli haircut, and he looks like the kinda guy who, I don't know, jumps off a second story window into a pool full of Jell-O.

And it's like no, he's actually not as ignorant as he looks. He's just got teenage style, but these kids are not all just brain dead. They're smarter than a lot of adults that I know. Again, anecdotal evidence is, you know, it's not really refuting your points here, but I'm not seeing this whole sort of brain dead Wall-E generation.

And if I am, it's adults, not kids.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. But no, y- you're getting to something important, and that's because it depends on [00:36:00] what kids you're speaking with. And there is actually a counter-narrative to all of this, and we'll get into that. But first, let's dig into what some of the scientists who are ringing the alarm bells are actually saying.

So you were right to point out teenagers. They are the group being studied the most. Multiple studies find that higher screen time does correlate with mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression. Heavy screen time also correlates with less emotional regulation and less cognitive flexibility, and study after study shows that no group is being hit harder than teenage girls.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right, it turns into this depression loop. And I can, man, I can kinda relate. I would hate to compare myself to other people on social media all day. I cannot imagine how much harder it is to resist doing that for young women. Teenage girls are scrolling through social media. They see girls that they think are prettier, that are skinnier and happier, that are using filters or whatever.

And of course it makes them feel worse. I'm an adult man. I'm 46 years old. I see [00:37:00] other things like that and I feel that little pang of like, "Oh, I really should lose a few pounds. I bet I could... Oh, I'm not doing the kinds of exercises this professional athlete in calisthenics, you know, gymnast is doing. I should be doing that."

You know? And, and then feeling worse, it sends them back to scrolling, which leads to more comparison and more anxiety, and around and around it goes. And if this is happening to a 46-year-old man who can put this thing down and look at all the blessings I have in my secure, happy life, I can't imagine being in a sort of a precarious teenager position and having to do that same thing without the foundation of ha- being able to go back to, "Well, I've got it made over here," right?

You're, you're already insecure, and then you've got this insecurity slot machine in your hand.

Michael Regilio: Absolutely. Uh, one of the leading researchers on this is David Blanchflower, and he's been flashing the warning lights in a big way. He has noticed that this very stable happiness index we've been talking about, it started to go awry around 2014.

Jordan Harbinger: So right around the time every teenager got a smartphone because they became affordable- Bingo ... and ubiquitous? Yeah.

Michael Regilio: Yes. Teens used [00:38:00] to be among the happiest age group, like we said. In recent years, Blanchflower has noticed that roughly one in 10 teenage girls, and a smaller but still significant number of boys, report severe mental distress, describing their mental health as poor almost every day.

Ugh.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, I don't want to argue with experts, but I'd be curious what percentage of teenage girls identify as goth, because ... that might explain why they're feeling depressed every day as well. No, I, I kid, but I'm also... Look, I see, and it could just be where I live, but I do travel a lot, and I feel like I see this everywhere.

When you and I were younger, ugh, it makes me feel so old saying stuff like that, but when you and I were younger, there was like a couple of kids that would wear the metal stuff and the black lipstick and the eyeliner. And now I feel like maybe there's a lot more of those darker subcultures. Maybe this isn't linked to depression and I'm just reading too far into it, and people just like different kinds of music and I don't get it.

I, I hope that's the case. But the mental health stuff, it's really scary [00:39:00] in kids and teenagers. I hate hearing this because it makes me really sad. I mean, if you had a couple of depressed kids in your high school, everybody kinda knew about it and felt bad for them. It seems like that's just everyone now.

That freaks me out. I, I hate hearing that. It's, you're supposed to be happy. You're not supposed to have clinical depression when you're f- 15. I mean, that's just, I don't know, it just makes my, it breaks my heart really. It's

Michael Regilio: a complex issue, but the fact of the matter is this is not just a US phenomenon.

This is cross-national research that shows similar patterns emerging among young people around the entire world. So there's the thing called the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, and that found that early screen exposure had lasting effects. Each additional hour of screen time was associated with lower classroom participation and weaker math performance years later.

Your ancestors fought saber-toothed

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We've also got a Jordan Harbinger subreddit if you want to talk about the show, talk about concepts from the show, ask questions of the show team. That's over there on the Jordan [00:42:00] Harbinger subreddit. Now back to Skeptical Sunday. There's also the element of being in school is often not that interesting.

So if you are really on your phone all the time and you're hooked on your phone all the time, then you're not doing your homework, and you have less to say in class, and you haven't done the reading because you're hooked on your phone. I feel like this is a, a cycle, right? You get addicted to the phone and then you end up doing less of your schoolwork.

It's what happened when I got a computer, man. I got a computer, I started finding out about the internet, I started playing Doom and stuff like that, and I stopped doing other things that I needed to do, and then I didn't know what was going on in school, so I kind of retreated into my head. I didn't have a phone.

And then I'd come home, and instead of l- being like, "I better catch up with everybody," I was like, "Screw it, I'm going on the internet again." So yeah, it's a cycle.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, for sure. It's definitely a cycle, and it's actually a pattern th- which is repeating itself. It's not just, uh, the Quebec longitudinal study, but research from Spain has found that higher levels of screen media are associated with lower academic achievement.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so [00:43:00] correlation, got it. But causation, though? Can they show that this is causing that? I mean, I gave you my harebrained theory about it earlier th- that I had from me growing up with a computer, but do we know that this is causal?

Michael Regilio: Maybe it's too early to say for sure, but the numbers are pretty alarming.

I've noticed the potential for depression and body image anxiety in my own family. Like, we're taking family photos, and my little nieces want to immediately review the photos and make sure they were good enough. And I mean, that breaks my heart. I grew up in a time when photos were taken on film. Th- the camera just disappeared into a lab for three months.

And when it came back- Yeah ... it never crossed my mind to look at it and wonder how I looked. And by the way, I've seen some pictures of me as a kid I should have been concerned with how I looked. I mean, I got one here I'm going to show you right now, and this picture is,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah Wow, you look like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber and Howdy Doody Doll, to be frank, had a demon child who got mauled by a [00:44:00] bear.

Okay. Well, we'll put that in the show notes. It's on the website when we drop this episode. Look, I get it. Kids today, they're under a different kind of pressure, and let's be honest, a lot of this is by design, man. App developers, phone designers, you cannot convince me that they are not deliberately building systems that condition us to crave our phones and stay on them.

My friend Nir Eyal wrote a book called Hooked. It's actually quite... It's probably 15-plus years old now, and it was about how companies are doing this. And you would think like, "Oh, this is going to be the warning sign that everybody is being lied to by these big companies." And so what happened? He wrote this book to warn everybody, and he immediately got hired by all of these companies because they're like, "Tell us how to do more of the things you're talking about in Hooked."

And he's like- No way ... "I kinda didn't... That's not where I was going with this and stuff." And it's, he's between a rock and a hard place because, yes, you're going to probably consult for Meta because you want to sort of steer thing- You w- well, and you want to make money because that's who's got the [00:45:00] money to pay you, but two, he's like, "I can steer things so that they're not as harmful."

And they were kind of like, "Look, we're not interested in your sort of moral boundaries of this. We just want to learn how to make this stuff more addicting." And he's like, "Ugh." So he started writing about other things. Uh, but he's still into behavior change, but I, I think he got It was a cold shower writing a book about how everyone's hooked on this, and then the people who are the most interested are the social media companies so they can make the problem worse.

Anyway, yeah, young kids, and adults for that matter, are basically defenseless against the research and development teams at massive tech companies. I mean, they're ... What are we supposed to do?

Michael Regilio: Man, the story of your friend, that is crazy. It's- Yeah ... a- and of course, we don't want to hear that we're addicted to our phones, but it makes so much sense that the app manufacturers, they want to hear it.

Like, tell us more. Yes. Yeah, so that's such a good point, but yeah, big tech companies all have neuromarketing and behavioral science teams. These are scientists whose job is to figure out how to influence behavior and keep people consuming more and more of their [00:46:00] products. In fact, there were just two huge landmark cases against Meta and Google that exposed a ton of information there.

They are literally trying to drive behavioral change. One of the most widely used frameworks for this is called the Fogg behavioral model, developed by BJ Fogg. He's at Stanford. His research sits underneath almost all social media design.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm glad you brought him up. Yes, he's a friend of mine as well, and a guest on the show, episode 306, and I meant to say Nir Eyal has been on the show several times.

I don't have his episode numbers handy. He was on recently about belief in behavior change. But y- yeah, BJ Fogg, also completely horrified by how his behavior change research, which he was doing, I think, at Stanford, how that's been used to create tech addiction in young people especially. He told me, I went to his house, and I, he was saying that one of the major issues that he has was he was teaching all these kids in Stanford, like, "Hey, you know, look at all this behavior change stuff, and here's how you can use it to form good habits and [00:47:00] break habits," and a lot of his top students went on to be like, "Here's an app that uses all of the behavior change stuff to keep you using the app as much as possible," and he was kinda like, "That's not really what I was hoping y'all were going to do with this."

So he, he's, he's kind of like, uh, the scientist who invented this thing that gets misused in a Marvel movie. It's like, "I've invented unlimited energy," and the evil guy's like, "Great, I'm going to use it to nuke everyone," and he's like, "No, no, no, no, no. I was-" He's Oppenheimer. Yes, he's Oppenheimer, exactly. Yes, so this stuff, this BJ Fogg stuff, this is really the science behind endless scrolling, where the feed never ends, and there's autoplay of videos, and one video finishes, and the other one immediately starts.

I mean, all of this kinda stuff, it stems from his original principles.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, exactly. A- and the way the tech companies have worked it is they, teenagers are not staying on these apps because they are choosing to. They're staying on the apps because the app manufacturers have made it frictionless. Yes. App designers make it harder to [00:48:00] stop being on the app than it is to just continue being on the app.

You pointed out two of the big ones already, which is infinite scroll and autoplay. Then add one-tap likes, instant reactions, pre-filled responses like LOL and emojis, and now they've, uh, all incorporated Face ID, which removes the last barrier, which is you don't even have to log in. You just pick up your phone and you're in This completely highlights the difference between the internet and social media apps.

And when we talk about teenagers and screen time, we are pretty much mostly talking about social media apps.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's be honest, this is not just teenagers we are talking about. You just described all of my middle-aged friends, even my parents. Again, both in their 80s. They're on their phones more than anybody that I know.

Just absolutely constantly. It makes me wonder how long it'll be until the other high point on the happiness graph falls off a cliff. Oh, I'm retired now. I can garden all day. Actually, I'm going to sit inside, look at anti-whatever Joe Biden or Donald Trump posts or s- whatever on [00:49:00] Facebook all day, watch people complain, and watch videos of, uh, people my age falling or something.

I mean, it's just, it's only a matter of time. Uh, they've, they have already figured out how to hook these people, so you know. Uh, it wouldn't surprise me if it's already there and we just don't have the research calculated yet.

Michael Regilio: Look, man, let's... I'm, I'm happy to look in the mirror right now and say, myself included.

Like, the difference though between, say, your parents or even me, is that our neural pathways were formed before infinite scrolling. True. So these kids today, they are developing their brains inside these systems while their brains are still young and malleable. So that's what's so dangerous about what, unfortunately, your friend's system developed and what his students went on to then exploit with these social media apps.

And there's a step two to the Fog Model as well.

Jordan Harbinger: It's crazy that the method by which apps are making young people's brains hazy is called the Fog Model. That's just a... I mean, it's just two Gs, but still.

Michael Regilio: Reality loves irony, Jordan. So [00:50:00] step two, and this is where it gets pretty insidious, is the prompt. And social media companies, they are crazy for it, and these teenagers, they are bombarded with prompts from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep.

Push notifications, vibrations, badges, streak warnings. Hey, your friend just posted, or you might like.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay, I've got to admit, this stuff works. Nothing motivates me like finding out I'm about to lose my Duolingo streak. I just recently lost my streak, and it's because I was on a boat with no internet, and I was like, "This is a good time for me to break the habit of feeling like I have to log into this thing at 11:30 PM even though I've already, I'm already just half asleep or already asleep to keep my streak."

I did have, like, an 800-day streak. No way. And then I had a 400-day streak after I broke that one when I went to Japan, because the date changed and I immediately... I don't think streak freezes existed, so I just lost my streak, like, over, uh, an error. And I emailed them to put it back, and they didn't get it or they [00:51:00] didn't do it, I can't remember.

And I was like, "Fine." So I stopped using it for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I just, again, last week lost... Like, right now my Duolingo says, "Jordan, oh no," because I haven't done it and my streak is now zero.

Michael Regilio: Oh, no. Yeah. Indeed. I'm a little bit proud. I'm at 390 days of German lessons here. Das ist sehr

Jordan Harbinger: gut, Michael.

Michael Regilio: Huh?

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, ke- keep practicing, Dummkopf. Uh, yeah, if that's the... Well, we're going to do a Skeptical Sunday on language learning apps because-

Michael Regilio: Oh, I'd be so curious.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Michael Regilio: I am trying. I find German to be sehr interessant.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Anyway. Any language is going to be a tough one to learn in the app. I use... This is an aside and maybe a sneak preview of the Skeptical Sunday, but I use it as an addition.

Like, I use it to reactivate Spanish, which I already spoke really well back in the day, and has since gotten beyond rusty, and it's worked really well for reactivating things. I use it to improve sentence structure in German, because my spoken German was really good, but my written German was crap. I used it to learn common [00:52:00] phrases in Chinese that I maybe didn't use, because I don't talk about owls very often in Chinese.

I guess that's not a common phrase. But you can use it for things like that, but they're very hard/not useful for people who want to start a brand-new language, and you're like, "I'm going to learn Quechua or whatever from Duolingo." It's like, no, you're going to pick up a couple vocab words, but y- picking this up from the beginning levels is basically a fool's errand of these apps.

Michael Regilio: I've definitely noticed that. I'm doing that thing that everybody does, which is I watch my Netflix in German now. I'm currently going through BoJack Horseman in German, so- That's

Jordan Harbinger: actually kind of a fun idea. I should probably watch movies with Chinese subtitles or something like that, or English subtitles.

Yeah. Or is it... Do you watch with English subtitles, but the audio is German? Is that what you're doing? Yeah, you can- Okay ... with

Michael Regilio: Netflix you can switch the audio. So it's, even though it was shot in English, not shot because it's a cartoon, but it was made in English, you can switch it to German and then turn on the English subtitles.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay. I could see that being useful, is if you're a d- if you have enough [00:53:00] of a basis of each language, otherwise you're just listening to stuff you don't understand at all and reading subtitles, and it's pointless.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. I do a lot of pausing and try and figure out- There you go ... what exactly was said there.

But no, it's... I'm going to need more than Duolingo, and again, looking forward to this episode. Definitely going to listen to that one. Anyway, so back to the social media apps. In fact, back to what we were talking about, which is the prompts. So the way that they're evil is that they arrive at moments of boredom, loneliness, insecurity, and social comparison.

The apps make sure there is never silence in your life Which is interesting because when I was in music school, we used to make a joke that the guy who overplayed his flashy guitar solos were this- was really just saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me." Right, right. Yeah. And that's basically what our phones are now, constantly screaming, "Look at me."

We are like Pavlov's dogs. We're trained to hear a, a beep or feel a buzz, and the phone wants us to drop everything, see what just came in.

Jordan Harbinger: So Nir Eyal's book Hooked, and again, this came out in probably [00:54:00] 2009 or 2010 or something. I don't know. You know what? I, I could be, that could be a little early. Maybe it's 2013.

But one of his first tips was turn off your notifications for things like email, ri- Back then, you only had a few apps, right? You had, like, email apps and things like that. Now, if you don't actively manage your notifications for everything, which I do religiously, I get notifications for only a few apps, right?

It's like iMessage, WhatsApp, and I do have New York Times breaking news, and I toy with turning it off and on again depending on the focus mode that I'm in because I don't need, like, "Breaking news: It's raining in Chicago." I don't need that kind of stuff. But I don't have... If you don't manage your notifications, you're getting like, oh, Hungry Panda, 14% off bubble tea this Saturday at this place really far from your house, and it's like I don't need to be constantly pulled back to that.

And to throw my wife under the bus, love you Jen, but her notifications are on for email, and they go to her watch. So she'll get [00:55:00] like, "Crate & Barrel's having a sale. Here's our newsletter." And it goes to her watch, and I'm like, "Honey, you're driving yourself insane. You're driving yourself insane." "I have so many notifications."

I'm like, "Yeah, for email that you can look at later, none of which you're going to address now. They're just stacking up on your phone screen giving you anxiety." And yeah, you've c- you've really got to make darn sure that these things are off. But y- yeah, though, back to your Pavlov's dogs thing, when you hear the beep or you feel the buzz, you want to drop everything and see what just came in, which is kind of ironic because most teenagers are feeling insecure and thinking, you know, "Don't look at me.

Don't look at me." But then they're perfectly happy to have their phone, which is telling them to look at other people. I don't know. It's crazy to me.

Michael Regilio: Just like the Pavlovian dogs, for me, the moment a notification comes in, it's tough to fight- Yes ... that temptation to drop everything and check my phone.

Jordan Harbinger: Who hasn't almost gotten into a car accident because we just need to know who texted me five seconds ago?

That's one of the notifications that I still have on, which is extra disappointing, again, [00:56:00] because you realize, wow, I almost died to learn that I could get 10% off at Sunglass Hut this weekend.

Michael Regilio: Believe it or not, I eventually had to make a rule for myself, uh, that's a crazy one. Keep your eyes on the road when driving.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, in y- your case, I on the road until recently.

Michael Regilio: Soon to be eyes Yes But, uh, yeah. Look, once I stopped checking my phone every time I got a notification, I actually noticed something kind of funny, and that is that when you're late and you need to get somewhere, you hit every red light. But if your phone dings and you're, like, desperate to check it, like, you know, is that the, the important gig that I- Is it my doctor?

Yeah ... that I asked about coming in? Like, when that happens, somehow you hit every green light. It's crazy. Yes. I call it Rugelio's Law. Yes. Anyway, so you and I are grown men, so we have the trouble fighting these temptations. Just imagine how much harder this must be for teenagers. Yep. And app developers know exactly what they're doing [00:57:00] Adolescents crave social acceptance, status, novelty, emotional intensity, and they fear exclusion.

So these systems are designed to exploit every one of those instincts.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm starting to think that screen time report we get every week is literally just the, the least big tech could do.

Michael Regilio: Oh, yeah, of course. Just like they're manipulating teenagers' brains by design, they're doing as little as they can by design because this is how they make their money.

In fact, Reed Hastings from Netflix once admitted that their real competitors are sleep and human connection.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. D- is that real? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, it was, like, on an investor call or something like that. Yeah, I was going to

Jordan Harbinger: say, he probably didn't say that during a, a PR opportunity- No ... Because that's- Definitely not

so dark and dystopian. Yeah,

Michael Regilio: but it tells you everything you need to know about their incentives, and it gets actually worse. So through whistleblowers and records obtained through lawsuits filed by state attorneys general, that we have now 31 [00:58:00] internal studies done by Meta, and the studies show pretty clearly that Meta knew their product was doing harm to young people, particularly, once again, adolescent girls.

They employ the same psychology that slot machine designers use, and these are powerful techniques that hack our brains and keep us pulling that lever for the next dopamine hit. Yeah, it doesn't get much clearer than that, I guess. Actually, to be honest with you, it gets a little bit clearer than that because let's talk about what we actually discovered in those two big cases I just talked about against Meta and Alphabet, which is the parent company of YouTube and Google.

Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Now, as a content creator and a lawyer, I know that social media apps, they actually have a lot of protection from being sued for what third parties put on their platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, right? Like, basically, you can't sue Facebook because somebody posted Nazi stuff or whatever on there.

Michael Regilio: Yes. That's absolutely right. So Section 230 was written in 1996, and just for [00:59:00] comparison, Netscape was the biggest game in tech at that time. Wow. Yeah. Which illustrates the problem with tech. It moves faster than the legal system- Yeah, by a lot ... Because no one in 1996 could have ever imagined TikTok. But you're right.

The apps basically can't get sued for what third parties do with them, which is why these two cases, one in LA and the other one was in New Mexico, were such a big deal. In these cases, the litigants proved it was not third parties but the apps themselves doing harm by design.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I read a little about this, and lawyers argued that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately designed to be addictive and that these companies knew their platforms were harming young people, and then the tech companies countered, and they were like, "Hey, our- you can't blame our services for complex mental health issues."

But that's different. Look, if somebody had, let's say, a message board, and someone's harassing your kid on the message board, that's kind of not the message board's fault because they can't moderate all that content. But if the message board [01:00:00] dings your kid's phone at night and then says, "Hey, look, all these other people are cool and you're a big loser," that's different, right?

That, that's the company, that's the message board doing the damage. And so yeah, that's what the lawyers basically had said is like, "No, no, no, this isn't third parties and multiple users bugging each other out using your technology. This is your technology deliberately doing this to mess with people so you can make money."

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, you certainly did your homework on this one, but You're correct that the defense of the tech companies were basically like, "Look, mental health is complex. You can't blame it all on us." But the thing is that in both cases, the plaintiffs argue that tech companies intentionally designed their apps to take advantage of young people's developing prefrontal cortex, basically exploiting their lack of impulse control.

Jordan Harbinger: That is so messed up.

Michael Regilio: Mark Zuckerberg himself took the stand and tried to argue that apps, that his apps don't allow users on until they're 13 years old. But thanks to the good old-fashioned [01:01:00] discovery period- Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah. So discovery is where you can sort of say, "Hey, we want your documents on this, this, this, your corporate policies.

We want to see all the emails having to do with this." This is where all the dirt comes out.

Michael Regilio: Right. Exactly. And the plaintiffs uncovered one document that said, quote, "If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens." Ha. Yeah. And another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times more likely to keep coming back to Instagram compared to other competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, so the whole thing was designed to keep them addicted and keep them scrolling, which is so gross, and then s- and then to lie about

Michael Regilio: it. Right. Well, Professor Haidt, uh, who you've had on the show, uses a great analogy. I've heard him say it several times in interviews. He says that imagine if instead of an app, it was a casino that opened in the neighborhood and let children come in and allow them to gamble.

Instead of running around with their friends in the woods and playing pirates, they were suddenly spending all their time at a casino gambling compulsively. Well, if that were the case, parents would freak out. [01:02:00] They would have the place shut down. Well, the social media apps are a casino opening in the neighborhood and robbing children of their youth and their sleep.

Jordan Harbinger: And as we have talked about on previous episodes of Skeptical Sunday, sleep is absolutely essential, especially for the developing brain. So a business model that intentionally eats into people's sleep, that's messed up.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Phone addiction is not classified in the same way alcohol, opioids, or gambling addiction are, but the fact of the matter is it checks a lot of the same boxes.

Most notably, and we just mentioned this, that dopamine-driven reward loop.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, and that dopamine hit is the same thing you see with other addictions, right?

Michael Regilio: Exactly. Notifications and likes give the brain a little dopamine reward. Sure. And that hits teenagers harder because the parts of the brain responsible for impulse control and self-regulation are still under construction.

Psychiatrist Anne Lembke, who you've actually had on the show as well-

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. R- Anna Lembke, great conversation, episode 951. She's very smart, and sh- uh, uh, she [01:03:00] was addicted to basically, like, smut novels, and she talked about it, which I thought was really funny. I've never heard of anybody talk about their addiction to, yeah, reading- Wow

smutty- Like the novels that had Fabio on the cover? Yes, exactly. Like Harlequ- well, I don't even know about Harlequin romance or, like, this was actually basically just written porn And she talks about how she would read it, and then she got into it, and then she would eventually start skipping to just straight to the part where they're banging.

And I'm like, "Oh, this is kind of what guys do with videos, right?" It's just she was... And she was like, "Yeah, that's what I've heard." So she was very, very open on episode 951. Anyway, go ahead.

Michael Regilio: Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Michael Regilio: Yeah, she sounds amazing. She is quite good. And from what I was reading about her, uh, she sounds super smart and knowledgeable as well.

And she described modern tech as a high dopamine, low effort stimulus that overwhelms the brain's natural balance. Basically, try imagining trying to quit an addictive behavior when the trigger is always in your pocket, [01:04:00] always buzzing, always available. Like imagine trying to quit heroin, but everywhere you go you have heroin with you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Well, it's like cigarettes, right? If, when you try to quit smoking, fine, but everyone's willing to sell an adult a pack of cigarettes, especially early in the '90s and stuff when it was just everywhere. The apps are engineered to keep you hooked. Infinite scroll, dopamine hits, zero shame. Kind of like your last relationship.

These sponsors though, healthy, stable, won't text you at 2:00 AM. We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for listening to the show and supporting our advertisers. They do keep the lights on around here. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are on the website searchably, clickably over at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Thank you for supporting those that support the show.

Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday So instead of telling me I spent six hours on my phone, how about the phone just takes itself away at night, turns off, "8:00 to 10:00, lights out. Go talk to your loved ones. Go be a person."

Michael Regilio: Yeah, that'd be amazing. That's a great idea, but [01:05:00] that,

Jordan Harbinger: uh-

Michael Regilio: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Would require them to stop designing apps that deliberately hack the brains of their customers.

Whoops. Exactly. Yeah. The problem with that, though, is, is obvious, right? Because if one company pulls back, the apps market, the whole thing would just optimize for the competitor that doesn't do that, right? So that company wins the market. So it's kind of like you can't just say, "Hey, guys, we shouldn't do this," because somebody else will just decide to go and do that.

Michael Regilio: Oh, don't get me started on the pitfalls of unregulated capitalism, Jordan. Yeah. This is a whole, that's a whole different episode.

Jordan Harbinger: It is. Communist Michael Rogelio. So okay, so before, before I have to sit through one of your Bernie was right about everything lectures, let me, let me say this. The argument that there's a connection between smartphones and teen anxiety, that's pretty solid, okay?

But smartphones are not the only thing that has changed since we were kids. The, the 24-hour news cycle is a new thing. I think it started with CNN cable news, because they're like, "Hey, we need 24 hours of news instead of one, so start pulling out things that weren't news yesterday and make them news now."[01:06:00]

And then the constant negativity in the media is kinda new, I think, right? I mean, yes, you would hear news about things that happened that were negative, but again, only during the news, which was 30 to 60 minutes every night. And there was fear about climate change. That's kinda new as an adult, or at least as a young adult we started hearing about that.

There's, now there's fear about fascism or fear about liberals coming to make the frogs gay.

Gay Frogs Clip: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the frigging frogs gay.

Jordan Harbinger: So you got that, and, and c- could all of this also be contributing to what teenagers are going through right now?

Michael Regilio: Absolutely.

There has been a lot of research that pushes back against just about everything we've been talking about. Sure. And- Okay ... that's just the reality of something, of studying something really new. Smartphones have only been around for about 19 years. So one of the leading voices on the smartphones aren't that bad side of the debate is Andrew Przybylski at University of Oxford.

Now, Przybylski's research argues that screen time shows very small, inconsistent, or in some cases no [01:07:00] clear association with overall well-being.

Jordan Harbinger: I get that the science is not perfect, but this feels like it completely contradicts what we just laid out, so h- how does that happen?

Michael Regilio: People have asked, uh, the good professor about that, and Przybylski, he explains this by pointing out that what he calls a tech lash, basically a backlash against technology that's going on right now.

So for a while during, he says, the Arab Spring, tech was seen as a savior. Smartphones helped young people organize protests and challenge power. Then he points to Cambridge Analytica as a turning point. He says suddenly people realized that there was a darker side. So the story flipped from tech will save us to tech is destroying us.

So his argument is that when you actually dig into the research, the data does not completely support the fear. Part of the problem is that screen time, and we talked about this at the top of the show, is kind of a meaningless umbrella term Another problem is that happiness and wellbeing are actually not that easy to measure.

So feeling unhappy is not the same as [01:08:00] having a diagnosed mental health disorder.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, a, a person's feelings might not be perfectly quantifiable, but they are still incredibly valuable when we're trying to understand how new technology affects us emotionally. I mean, how else are we supposed to do this?

Michael Regilio: Well, what you're voicing now is something a lot of people in the field are feeling, which is frustration. Researchers are trying to study something that is important but inherently opaque. There's another paper worth mentioning here called To What Extent Are Trends in Teen Mental Health Driven by Changes in Reporting?

And that paper argues that reported increases in teen depression may be strongly shaped by changes in screening practices within psychology itself.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You know what? That does make sense. I feel like this is a problem with a lot of different things, right, where people are like, "There's an uptick in ADHD."

And it's like, okay, but are, are there actually more ADHD people, or do we just have a word for all of the kids that couldn't sit still before that we considered bad or misbehaved or whatever? And it's like now we just have a term for that. We're just [01:09:00] expanding that, so come on. And you're supposed to look for it instead of just being like, "Oh, your son has the wiggles."

It's like, well, he's 16, so it's not the wiggles. He can't... He has impulse control issues that he has all of th- everywhere. He's not just misbehaved in school, and he's not... You know, it's not bad parenting or whatever. Anyway, so we're this far into the episode, and I still have no idea if smartphones are good or bad for you.

Michael Regilio: There's arguments on both sides, and that is totally true. But if you look at the broader consensus in the field, it actually is that, yes, there's still debate, but general agreement among researchers is that excessive screen time does carry risks and have very harmful effects, especially for young people.

This is how science works, which is so great. This is in part because of Professor Przybylski's work that newer studies have moved beyond simply asking, like, how many hours are you on your phone? Researchers now ask more precise questions. What are you doing on the phone? When are you using it, and un- and under what psychological conditions?

And so now with this more nuanced approach, the pattern [01:10:00] remains strong. It's still there. So heavy social media use, especially on comparison-driven platforms, is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression in teenagers. That's just kind of a fact. Late-night phone use correlates with sleep disruption, which then cascades into mood and attention problems.

Algorithmic feeds amplify emotional volatility by design. Intermittent reward systems activate the same impulses seen in gambling. And in young children, screens show measurable effect on attention and emotion regulation, and they replace human interaction. So smartphones are bad. No. Smartphones are great.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, this feels like a who's on first routine and is a very confusing episode.

Michael Regilio: That's because this is a confusing topic, but come on I'm old enough to appreciate that the thing I'm holding in my hand is a freaking miracle.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Michael Regilio: It's more powerful than anything we ever imagined. Even Star Trek did not imagine something as powerful as a smartphone.

I'm not going to bore the audience by listing [01:11:00] all the incredible things a smartphone can do. Like I said, everyone on Earth pretty much has one. We just need to be smart about how we use our smartphones, particularly if you're a teenager.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny that you just mentioned Star Trek because I remember 15 years ago, people were marveling that flip phones literally looked a little bit like the communicators they used on Star Trek, and people were like, "Whoa, Star Trek got it right.

Oh my gosh."

Michael Regilio: It's funny you should say that because that's one of Professor Haidt's recommendations for teenagers. They should only be allowed to use flip phones Not smartphones. Which, if you think about it, seems like a pretty good recommendation to me, so maybe Star Trek did get it right.

Jordan Harbinger: We somehow made it this far without talking about video games, which is, I think, where a lot of s- teens' screen time actually goes.

Well, actually, teens and kids, because you got Fortnite and all that stuff. So let me guess, ga- video games are terrible and wonderful and complicated all at the same time, right?

Michael Regilio: Let's look at what Rachel Kowert, uh, who is one of the leading researchers on the subject, uh, she's done extensive research on video games, and she points out [01:12:00] that they can actually be very good for young minds.

They are effective for learning new skills, releasing endorphins, and reducing stress. Kids learn leadership, cooperation, turn-taking, and operating within a set of rules. I never actually thought about this until I read one of Dr. Kowert's pieces, but when you're a little kid playing something like Chutes and Ladders, if you lose, you can throw a tantrum, and half the time your parents will say, "Okay, okay, you get an extra turn.

That one doesn't count." And that's a terrible lesson. But video games don't care if you're crying. You lost. Deal with it, kid.

Jordan Harbinger: Facts. Oh my gosh, that hits close to home. That, uh, maybe that works for Chutes and Ladders and a very young child, but I do remember Professor Hite making the point that when children play games out in the world, like basketball for example, they have to resolve the disputes, right?

One kid says he got fouled and the other kid says he didn't, and young people kind of have to learn to work it out. Does that happen in video games? Not really, right?

Michael Regilio: No, of course not, and that's another excellent point. And, uh, all these points, the pros and the cons, it's [01:13:00] all making me start to think that by inventing a super futuristic thinking machine and then trying to live with it is going to be kind of complex.

Jordan Harbinger: What about violent video games like Call of Duty? because I remember even when Pac-Man was out, people were like, "Oh, this is going to poison the kids' minds," and then you had Grand Theft Auto, and it's... Do we have research on whether this makes kids violent? I, I feel like it doesn't, but what do I... Again, I, I don't know anything about

Michael Regilio: this.

Your instinct I think is a good one, because Dr. Kowert says that even shooter games can be good for honing visual perception skills and improving frustration tolerance. She also points out that this is how a lot of kids hang out and decompress in the 21st century. And when you look at the research over the last 50 years, the overall impact of video games on players tends to be more positive than negative, even for games like Call of Duty.

But the concern is that they make the kids more violent,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah?

Michael Regilio: Well, according to Dr. Kowert, the research does not support a causal connection between video games and real world violence.

JHS Trailer: Okay. She

Michael Regilio: argues [01:14:00] that the fear of social atrophy, the idea that gaming makes kids unable to socialize in the real world, is not supported by the data either.

In fact, she says that kids who play video games are often learning 21st century social skills. People increasingly have to communicate with fewer non-verbal cues, and gamers get a lot of practice doing that.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. But we started this episode by saying that kids need to learn to identify non-verbal cues kind of in real life.

Michael Regilio: Well- Look, that was for babies- I see ... which is why you keep the kids away from screens. But the stone-cold reality is that this is the 21st century and these kids have to live in it. So I see her point. Kids are developing skills that previous generations just didn't need, like managing multiple conversations across topics at the same time.

This is called multithreading. I'm just learning about it. How, how are you at multithreading, Jordan?

Jordan Harbinger: I have gotten better over the years, but I'll be honest, I preferred it back in the old days when we did mono-threading. I think it was called talking. [01:15:00] So is the good doctor saying I should just let my kids play video games?

I don't know.

Michael Regilio: Well, she says the best thing to do is to actually play the games with your kids, and if you don't want to play them, just watch your kids playing the video games. She says if parents are capable of watching a soccer game of five-year-olds for two hours, they can handle watching their kid play Fortnite for a little while.

Jordan Harbinger: That is true. Okay, so maybe video games are not that bad. Honestly, I think it's super fun playing Mario Kart with my son and my wife. My daughter's a little bit too young. She doesn't know how to steer and stuff, but I love video games, man. That's definitely some of my screen time. Which brings us to another question: What if screen time itself is th- th- just a temporary problem because technology's changing so fast?

You and I talked about this a little bit before we hit record, but are screens even going to be a thing in a few years?

Michael Regilio: Oh my God, that is such a good point. Yes, futurist and companies ma- like Neuralink are already talking about a future without screens. Instead of looking at a rectangle, the idea is to connect directly to the brain and create immersive [01:16:00] experiences that feel real.

So in theory, that could simulate human presence or richer environments and maybe solve some of the emotional flatness that we're getting from screens.

Jordan Harbinger: Let me guess. When that day comes, people are going to completely freak out. So if the printing press, the bicycle, and the telephone melted people's brains, mind control human cyborgs are going to send people into total collapse.

Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, it's coming, and we're just going to have to cross that bridge when we get to it. Look, shaking and completely freaked out, we will put one foot in front of the other and do what humans have always done, uh, nervously embrace new technology. Look, I'm starting to think that screens are also like a very different old piece of technology, the mirror, because we see ourselves when we stare at our phones with all our potential and all our failings.

Of course, we need to work on making the tech better for us, but we also need to keep working on the never-ending project of making us better for us.

Jordan Harbinger: So I guess where that leaves us is [01:17:00] this. Screens are not evil. Phones are not the devil. Video games are not turning kids' brains into soup. But how they're designed and how they're used actually matters, especially for kids whose brains are still developing.

And the research is not actually all saying that it's good or all bad. It's about balance. So maybe instead of a screen time report each week, we should get a screen downtime report. What did you do with your one short life when you weren't scrolling your phone? Maybe that's the perspective that we actually need Thanks, Michael, for taking some of the glare off of screens.

And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com. All- almost every episode of this show that we do comes from you guys, so thank you for that. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals.

I'm @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, and you can find Michael Rogelio @MichaelRogelio on Instagram. His special War Bar dropped in October of 2025, and we'll link to [01:18:00] that in the show notes. And this show was created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own, and I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we of course, try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked, so consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and wellbeing or that of your kids.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love, and if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

Want to master the art of communication? Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators, reveals key strategies for enhancing your connections and conversations in this enlightening podcast episode.

JHS Trailer: Why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I'm talking to my wife and, like, we cannot connect with each other.

[01:19:00] And it turns out it's just a set of skills, right? Like, it's just literally a set of skills that supercommunicators know and that any of us can learn and become supercommunicators ourselves. Looping for understanding. It has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words.

And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. It's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating. It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it.

Communication isn't something that happens just one-to-one. Sometimes it's one-to-many, but the same principles still hold up. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. Laughter is actually one of the non-linguistic ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about eighty percent of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny.

It's [01:20:00] because we're basically in a conversation and we're saying to someone, "I want to connect with you." Nobody is born a supercommunicator. That's what feels tiring, is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't. Right? This isn't a behavior. This isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn, we can use when we want to use

Jordan Harbinger: it.

Learn how to categorize conversations, improve active listening, and overcome communication barriers to build stronger relationships. Tune in and transform your interactions into meaningful connections on episode 963 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.