The Coddling of the American Mind moderated by Malcolm Gladwell
What this covers
Civil discourse is in decline, with potentially dire results for American democracy.
On college campuses across America, visiting speakers are disinvited, or even shouted down, while professors, students, and administrators are afraid to talk openly, for fear that someone will take offense. Political discussion on social media and television has devolved into a wave of hyper-partisan noise. A generation of overprotective parents are reluctant to let their children play outside without supervision. How did we get here? And how can we change the way that we engage with one another?
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind sounds the depths of this generational crisis. Join us for a lively discussion with the authors, president of the non-profit Let Grow and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement Lenore Skenazy, and #1 New York Times bestseller Malcolm Gladwell on how we as citizens can engage with one another across the political spectrum.
Recorded on January 16, 2019 at 92nd Street Y.
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Overprotection in childhood combined with social media adoption around 2012-2013 has created a fragile generation suffering unprecedented anxiety and depression, while also cultivating a subset prone to call-out culture that chills free speech and institutional trust.
- Kids born after 1995 show sharp increases in self-reported depression/anxiety, hospital admissions for self-harm, and suicide rates—not explained by economic or other factors alone
- Social media at ages 11-13 combined with lack of independent play creates stress-hormone saturation during critical brain development, explaining the sudden 2013-2014 shift on campuses
- Call-out culture (medicalizing minor offenses, demanding firings for good-faith speech) originated at elite universities and spreads via hiring pipelines to media, tech, and nonprofits, replacing institutional trust with fear
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Strong institutional norms that give people the benefit of the doubt and prioritize cooperation ('we're all in this together') can prevent the spread of call-out culture even when activism is present.
“if you really are trying and you can show that you're trying and then you can also stand up for norms something like, 'We're all in this together. We We have a good company. We think we make a good product for our customers...Now, people have problems. We've got to work it out. We've got to give each other the benefit of the doubt.' That's the key phrase, benefit of the doubt. And that's what has vanished from my world.”
During the critical learning period (ages 6-9), if children don't develop through play, exploration, arguing, and copying adults, they miss crucial brain wiring that cannot easily be recovered later.
“that's when kids are playing and exploring and arguing and fighting and making things happen and copying adults and getting all this wiring in their brain. And if instead all they're doing is walking from the car to judo and maybe they're really missing out on a fundamental part of their maturity uh which has been taken from them”
The process of overprotecting children from risk and then exposing them to social media at ages 11-13 creates the 'perfect formula' for anxiety and depression because they lack an internal locus of control.
“if you've been growing up and you've only been in the back of the SUV and you've been taken every place and there's always an adult organizing your life and mediating all your disputes and telling you what to do, that's that creates anxiety because you don't really have the what is it the internal locus of control? Yeah, well really is scary place if you don't have an internal locus of control, you're a victim of circumstance. And you've been told that everything out there is scary and that's why you have to be with an adult all the time.”
Human beings are antifragile—built through evolutionary design to learn by trial and error, falling down and getting back up—and children actively seek out risk once they master something and make it more dangerous.
“the central idea in the book is that human beings are antifragile. That is uh kids might look fragile, but actually the evolutionary design is for us to go out, fall down a few times, then we learn how to stand up...We're built to learn by trial and error. We're Kids seek out risk. Once they master something, they try to make it more dangerous.”
Humans are the one species that doesn't go straight from zero to reproduction and death, but has an extended childhood where they slow down development (around ages 6-9) to absorb vast amounts of cultural knowledge through play, exploration, and social interaction.
“human beings um are the one species that doesn't go straight from from zero to reproduce, die. Um which is good cuz it gives us a little more time...they start out growing really really fast and then around 6 7 8 9 they slow down until puberty. And the theory...why do we slow down? And it's because that's humans need to take in so much more”
Beginning in 1984 with missing children on milk cartons, American culture became obsessed with the idea of child predators and the assumption that any unsupervised child would be snatched, even as actual crime rates remained stable or declined.
“in 1984 we started putting the pictures of the missing kids on milk cartons and we neglected to say, 'By the way, this was a runaway or this kid was taken in a custodial dispute'...if you're growing up with, you know, the here's your Rice Krispies and here's the person who's been missing...we really became obsessed with the idea of predators and no child ever being safe”
The call-out culture and speech policing on campuses is geographically concentrated at elite liberal arts colleges in the Northeast and Pacific Coast (plus Chicago), with all documented speaker shutdowns occurring in this region.
“The politicization of it...is not national. That is if you look at the top liberal arts colleges in the Northeast and the West Coast and Chicago, you find it. In fact, that's where all the shutdowns have been. We have a map at Heterodox Academy...every shutdown where a speaker was literally shouted down...it's all right along the Eastern Seaboard and the rim of the Pacific Coast and Chicago.”
The majority of every demographic group (male, female, old, young, Black, white) dislikes political correctness according to the Hidden Tribes study, except for the 'progressive activist' group on the far left, but majorities don't determine institutional outcomes—instead, activated minorities with power do.
“One of the big findings of the hidden tribes study...majorities of every single group, male, female, old, young, black, white, majorities of every group dislike political correctness. Except for that group that is called the progressive activist group on the far left. So almost every great majority of people dislike political correctness, but we don't take a vote and say, you know what most of us don't like it, therefore it's not going to affect us.”
A gay Latino man in his 40s at a comic book art school is suddenly being reported to the bias response team for not saying things exactly according to the prescribed way, demonstrating that speech policing harms people who would not be considered privileged.
“And he's, you know, he's a gay man and he's Latino in his in his 40s. And suddenly he's being reported to the bias response team because he's not saying everything exactly right...I'm suddenly the oppressor. I'm suddenly like the bad one because I don't say things exactly by this very regimented way that you're now supposed to in at my comic book art school”
Crime rates today are lower than when Skenazy was growing up, yet parental fear of crime and strangers has dramatically increased rather than decreased.
“as a reporter, I knew that the crime rate today is lower than when we were growing up. So, between not letting our kids do anything and having the reason be because times have changed, it just didn't make sense to me”
The people most passionate about aggressive speech policing on campus are disproportionately wealthy, from elite backgrounds, and have the least racial diversity of any political group except the far right.
“the people who are the most passionate about this really aggressive form of speech policing is about 8% of the population. It tends to it's the highest it's the highest economic class of any of the groups and the and it has the least amount of actual racial diversity of every group except for the farthest to the right 8% group”
A gay woman at Vanderbilt was explicitly told by the LGBTQ group on campus not to befriend LGBTQ kids from the town of Nashville (off-campus gay youth) because those kids offended campus activists with their speech patterns.
“she had friends, you know, obviously on campus, but she also was friends with a with a big part of the gay and trans population of Nashville. And she was...told quite explicitly by the by the LGBT group at Vanderbilt not to bring the the the the the kids from Nashville the the townies the the gay and lesbian kids from from town partially because they were constantly offended by the way these other kids would talk”
When trust leaves the university, the fundamental character of the institution changes and it basically cannot function—professors stop trusting students, students stop trusting each other, and collaborative intellectual work becomes impossible.
“And when trust leaves the university, the fundamental character changes and basically can't really function. And then imagine that these students that began graduating in the in May of 2017, imagine that you run a small company, you have a tight-knit team, and you hire one of them. And this person is always looking to call someone out.”
The greatest generation complained about the Baby Boomers being narcissists (blamed television), Baby Boomers complained about Generation X being aimless (blamed video games, heavy metal, D&D), demonstrating a universal pattern of generational complaint.
“the greatest generation looked at the generation that followed, the baby boomers, and said they were narcissists...And blamed television...the baby boomers then turned around and looked at generation X...They said they were aimless...Why were they aimless? Because of video games and heavy metal music. Possibly gangster rap. And D&D.”
Microaggressions and overemphasis on small slights has a historical precedent: for centuries, minorities and women were told to 'tough it out' and stop complaining about slights, so dismissing contemporary concern about small offenses repeats that harmful dismissal.
“I am demeaned or if I even worse, if I'm a woman, I am demeaned on a uh a daily basis through language, through attitudes, through reinforcement of my inferior status...That was the line that was fed to black Americans for uh how many hundreds of years in this country? You know, there is a wonderful wonderful There is an an awful moment um in uh I was uh reading this No, I was listening to um to uh podcast...And there was a quote from someone in the uh it was in the it was the What podcast is this?...a white guy in South in the 1960s who was saying, 'You know, we've had 3 years of this civil rights nonsense. All right, enough already.'”
Lenore Skenazy allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the New York City subway alone, which generated significant negative reaction from other parents who said they would wait until their children were 38 or 39 to allow similar independence.
“I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone...the blowback was so immediate...I didn't realize how scared my generation of parents had become to let their kids do anything on their own”
At Yale in 2015 and Middlebury in 2017, students protested regarding race and gender issues at institutions that are explicitly anti-racist and progressive, which is a different situation from protesting at institutions with actual legal barriers to equality.
“Yale University in 2015, Middlebury College in 2017, we're talking about places that are trying as hard as they can. They're as they're the the ethos, the culture is explicitly anti-racist, progressive, welcoming, inclusive. So the strategies that were completely legitimate at a time when there were when there were actually legal barriers it's a completely different world from the one that we're talking about here on campus.”
Social media acts as a 24/7 junior high school experience, where kids born in 1995 and after are bathed in stress hormones during critical brain development (ages 11-13) and cannot sleep because they are anxious about social feedback.
“if you get it at age 11, 12, or 13, now your brain is just beginning to develop and your parents let you have your device at night. So, you're sitting there and somebody just commented on something you said and you know, you're trying to go to sleep, but you're worried about it. And so, if you imagine 11-to-13-year-olds bathed in stress hormones and not sleeping year after year, yeah, suddenly when they show up in college in September of 2013, it's like from out of nowhere.”
When teenagers got social media in college (late millennials), it did not appear harmful; but when they got it at ages 11-13 during brain development (iGen/Gen Z), it caused significant harm.
“if you do that start If you get social media in college, it doesn't seem to be bad for your brain. But if you get it at age 11, 12, or 13, now your brain is just beginning to develop”
The increase in anxiety and depression in kids born after 1995 is visible across multiple objective measures that cannot be faked (hospitalizations for self-harm, suicide rates) and self-report measures (depression/anxiety diagnoses), making it impossible to dismiss as perception.
“if you look at the graphs of hospital admissions for cutting yourself the graph for boys actually is fairly low and that actually does not go up...But the girls...it goes like this...you can't effectively fake...That scared me scared me to death”
Social media disproportionately affects girls more than boys, as evidenced by hospital admission rates for self-harm tripling for 11-13-year-old girls but remaining stable for boys.
“It disproportionately hits girls. And the way I try to explain it is imagine the absolute worst of junior high school 24 hours a day forever”
Facebook opened to anyone claiming to be 13 in 2006, but 11-year-olds were not widely adopting it until later; the iPhone came out in 2007 but was expensive; by 2011, most teenagers had an iPhone and were checking social media hundreds of times per day.
“Facebook opens up. It used to just be for college students when it came out. And then in 2006, now it opens up to anybody who lies and says they're 13. But you know, but 11-year-olds aren't really getting on Facebook in 2006...the iPhone comes out in 2007, but it's expensive and so, 11-year-olds don't really have iPhones in 2007. But by 2011, they mostly do. Most teenagers now have an iPhone and social media and they're checking it hundreds of times a day.”
John Haidt taught by provoking emotions, discomfort, and multiple perspectives, creating dramatic tension and resolution in his classes—a pedagogical approach he trusted would work because he had built relationships with students and they trusted him.
“I thought the job of a teacher, or at least how to be a good teacher, is you provoke a variety of emotions during class, you get people to look at things from different perspectives, you lead them through a path which sometimes is uncomfortable, and then you resolve it...that's the way I always taught, and I was trusted my students and felt that they trusted me”
Students who previously would give professors the benefit of the doubt and trusted them suddenly stopped doing so, with this shift happening around 2013-2014 across multiple universities.
“the sense that students would give you the benefit of the doubt because you're all in this together, you're trying to put on a great class together, that seemed to vanish after a couple of such complaints”
Jean Twenge's research in 'iGen' shows that behavior changes among kids born in 1995 and after are sharp and distinct—late millennials still got driver's licenses and occasionally drank/dated/worked, but iGen kids predominantly stayed home alone on devices.
“There's a wonderful book uh called iGen by Jean Twenge. This is what really clued us into the sharpness of it. You look at the behavior changes that happened. The late millennials are still getting driver's licenses. They still sometimes drink with their friends. They still sometimes go out on dates and go to work at jobs. But beginning with kids born in 1995, all that plummets because all they're doing is sitting home alone on their devices.”
Deb Mashek observed a student recording her lecture, not knowing whether to expect trouble from the left or right, and learned that her students' motto was 'silence is safer'—indicating that fear has become normalized at elite colleges.
“there was a student who was clearly taping her...you don't know who there's you know, uh people can get you in trouble. And so it's just better to just as and Deb says, one of her students said to her, 'My motto is silence is safer.' That's a terrible motto for a college student.”
A 9-year-old boy on Long Island imagined his maximum independence as walking from a car door to his judo class while his mother parked the car—approximately 57 seconds without supervision.
“I interviewed about 20 kids um 2 months ago...the story that stuck with me the most is that I think it was a fourth grader said he wanted to get himself to judo...he said, um 'No, I'm going to get out of open the car door and then I'm going to look very carefully both ways and then I'm going to walk into judo while my mom parks the car in the parking lot.'”
Julie Lythcott-Haims, Dean of Freshmen at Stanford, observed that brilliant students at Stanford were perfectly designed to get into elite colleges but hadn't learned how to do their own laundry or manage their lives, creating anxious and depressed people despite their accomplishments.
“Julie Lythcott-Haims who wrote a wonderful book called how to raise an adult and she was she was the Dean of Freshmen at Stanford and what you what she was seeing was these absolutely brilliant students who weren't they weren't spoiled. They were they were built like heat-seeking missiles. They were they were perfectly refined, perfectly designed to get into the Princetons and the Harvards...But unfortunately they hadn't been taught how to do their own laundry, how to make how to actually manage their lives”
A poster in every bathroom at NYU tells students how to report their professor if they say something the students dislike, which fundamentally changed Haidt's teaching because he realized he must self-censor to avoid being reported.
“Most of the students are great. But the fact that there is a poster in every bathroom at NYU telling students how to report me if I say anything they don't like. So yeah, I changed my behavior. I don't say anything they might not like.”
The phenomenon of rising anxiety and depression in kids born after 1995 is nationwide, observed by college presidents, professors, guitar teachers, counselors, and coaches everywhere in America—not limited to elite East Coast schools.
“wherever you go, anywhere in America, if you're dealing with kids born after 1995, everybody from the college president through the professors through the guitar teacher through the counseling center, everybody is saying, 'What hit us? The anxiety, the depression, there's a tsunami of it.'”
In spring 2014, Haidt's students began reporting him to the dean over classroom content (e.g., teaching the Milgram experiment), with one student claiming they didn't feel safe, using medical/psychological language rather than expressing disagreement.
“in the spring of 2014, I had several incidents where students reported me to the dean and demanded that he do something about things I'd said in class, like teaching the Milgram experiment. One student thought that I was saying that the Nazis were okay...one student was talking about issues in terms of of I don't feel safe”
Greg Lukianoff experienced a severe depression in 2007 that required hospitalization, and discovered that cognitive behavioral therapy—which teaches people to challenge catastrophizing, personalizing, and overgeneralization—was effective in managing it.
“around 2007, I um I had a very bad bout of depression, like a scary, hopefully the worst I'll ever have, and I ended up being hospitalized for it. And the thing that really helped me um deal with...the thing that really made these battles winnable pretty much from this point on was cognitive behavioral therapy”
Hospital admissions for self-harm in 11-13-year-old girls have tripled since around 2013, and suicide rates have gone way up—these same trends are observed in the UK and Canada.
“Three times as many girls are putting themselves in the hospital preteens. Same thing for suicide the rates go way up and these exact trends are exactly the same in the UK and in Canada.”
Haidt stopped teaching a discussion unit on discrimination law where students shared their own workplace experiences, not because the law changed but because he became afraid a student would report him or that it would generate social media criticism.
“Um but I wouldn't do that now. I don't do that anymore...I wouldn't dare do that now because that's a microaggression. That's a microinvalidation. I would be invalidating someone who believed that there is structural sexism. So, I don't touch that stuff.”
Lukianoff observed that beginning around 2013-2014, college administrators began telling students they were in danger, which he feared would teach students to catastrophize—the same cognitive distortion that exacerbates anxiety and depression.
“I was watching on campus um administrators, in my opinion, um exercising modes of behavior that seemed to be saying to students, 'You're in great danger all the time.' And I was And at the time, I was like, 'Well, but thank goodness students aren't taking these lessons to heart.' And unfortunately, that seemingly changed overnight.”
A Kentucky mother was threatened with child protective services reports if she did not have an adult waiting at the bus stop every day to walk her 9-year-old son home from school, even though she could see the house from the bus stop and her father normally walked him home.
“every afternoon when her son, who's nine, gets dropped off by the school bus, the rule that the school has is that there has to be an adult waiting at the bus stop to walk him home. It's actually She can see her house from the bus stop...if it becomes a third time, she gets reported to child protective services”
Microaggressions are a useful concept when defined as small, often unintentional slights (e.g., repeatedly asking someone 'where are you from' when they're a visible minority), but the term has been expanded to mean intentional aggression, conflating offense with harm.
“the idea of microaggressions is right on two points and wrong on at least two. Um the idea of microaggressions was proposed by Chester Pierce...if a microaggression is a small act of aggression, maybe one that you can kind of deny that you had any intent...Um and the other reason why microaggression is useful is that it's meant to apply you know, so if you're if you're Asian or if your skin is dark, people often ask you, 'Where are you from?'...that's a useful concept to have.”
Call-out culture, which originated at elite Northeast and West Coast universities, has spread to industries (journalism, media, tech) that hire from those schools, causing workplace dysfunction and reducing creativity and cooperation.
“So, when this call-out culture, which was nurtured in the university and certain universities, especially in the Northeast and the West Coast, this call-out culture industries that hire from those school from those So, journalism, media, and tech, talk to people in those fields about their young employees and they'll say they're making life a nightmare.”
Professors have been reported to the general counsel (not just administrators) for discussing racial epithets in an educational context (explaining their harm), and the fear now extends to potential viral social media spread beyond the university.
“I see a lot of really frivolous cases of people being reported for actually, you know, for example, discussing racial epithets, not actually using them...Now you have to worry about who is the single uh least trustworthy student in your class...And now we've added an extra level to it where what is this going to look like when it hits Twitter?”
University presidents in 2015 (when the article was published) responded to student protests by validating the narrative that the university is structurally racist rather than standing up for faculty members acting in good faith—this is reactive leadership, not principled leadership.
“the CEOs are now where the university presidents were in 2015. They don't know what hit them and when there's a problem, they're reactive and what they don't do is stand up for a principle...So like at Yale for example, um when the protesters charged that Yale is structurally and systemically racist...A good leader would have said, 'I hear you. I can agree with you on this point and this point. However, these faculty members were acting in good faith and I'm going to stand up for them.'”
Social media accelerates two separate trends: depression and anxiety (through social comparison and feedback stress) and political polarization (through algorithmic echo chambers that reward extreme views with dopamine hits).
“social media as something that really sped up two different factors. Certainly, you know, the depression and anxiety...the other thing that it sped up that...is...the much slower process of group polarization, particularly political polarization. And really social media pats you on the back for having an echo chamber, whether it's on Twitter or or Instagram or Facebook. Essentially gives you a nice dopamine rush the the thicker your your echo chamber is.”
By developmental markers, an 18-year-old today is at the maturity level of a 15-year-old from 30 years ago, suggesting colleges should consider requiring gap years rather than admitting 18-year-olds.
“by all the markers of development an 18 year old today is at the level of a 15 year old from 30 years ago and this is why Greg and I recommend in our book we should consider not having 18 year olds on college campuses they're really not ready for it a lot of them and so we should the norm should be a gap year”
Most kids in the current generation are doing fine; the problem is that a subset (estimated 5%) has been empowered by the new moral culture to call others out and police speech, which changes institutional behavior even though it's a minority.
“most kids in this generation are actually doing fine. Most are not suffering from depression and anxiety. Most come to college, they want to learn. The problem is that there's a with this new morality, a subset have been empowered to call others out...So, think about it like this. Suppose you married someone who, no matter what you said, he or she just always took it in the worst possible way...And now imagine that you admit students to your school and 5% of them are like this.”
A psychological principle states that losses loom larger than gains—each generation notices what it lost compared to the previous generation but fails to notice what it gained.
“there's a psychological principle that losses loom larger than gains and so each generation is different from the one before and the one the older one looks at them and says well they don't have this thing that we have therefore they're deficient and we don't notice the thing that they do have that is good”
When children learn a language at ages 6-9 by being immersed in a new country, they acquire it without an accent; but after that critical period, language learning becomes much harder and always includes an accent—the same principle applies to learning independence and resilience.
“when kids learn a language when like they're 6 7 8 9, you throw them into another country, they learn the language and they don't have an accent. But after that they do because that was the time when they were really ready to soak everything up and we're not letting them develop”
Current generation (iGen) is more tolerant of sexual orientation differences, less likely to drink/use drugs, and more likely to be inclusive of diversity compared to previous generations.
“the data in iGen shows what we kind of all know which is that to them you know differences in sexuality are just not a big deal...much less likely to to drink do drugs have premarital sex all sorts of things that get teenagers in trouble. The flip side of that of course is teenagers probably need to get in a little bit of trouble”
The CEOs in 2019-2020 are where university presidents were in 2015—they don't understand what is happening and when problems occur, they respond reactively by validating activist narratives rather than standing up for principles.
“the CEOs are now where the university presidents were in 2015. They don't know what hit them and when there's a problem, they're reactive and what they don't do is stand up for a principle.”
Beginning around 2013-2014, students at universities began reporting professors and demanding administrative action based on classroom speech, suddenly and dramatically shifting from being the most pro-free-speech constituency to the most likely to police speech on campus.
“2013, 2014, we um at the time, we had no clue exactly why. Uh students who used to be the best constituency for free speech on campus suddenly became, to some degree, sort of like the stereotypes people have of the don't you dare say that kind of attitude very very very very quickly.”
As an 18-year-old by developmental markers from 30 years ago, a person is at the maturity level of a 15-year-old, suggesting that the standard developmental trajectory has been delayed by roughly 3 years in the current generation.
“by all the markers of development an 18 year old today is at the level of a 15 year old from 30 years ago”
HR departments and employment law will see increased work due to call-out culture spreading to business; Haidt recommends investing in HR companies and employment law.
“My stock tip is invest in human resources companies. Um the HR departments are are going to get a lot of work and there and and there's going to be a lot of litigation and a lot of litigation. employment law. That's what I tell them.”
Many business people report in the past year that their young employees cause constant drama and HR nightmares due to activism, creating an 'unending soap opera' that exhausts everyone.
“I've heard from so many business people now in the last just in the last year. It's like it's an unending soap opera. I'm We're all so exhausted because somebody got angry and this is taking up all our time.”
Haidt predicts that some currently prominent nonprofits and cause-based organizations will fail or become irrelevant in the next 5 years due to the cultural pressures described in the book.
“I'm willing to be go so far as to make some predictions um and a stock tip. Oh. Um and I would say two things. Um what the actual scale of this and how business adapts to it, business can be very adaptable and I think that some of these schools that actually hire from University of Indiana are going to end up doing better...But I do think I'm willing to predict that there are going to be several, you know, currently prominent nonprofits, cause-based organizations that are either completely fail due due to some of these new cultural pressures or rendered irrelevant in the next 5 years.”
Students are taught three false ideas: 'What doesn't kill you makes you weaker' (antifragility inverted), 'Always trust your feelings' (emotions over reason), and 'Life is a battle between good people and evil people' (binary morality)—all three are harmful to human flourishing.
“the three great untruths that we think kids are being taught are what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and look at life as a battle between good people and evil people. And if you're a human being, those are probably the three worst ideas we could possibly put in your head if we want you to flourish.”
Some schools teach incoming diverse students that misunderstandings are 'faux pas' (honest mistakes requiring learning), while other schools teach that misunderstandings are 'acts of aggression' by bad people—the difference in framing determines whether diversity becomes a collaborative or adversarial project.
“one school...they say, 'You know what? There's going to be a lot of misunderstandings...let's teach you about the concept of a faux pas...But then in another school, they have the same incoming class...they say, 'It's not a faux pas. It's an act of aggression.' The world's divided between good people and bad people”
Intergenerational complaints (older generation criticizing younger) are universal throughout history, but this does not mean all such complaints are equally valid; some generational critiques contain truth.
“intergenerational critiques aren't necessarily automatically wrong in fact sometimes there's there's some truth to them. But but given the the tremendous amount of comfort and progress we've had just over the last two centuries it is the case that you can say pretty reliably that everyone's grandfather had it a lot a grandmother had it a lot harder than they do”
Van Jones argues that safety—whether ideological or emotional—is not the goal; strength is the goal, and people (especially marginalized people) need to learn how to deal with adversity, not be protected from it.
“Um I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity...If you're gay, if you're black, whatever you are, you need to be strong in this world.”
Long-running generational discomfort with the next generation may have some validity when examined carefully, but the solution is not to make conditions harder like the past but to preserve modern comforts while drawing wisdom from harder times (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha).
“So what is the solution? It's not that we say oh it needs to be hard like it was in the good old days. The best possible thing that we could we we could imagine having is a world in which we enjoy the fruits and comforts and video games and media of the of the current age but are able to also draw from the tremendous wisdom that was brought by much harder times from people like Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or the Buddha.”
Despite current pessimism, humans are inventive and creative at solving problems once they identify them, so the mental health crisis affecting teenagers will likely be addressed once widespread awareness emerges.
“when there are problems, the amazing thing about human beings is we're actually really inventive and creative and we figure out what's the problem and and then we figure out ways to solve it...I think this is the year when it's going to turn around. We're all going to put our heads to this...This is the health of our kids. So I think that so things happen like we start Let Grow.”
Children are told they are not safe even when they are safe, which teaches them that nothing seems safe—explaining why campus students say 'I don't feel safe' as a blanket term for anything they dislike.
“They're being told They're being forced to be supervised every single second...the reason the rationale for that is that otherwise they're not safe. And it's like they are safe. But if you're always being told that you're not safe when you are safe, nothing seems safe. And I think that's why we hear the word I don't feel safe on campus”
Beginning in the 1990s, parenting and childhood shifted from allowing risk to attempting zero risk, which deprives children of the ability to develop normal autonomous abilities.
“beginning maybe in the '90s, we started saying, 'Risk? How about zero? How How about no risk? Is that good for you?' Um and so, we basically deprive them of the ability to develop their normal abilities as a as an autonomous human being. So, that it really ramps up in the '90s.”
When university leaders validate the narrative that the institution is structurally racist and require diversity training without making substantive changes, they create a cycle where these symbolic actions never actually solve the problem, requiring endless repetition.
“If you validate the narrative that this place is terrible, life is divided between good people and evil people, we need more diversity training, and again university doesn't do anything, but it's kabuki theater, but let's just do it again anyway. If you validate that narrative, you're stuck and you're just going to keep doing it.”
A young nonprofit worker reported that an employee asked for two weeks off due to anxiety, and although Skenazy feels compassion for the person's anxiety, she attributes it to never having experienced independence—suggesting the anxiety is created by overprotection.
“there was one of the young women that she was working with had just said, 'I have to take a couple weeks off. I'm anxious.' And just took 2 weeks off. And I feel bad for that person feeling that anxious, but I think I would feel very anxious if the sum total of my independence uh was even at age 9 or 10 or 11 just always being supervised.”
Lukianoff experienced class-based resentment in watching elite college activists police speech in the name of marginalized people they don't actually know well, suggesting the speech policing is partially driven by class anxiety rather than genuine solidarity.
“I actually what I see in this is a lot of classism, but it's partially coming the classism is partially coming from the speech policers...I'm going to police speech in the name of these people that actually I don't really know very well, but I know that this is this is a great evil, so I can make up for it somehow by being extra strict about what you're allowed to say”
When people are given the freedom to try solutions to the identified problem (like the Let Grow project), they often discover that the feared consequences don't occur, which encourages them to try again, creating positive feedback loops.
“we're all going to recognize this is not political...So I think that so things happen like we start Let Grow. And uh there's going to be all kinds of innovation...if we can now just uh we talk about a lot of possible solutions in the book. Um I think this is the year when people are going to gingerly start trying them and discover that they actually don't get shot for it. That actually a lot of people applaud. Uh and that's going to encourage them.”
The Let Grow project is a school-based intervention where teachers assign children to do one thing without their parents—it breaks the overprotection cycle fast by giving parents permission and producing pride in the child's independence.
“there's a couple of ideas that are really practical and really simple...it's called the Let Grow project it's not even a project it's the teachers telling the kids to go home and do one thing on their own without their parents it's homework and when kids do it it it breaks the cycle pretty fast cuz the parents are so proud that the kid has done oh my god my kid got a slurpy yay you know high five”
The situation where a small group (5%) can determine institutional behavior through threat of reporting is like giving everyone a blowgun with darts that hurt when they hit—most people won't use it, but everyone changes their behavior knowing it exists.
“It's one thing if 5% are kind of annoying and you know what they might say something annoying to you. You can put up with that. But what if instead we arm everybody with a little like a little like blowgun and they can shoot darts into you and it really hurts like a really goes into your skin and you know, an inch in it really hurts. And so five you know, everybody's got one and 5% of them are just going around blowing them at like anybody who who looks askance at them. I think I'd change my behavior. I think we all have.”
Even if one grants that an overcorrection is happening now, it might be a good overcorrection compared to the historical undercorrection of ignoring systematic discrimination, so the question becomes whether it is wise to correct the overcorrection.
“What we're seeing if what we're seeing now is evidence of an overcorrection on the other side. Why is that a bad thing?...if you're talking about places where the laws say you don't have equal rights and the norms say you're garbage and you've got to move out of our way, that's a terrible situation...So the strategies that were completely legitimate at a time when there were when there were actually legal barriers it's a completely different world from the one that we're talking about here on campus.”
Haidt recommends that colleges with free speech norms (like the University of Chicago) will improve their US News rankings as they attract students and families who value free speech, creating competition that spreads the norm.
“universities that grab onto this and and figure out how to create an environment which people can actually speak up in class and you know that if you go into a seminar class at this school, people might disagree with you, they're not afraid to, those schools are going to attract more applicants and that's going to make their US News numbers go up. And once some like Chicago, when University of Chicago as their numbers are going up, other schools are going to copy them.”