We're rewriting our brains to become lonely and depressed, says Harvard's Arthur Brooks

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Many American workers uh are worried about AI and potential job losses.

[00:00:05]Joining us now, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks. Uh he is host of the office hours podcast and his latest column for the free press is titled inside the mind of an internet troll. Is that you?

[00:00:18]>> No. Oh no, no, no.

[00:00:21]>> I'm a troll critic. I mean it's I've been writing for a long time for various outlets.

[00:00:26]>> Autobiographical.

[00:00:27]>> No no no. This is just the the comment sections. They are a perfect ecosystem for people who have dark triad personality characteristics. That's where narcissists go to make other people's lives miserable.

[00:00:38]>> Yeah, Twitter, I see it.

[00:00:42]>> With all the things we now have in in modern society uh to worry about, >> right?

[00:00:47]>> Is AI we going to layer that over the top? Job losses from AI. I guess >> this is the new thing. Anything that makes any technological advance that makes us feel like we're out of control, that makes it look like something's going to come along that we can't understand entirely that actually might take our jobs or split apart our relationships is going to freak us out.

[00:01:05]But that's nothing new about that. We've been freaking out about something for, you know, generations. It turns out that this one is just a little bit more advanced. A little bit more down the road is the way that that works. But what we can probably expect is that yeah, there will be displacement. there will be a lot of trouble from it, but within a not too long a future, we'll figure out how to use it. And once we figure out how to use it, it's going to make our life a lot better. So, in figuring out how to use it, can can the government help with with guard rails or will the free market handle it? Will there be uh pains, growing pains as we, you know, try certain things and we realize they don't work? I mean, we really didn't manage social media very well with our kids.

[00:01:46]>> It's is a very, very hard thing to to very hard thing to regulate. But the thing to keep in mind is that the the way that artificial intelligence works, people think that it's extremely human.

[00:01:55]It's not. The essence of humanity, the essence of what it means for us to be human is something that occurs in the right side of our brains. The right hemisphere of our brains. That's where mystery and meaning exists. That's where love and happiness exist. The left side of our brain is analysis and engineering and technology. And what AI is really good at is helping us solve very complicated leftbrain problems. The problem right now is that people are using it for these right brain things.

[00:02:20]They're using it to get advice as if it were their therapist. They're using it for the girlfriend experience or to be their buddy. And that's why they feel lonier and lonier. When a technological phenomenon actually is used to solve your loneliness, you're going to get lonier is the bottom line. Just ask anybody who's gotten stuck on social media or a dating app to find the perfect partner.

[00:02:40]>> Well, you know, AI didn't replace social media. So, we're that was my point.

[00:02:44]We're layering layering more and more >> of these potentially depressing things that cause depression or cause inadequacy or insecurity. It it's hitting us from all sides.

[00:02:58]>> Yeah. But if we use it wrong, that's exactly the case. You know, social media's promises that it would wipe out loneliness and it made loneliness worse, of course, except for people who use it appropriately. And we're finding that younger people today are actually better at social media than people slightly older than them. My kids are 28, 26, and 23. Now, two of them are US Marines, so they have restrictions on how they can use social media. But all of my kids use it in such a way that it doesn't make them lonier. It doesn't cut them off from other people. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to have figured out how to use that. And that same thing will happen with AI. There can be problems getting from here to there, >> right? Well, so what is the proper way that to use it? The proper way to use AI is to do the things that actually that employ the left side of your brain, the complicated the tasks.

[00:03:46]>> And then where do you go for the other side?

[00:03:48]>> For the other side, you go to your family.

[00:03:50]>> You go to church. You actually hang out with your friends. You do all the stuff that people actually find love in their lives. When it comes down to comfort >> if dogs are your thing, absolutely. But the whole point is, look, >> I'm not cats.

[00:04:03]>> You know perfectly what makes you happy.

[00:04:05]I know what makes you happy is being with your family. is being with the people that you actually love and there's no technological intermediation for that. AI will never substitute for that. The more you try, the worse it gets.

[00:04:14]>> And so what do you expect at this point in terms of guard rails? What what what would if you could design them for the government to not screw things up? Yeah, I mean probably we we should start with what people are talking about with proper guardrails for social media and take some lessons from that and and what we're learning is that you know proper um you know age guard rails making sure that we we're not using them inside institutions where people are supposed to be talking to each other in real life.

[00:04:40]>> What's your age cut off? So Rahm Emanuel's out there saying that we should be like Australia and some other countries in Europe 16 years old.

[00:04:46]>> I think that's right to begin with and that's Jonathan height you know from from NYU talks about that. I think that's the best way to do it is to start with 16. 13 is too young. But actually the the the better institutional guard rail for all these technologies is out of the schools. I mean there shouldn't be a classroom in America from from kindergarten through PhD where you're allowed to use your personal devices.

[00:05:06]You shouldn't have them in there. And >> but it's not it's not just personal devices. At this point, every kid is issued a laptop from the school. And by the way, that's probably a good thing just in terms of preparing them for the way the world operates. first time you see a laptop is once you graduate from high school.

[00:05:21]>> Yeah. But we can't actually have them hooked up to the internet actually in schools. That's the biggest problem. And one of the things that John Height and others have shown and many other scholars are showing is that a lot of the other technologies including the the iPads that they were issuing just standard to students in schools, they've been very diloterious in learning, they've been really bad for fragmenting kids attention and we shouldn't have done it in the first place. We actually need less tech is what we need in school even though there's going to be more tech in life. And we need these relatively tech-free zones. And by the way, the most important time to not have the devices is during lunch.

[00:05:54]>> Yeah.

[00:05:54]>> For kids because that's when they're supposed to be talking to each other.

[00:05:57]We're rewiring our brains to become lowly depressed.

[00:05:59]>> But do you believe with in things like the Khan Academy, right, that uses technology to try and get learning and and tutors to to kids who would never have access to it?

[00:06:08]>> That's different than the internet where we have unfettered access to information we didn't seek. The biggest problem is being bombarded by facts and information we didn't seek which is pushing us away from mystery meaning love and happiness.

[00:06:20]>> Then where do you land? Do you know what the alpha school is? You heard of the alpha school? Tell me. There's one in New York. There's one there's one in Texas. I think there's a couple in California and some other places. This is a new AI oriented school.

[00:06:32]>> Uh Bill Aman's an investor.

[00:06:34]>> Yeah.

[00:06:34]>> Um there's been a whole bunch of attention on these schools. These are, I believe, K through 12 schools that are supposed to superpower your ability to learn, >> right?

[00:06:46]>> It's all AI based. Let's say you're a third grader and you're a boy who loves basketball and Marvel comics. Instead of reading um some book that they hand you, they will generate reading material at the third grade reading level and possibly even customized reading level depending on where you actually are. If you're if you're better than that, it'll it'll keep moving up. But it will tell you stories about a basketball player who happens to also be a Marvel comic character because that's what you love to try to get you engaged and involved in it. And apparently they say it, you know, multiplies your ability uh to learn, you know, at speed.

[00:07:27]>> Well, I'm I'm I'm willing to I'm willing to entertain any particular idea, but >> but you you are in front of a computer for the most part. I mean there are teachers in the room but you are working by yourself with a computer >> for hours.

[00:07:40]>> That's problematic. That's really problematic for the brain. That's pushing us to the left hemisphere of the brain and most of happiness and most of understanding life itself comes from the right hemisphere of the brain. Too much screen time is actually breaking our brains is the bottom line. So you can say good you're going to give the kid something that's interesting so the kid will learn better. But one one more thing it's really important to point out. We are not homoeconomicists.

[00:08:00]You know, we don't exist so that we can learn as much as possible and become these perfect little economic agents. We actually learn need to learn how to live socially. We need to learn how to develop friendships. We need how to learn how to love each other. And that's one of the most important things you learn in school.

[00:08:14]>> I I believe that that makes sense.

[00:08:17]>> I mean, that was I mean, that's what do you remember from school? I don't remember anything I learned, but I remember my first what's that old book?

[00:08:22]Everything I need to learn about life I learned in kindergarten.

[00:08:25]>> Yeah, probably before I knew how to read in the first place. But that's the whole point.

[00:08:28]>> Happy Kind. Anything that is a screen that's between you and other people is going to become a problem. The the basic rule is if if if technology is a complement to your relationships, good.

[00:08:40]If it's a substitute for your relationships, bad. That's just what it comes down