Neuroscientist: Why Millions of Healthy People Now Claim to Be Autistic

[00:00:00]As an elder millennial, I say this lovingly. Why is Gen Z so dumb? Okay, maybe not dumb, but perhaps less equipped to deal with life. Well, my next guest today did a deep dive into what screen time, devices, and the current situation in our education system has done to our most techsavvy generation. And the answers are shocking. Jared Cooney Horvath is a former teacher turned neuroscientist who testified in front of the US Senate to warn our nation about the real effects of screens in schools and what exactly is happening to youth brain development.

[00:00:34]I am so excited to dig in. Thank you so much for joining me.

[00:00:38]>> Thank you for having me on. It's awesome to be here.

[00:00:40]>> Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe to support that YouTube channel, Tommy is Fearless.

[00:00:46]So, I first saw your commentary, of course, at that hearing, and you delivered some nuggets of wisdom that I think a lot of us probably thought we knew, but the way you dug into it, I thought was super interesting. So, I want to dig into that. First of all, um, talking about technology entering education and and what that does because conventional wisdom would tell us that the more equipment that we have, the more high-tech our classrooms and schools are, the smarter kids are going to be, the more well equipped students are going to be. But that's not necessarily the case. Can you break down what you've discovered with my audience?

[00:01:23]>> Yeah. Yeah. I think if we've made a a pretty big mistake in the tools we use as adult experts for production are not the tools a young child should use to learn how to become an expert. So what we basically found was, and a lot of people have felt this, Gen Z is the first generation in recorded history to underperform their parents on basically every cognitive measure we have. Memory, attention, general IQ, literacy, numeracy, they're going down. Now, every generation before that has been going up up. So what changed? Why all of a sudden around 2010 did everything kind of flip?

[00:02:00]And the biggest answer we've come up with was the tools we're using in schools. was as we started to bring more and more tech into learning to interface between the student and the teacher to supply personalized learning the more learning actually started to go down. So that's a lot of my research has focused on what is it about human learning that works and why then would that be circumvented when we use tech and if that's the case then do we need to get rid of tech not maybe completely but by and large when it comes to learning in schools and the answer seems to be yes >> so the research that you've done I want people to understand it because >> most people when they hear well screens devices they think oh yeah you know when you give your 5-year-old an iPad and you use it as a babysitter Most people could glean that that's not going to be advantageous. Or when they say, "Oh, well, when kids are in the classroom and they should be learning and instead they're on their phone, they're distracted and learning is going to go down." Most people can reasonably understand that that would probably be the case. But your research and the testimony you delivered, it it's deeper than that. It's not just their distraction from their personal device texting their friend or playing a game on their phone or looking at Tik Tok.

[00:03:11]It's actually the screens and the devices that are used in education that have not been helpful. And that's where I think people are going to be blown away by this because they wouldn't think, most people wouldn't think, oh, well, you know, if they instead of having a book, if they have an iPad, that's not necessarily going to be a problem. In fact, they would see it as an advantage. So, can you dig into that even more so that my audience can really understand what you're saying because that's the part that really blew me away. Yeah, and I think you're right is our first protocol was to get smartphones out of schools. Great. That was easy. That was never the problem. I mean, that was a problem, don't get me wrong, but we have what's called edte, educational technology. So, these are digital tools supposedly specifically for educational purposes. And it turns out these tools are just as bad for learning as a phone. So, when you made the screen this big into this big, it was equivalently bad. So, what do we have? We we've got problems of distraction, as you've said, is if you think about it, when it comes to computers, so even just laptop computers, kids spend on average a little over 2,000 hours a year using these machines for fun and games and excitement, texting their friends kind of purposes, and only about 250 hours for learning. So, when we now say, "Okay, here's a tool you've spent thousands of hours a year training yourselves to multitask on. Now I need you to focus and read a long passage on it. The answer is basically they can't do it. They make it about six minutes on average till they start multitasking and learning goes back down. So we've got this training aspect, but you bring up another thing is if you just think about something like reading, how does reading basically work? One of the reasons why we remember what we read is due to the spatial location of text. How text is aligned on a page becomes part of our memory and determines how we can remember access that information later.

[00:05:06]When we read on a screen, there is no three-dimensional location. The same words will scroll from the bottom of the screen, out the middle, out the top. An entire aspect of how human memory works just gets dumped. Which means when we read the exact same thing on a screen versus a book, learning comprehension goes down significantly. So these are all just things that it's it's not the size of the tech. It's not whether it's stamped with an educational purpose.

[00:05:29]It's not even how you quote unquote use it. It's the tool itself so goes so far against human learning that you just see harm whenever you you tend to bring it in.

[00:05:39]>> That's crazy. I mean, I didn't I have never even considered that because I would think, hey, it's the same thing.

[00:05:46]It's it's text here. It's text here. You don't have to lug around a big book.

[00:05:49]Makes things easier. You know, your backpack's not as heavy. It's crazy when I think about just how much things have changed in the last 10, 15 years. And I think uh when we look at this and you know a hell of a lot more than me, but when I look at my own experience as a millennial and you know, we're told that millennials have such a hybrid understanding of technology and traditional learning because as we were growing up, we still had the traditional things, but then the technology got introduced as we were maybe in high school and then certainly college. But I remember, you know, I was born in '92.

[00:06:19]So when I was in elementary school, when I was in middle school, high school, we had computers. We did research on computers. We had a computer at home.

[00:06:28]But most of our work was done with textbooks. Every year we got the textbook. Every year we had to wrap it with a book cover. Every year we had to lug it around. You know, it was one of those things that we hated. You know, you could highlight certain things, but you couldn't destroy it because then you were going to get fined. But I remember having textbooks and I remember, you know, thinking these are really heavy.

[00:06:45]You got to lug them around. you don't want to forget your book. And you saying that actually you learn more when you actually have a physical textbook.

[00:06:53]That's shocking to me. And I know that even as we use computers, like when we would go to the library to use computers, right? There were certain things that we could visit, like you could look things up, but it was still limited. I mean, we couldn't even look at all the images because they didn't want us looking at dirty things or whatever. So, it was like very limited in what you could look at. So, you still had to rely on the book even though you used a computer as supplemental. But from what you're saying, that might have been the better option.

[00:07:19]>> It it really is is if the schools that are kind of regressing back to what works best, one of the first things they're doing is a reinstituting the computer lab. Was so if you I grew up kind of similar time you did, if you wanted to learn about a computer, just like if you wanted to learn about music, you went to music room. If you wanted to learn about wood shop, you went to wood shop room. If you wanted to learn tech, you went to the tech room.

[00:07:42]What's changed is kids now over 90% of schools in the US now every kid has their own internet connected laptop at all times and everything is being taught through it and that free-for-all that freedom just makes it untenable that's when teachers can no longer control what they're seeing what the kids are doing and that's when things kind of go haywire but you were right was when we have a computer lab what the focus becomes on is learning about tech you're learning about this program how do you use word processing? How do you use Excel? When everyone has a laptop, what happens is you change from learning about tech to learning everything through tech. Now, because the tech is there, it becomes the default. Now, you learn math on the computer. Now, you learn reading on the computer. And when you learn through a computer, learning goes down. When you learn about a computer, then by all means, you learn something important. So, I think you've made a really good point that it's it's a matter of control of of reigning it back in having a computer lab, having a computer cart where teachers control what kids are able and not able to do on tech versus just this, hey, you have a laptop, therefore you will learn. It just didn't seem to work out that way.

[00:08:52]>> What part of that is making it too easy as well? Because I think about kids in school now, they've got AI, which is a whole different discussion I want to get into. But even if you take AI out of it, when you're just regular googling something, you can get information um much easier, which you'd think would be a benefit. But as we talked about, like when I was in school, when you were in school, I had the internet. I could look things up. But my primary resource oftentimes was using a book, going to the library, finding something in a book, finding something in text. I had to hunt for information. I had to take that information. I had to write about it, but I had to try to go and find it.

[00:09:26]And I wonder from your perspective, how how much of that is, you know, forming your brain to search for things and have to work for things instead of just being able to type it in and having the answers there. And I'm not saying that millennials, you know, had it so hard.

[00:09:39]We still had computers. We still had information readily available, but we had to look for it a little bit more.

[00:09:45]Does that help our our cognitive abilities?

[00:09:49]>> 100%. It's it' be just like the gym. If I invented a tool that lifted weights for you, no one would assume you now worked out. It's the effort of the process that allows the outcome to be meaningful. And and so it's the exact same thing with learning. The more oomph you put into the process of learning, the bigger outcome, the better outcome you're going to have of that learning.

[00:10:10]So just as take typing versus handwriting, handwriting, if you take notes by hand, it requires more effort.

[00:10:18]It requires more thought. By definition, you have to piece ideas together. Memory comprehension deepens. Then if you take those same notes on a laptop where all you're doing is typing while someone is talking. When you use a laptop to take notes, most people take more notes, but they're not paying attention to what they're taking. It's too easy to just get it, put it on a screen, I'll read that later, and you don't actually do the work of learning. So all these kind of analog methods, these things I I don't know that we knew we were doing them right. But what we were doing when we were going into school, we were putting in that extra effort which made learning deep. Now you can extrapolate that too is I think one of the funnier stats is millennials. Your generation, I'm kind of like early millennial, late gen X. I'm I'm in this weird little category, but I'll say our generation, we are more digitally literate than Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Now, Gen Z has used a computer basically every single day at school. Yet, they do not understand how to use computers as well as us, even though we were only randomly taught typing programs and stuff in school. Why is that? That's where you start to recognize the work of learning allows you to then translate your knowledge and abilities into different tools. If you know how to think and somebody says, "Here's a computer. Can you use it?" The answer is, "Yeah, that's fine. I know enough about thinking and knowledge that I can make this work." But if you're only ever taught the tool, here's how to use a computer. Now, as soon as that tool changes, you don't know what to do.

[00:11:47]As soon as someone brings a new tool, you don't have any baseline to think against. You're stuck just using the tool you were trained on. So, it's a weirdest thing that by having an analog education growing up, we are more digitally literate as adults than they are having a digital childhood growing up with it.

[00:12:03]>> Cuz we learned how to learn.

[00:12:06]>> Exactly. Exact. Teach a man a tool, they'll be able to use that tool. Teach a man how to think, they'll be able to use any tool. That's kind of what we're starting to figure out.

[00:12:15]>> Wow. Well, and I think about that just for all of us multigenerationally when we think about when you used to have to navigate using a map or even when you had to navigate printing out the map quest or even in the early days of the GPS, you still had to have a better understanding of where you were going, you had to, you know, memorize it or you had to have some directional awareness.

[00:12:38]And now that we all rely on just our Google maps or our ways, we don't necessarily remember as much because we just rely on it so much. We don't even worry about learning the destination. We don't even worry about learning the directions because we know we can just type it in. And I don't know even what I would do. I'll crap on millennials, too, and most of us. Like if you would plot me in a city that I haven't been to before and tell me to navigate somewhere without my Google maps, I would be in a bad situation because >> and I think that's Google Maps is a perfect example of it is it makes life easier. And so we use it and that's but the trade-off is is by making navigation easier by necessity you will now reduce your skills of spatial navigation and recognition. That's going to be the trade-off. And I think for the most part when it comes to to navigation, most of us are willing to make that trade-off.

[00:13:33]If I got to drive through the we crazy streets of Rome, I'd rather have a GPS tell me what to do. Even if that means I'll never remember those streets, I can never walk them in my head. At least I got through them with a GPS. That's a trade-off. That's fine. When that trade-off becomes the ability to read, to sustain focus for long form reading, to actually perform mathematics instead of just typing math into a thing. When we replace GPS with thinking tools with students, the skills we are now no longer developing, those are the most important ones that allow us to think.

[00:14:05]That's our cognition. And that's why when we start to offload those things to to young students, we see cognition drop. We see IQ drop. We see memory drop. You need to work the system if you want the system to work for you. And so, again, I think you're right. Some trade-offs are worth it. Maps, I'm fine.

[00:14:22]Reading, that's where I I kind of start to draw the line. Yeah. And just to close the discussion on the map thing, that's why you see these people that are driving off cliffs because they were following their GPS. It's like, but you didn't see the approaching thing and think, you know what, I know my GPS is telling me to go this way on the ways, but uh I don't think I want to go over a cliff. And they do it anyway. That's um it's stunning to me. But some people are so dependent on those tools that they just cannot think using regular common sense, which is really wild to me, too.

[00:14:53]How much of this is also Imagine AI in writing. Now, now you give someone a tool that says, I'll write everything for you. That's the next level of that exact same thing. The AI says this.

[00:15:04]>> Did you stop and think, is that going to take me over a cliff? Does that even make sense? But the answer is no. Most people will just say computer said blank, therefore that's what I'm going to put out into the world.

[00:15:14]>> Yeah. Well, and I want to have the full AI discussion because there's a lot of things that are worrisome there. But in terms of teaching, too, it's not even just students. I think teachers relying on tech so much and I think well-intentioned most of them I mean going back to just being a millennial I remember you know being in school knowing it was going to be an easy day when you saw the movie cart roll in and you knew you were going to watch an educational film that was loosely tied to something educational like if you watched Denzel Washington and the great debaters that was an educational thing because the teacher told you it was but we all knew that was bull. It was an easy day for the teachers, but we didn't care because it was an easy day for us.

[00:15:52]But now, I feel like teachers relying on tech so much and being able to use AI to write their lessons plans or being able to teach with the assistance of AI or just to throw everything on some kind of a computer program. How much of that has taken away traditional teaching? What element does that play?

[00:16:10]>> Yeah. And I there's a very interesting fact about learning is it is interpersonal.

[00:16:18]Human beings have evolved 150,000 years to learn from other human beings. We have biological mechanisms that says when I interact with you, I do what's called neurological and physiological synchrony. My brain starts to link with your brain. My heart starts to link with your heart. And in so doing, I learn better from you. Now, when we do that same learning on tech, we lose that entire those biological mechanisms.

[00:16:42]Learning necessarily goes down. But that's always been an argument for why teachers are so dang important. We're not only important for what we know.

[00:16:48]We're important literally for who we are and how that helps kids connect with and learn material. Now, our biggest weapons when it comes to being a teacher are lesson design. I know my field and I know what the steps are for you to learn that field. Assessment design. I know what questions I need to ask you to sus where you're at in your journey and feedback. I know what I need to tell you to help you get to the next step. So, lesson design, assessment design, feedback. Everything else, farm out to AI, farm out to tech, fine. If you're just using tech to send letters to parents or do field trips, permission slips, no one cares. The problem is exactly as you said, is a lot of teachers now are relying on tech to do the big three. Design my lesson for me.

[00:17:32]What are some good questions to ask about this passage? Uh, did this kid answer this question correctly? If we lose those three things as our teach as teachers, we do not know our students anymore. We cannot help them on their journey. We've basically cut ourselves off at the legs. So, you're absolutely right. When it comes to students using tech, it's going to harm their learning.

[00:17:51]When it comes to teachers using tech for lesson design, assessment design, or feedback, we're basically telling the world, we no longer need to be here because we no longer have the data, the information we need to help your kid learn.

[00:18:02]>> Yeah. And you know, as somebody who's never been good at math, um, when you are made to show how you got there, that was always important because the teacher would look and be like, you're doing the wrong steps. And sometimes you'd look in the back of the book and you put down the right answer, but your work didn't show that you got there correctly. And a teacher could detect that, right? So, I feel like even back in the days of millennials and before, even if we wanted to, you know, cheat, we still had to go through great lengths to cheat, we were learning something through cheating. You know, I'm not saying that necessarily looking in the back of the book is cheating or whatever, but everybody's done a little pix pixie at someone else's paper there and put the right answer down, but they didn't know how to get there. But even in that, we had to use some part of our brain to be able to dupe somebody into doing something. And now it's like the AI will show you how you got there, too. So you could just fully you don't even have to think about how you're going to cheat because it'll cheat for you.

[00:18:54]>> Do you remember when every once in a while you'd get a test and the teacher would be like, "You can have a crib sheet. You can have one >> note card and you can write whatever you want on that note card. You can bring that into the test."

[00:19:04]>> The reason they did that was the act of creating that note card usually meant we no longer had to look at it. We did our learning by creating the note card. Now you sit the test, you get a question, you're like, "Oh, I remember that cuz I had just written it down on this card."

[00:19:19]So the you're basically right, the act of cheating, we still had to go through work to make the learning stick. Whereas now, if I can just press a button and it spits out something for me, it's just searching for information. What's the point anymore? I And again, I want I I want people to know, man, I'm not anti- tech. I really don't care one way or the other. I'm just very much pro-learning.

[00:19:40]If we're going to take 12 years of our kids' life and put them in a classroom, we got to make sure we're doing the best in those 12 years to make sure they can grow, develop, and be healthy adults who can function in society. And I just am afraid that the tools we're using right now to do that, they just don't seem to be catering to that outcome that most of us want.

[00:20:01]>> I want to talk to you about just social media in general. We know, we've heard how bad it is for young people, and I understand that. I don't know how I feel about social media bans, though. Um, we know Australia, a number of other countries, and even states are looking at social media bans. Uh, I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to enforce. I think Australia thinks they're doing a good job. I don't know how good of a job they're actually doing. I think that's a really hard thing to gauge, right? It's like, we're keeping 16-year-olds off social under 16 off social media. I don't know how great the enforcement is. I don't know if they know if it's working. But what do you think about social media bans and just the impacts of social media on, you know, developing brains? Yeah, it's it's social media itself is an absolute minefield.

[00:20:44]If you had to invent something that was as emotionally developmentally destructive as humanly possible, I don't think I could come up with something better than social media. It's like take all the remember when you were a teenager and you'd be brushing your teeth and you'd imagine like the Truman Show. What if someone was actually watching me brush my teeth right now?

[00:21:04]Imagine that actually being real at all times for everything you've ever thought or done. That's basically what social media is. It says go put yourself online. That's horrible for someone who's trying to establish an identity, figure out what they believe, who they are. So, I believe it or not, I I I'm totally fine. I think social media should be banned for everyone. I don't see any good that it's ever done except for advertisers maybe. But I'm 100% with you in that a ban is basically non-inforceable.

[00:21:31]But what it's doing, I believe, is is sending a message as to what our culture values. What are we striving for? It's it's like cigarettes. Cigarettes are banned, mate. I smoked before I was 18.

[00:21:42]Wink, surprise. Drinking is banned, but we all had beers in high school. We know the rule is going to be broken, but the rule is establishing a principle, a moral of value that us as a society are saying, "Here's what we're trying to strive for." So, I think you're right.

[00:21:57]It will it work dayto-day? Probably not. But is it sending a message? I I hope so. And I hope that puts us in the right direction. Yeah, it's so difficult with that because there's so much creativity on social media. So that part of it I like that people are thinking of things and you know they're working within an algorithm to try to be creative to create content that other people are going to watch and like that part of it I like because you know and I use it obviously uh part of that is like this genius use of you how we put things together and I think that Jenz and younger like they're very good at that like they're very smart with that. So, I like that part of it because they are thinking about something and they're thinking and being creative, but then there's the other part of it, too, which is we always hear about like the impact on mental health. I mean, geez, if I had a dollar for every time we heard them talk about the impact on mental health, and I'm not dismissing it because I know that it's real. But I think part of that, too, just goes back to some of the traditional elements that are not in play for this generation that were in play for past generations. Millennials, we had Facebook, you know, later on, like college time for a lot of us. And then we had Instagram, you know, again, that was probably like late college and Instagram was just kind of becoming a thing. And now a lot of us are on Instagram. Some of us are on Tik Tok and we use Facebook and we used all of these things. But I don't think it has as big of an impact on us because we knew life without it. So, we weren't forming our perceptions of life based on it. If that makes sense. Like I know that I can use social media and I like to, you know, post fun things and I like to post a picture and look at the comments and I like to post content and look at the algorithm and and how many people have viewed it, but I don't base my self-worth on it because I didn't grow up basing my self-worth on it. But now Gen Z, it's like that is their barometer for everything. How does that impact their brain?

[00:23:41]>> That is ex, you nailed it. It's it's the identity formation problem. If you come to social media with an established identity or at least a healthy identity, it's going to be exactly as you said.

[00:23:52]It's going to be fun. I'm going to try some things. Some things are going to work, some things aren't, but I ain't going to take any of it too personally.

[00:23:58]When you're a kid using it, that is how you are establishing your identity. So, especially when you're a teenager, a lot of what we do is performative to get some sort of feedback to see what's working, what's not. Is that making people laugh? Maybe that's who I am. Now this kind of process of outputting identity, getting feedback works really well in small societies and small cultures and groups. In a high school tends to work pretty well because you can now build clicks and everyone can establish who they are. Once you throw that writ large globally, now what you've got is a bunch of people. So when we say that kids say are more narcissistic, go back to the myth of narcissist. Narcissist most people think he fell in love with himself. He didn't.

[00:24:41]Narcissist fell in love with a reflection of himself. The myth isn't a myth about self-ego. It's a myth about externalizing your identity and allowing the world to reflect back to you who you are and falling in love with that reflection rather than knowing who you actually are. And so the myth ends with him killing himself when he realizes it's just a reflection. He'd rather kill himself than go through the hard process of figuring out who the heck am I? So, when I've got six friends and I'm externalizing my identity and internalizing it, it tends to work.

[00:25:11]Okay? It's what we've been doing forever. When I've got a million people online now, you've got kids who are making art who the art is neither good nor bad till they put it online and the algorithm tells them it's good. You got 100 likes. This one only got 10 likes.

[00:25:28]They have no personal vested interest in it until the world tells them exactly what they need. And that's what scares me is you when you were talking about how they know how to work the algorithm to get views. That's how they start to form their identity. Who am I? I'm the person who knows how to get views. How do you get views? You have a problem.

[00:25:46]Anyone normal doesn't get views online.

[00:25:48]You have to have an angle or an edge.

[00:25:50]And then they start to identify with that edge. And this is why you your producers brought this up and I think this is a really good point. Something like 50% of Gen Z identify as neurode divergent. They will self-identify as I am autistic. I have ADHD. I have Tourette's syndrome. And the reason for that is is because they've externalized their identity and they've realized that's the only algorithmic pattern to get views, to get clicks, to get likes, and they genuinely think then that's who I am without realizing no that's just a game you're playing out there. So that yeah, when it comes to us as adults, I'm fine. But when it comes to the point of identity formation, that's when you need a lot less input and a lot more personal time and they're just not getting it.

[00:26:32]>> I'm glad that you brought that up because I'm very interested in Gen Z just wishing to be autistic. I think it's so bizarre to me. I can't figure it out. And you know, we've got some clips of it, but it's it's weird to me. I've I don't look up this stuff. I don't care about this stuff, but my Instagram search page, every once in a while I will see an influencer talking about being neurode divergent or autistic.

[00:26:56]Now, I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose them, but from what I've learned about people who are on the spectrum or autistic, the behaviors are not matching the people who claim to be autistic on their Instagram video. I want to play, you know, some of these videos, too. And and this has been applied to even stores like Sephora introducing quiet hours for neurode divergent. It's great if it's for actual people who are neurode divergent, but it's not great for, you know, Becky on there who thinks that she's autistic because Tik Tok told her so. I want to play some of these videos of these people um talking about their I guess their self- diagnosis of autism.

[00:27:35]>> Sephora just made history and as an autistic person and accessibility consultant, I need to talk about it. It just feels really effective to shop like in calmness all the time.

[00:27:45]>> During specific times during the day, they're going to lower the lights, lower the music, turn down the display screens, and it's going to be calm.

[00:27:53]>> And let me just tell you, I didn't Am I autistic?

[00:27:58]I think I might be because oh my god, it is so quiet in here.

[00:28:05]So these people are associating the enjoyment of peace and quiet with being autistic.

[00:28:13]Please explain that to me.

[00:28:15]>> That's that's the the small amount of research that's gone into these ideas of quiet hours shows that genuinely autistic people do benefit from it. So does everyone.

[00:28:29]Literally everybody enjoys it. There's no one that's gone in there and been like, "This sucks. is too quiet, which is exactly what you're saying is I think what we're seeing is the perfect confluence. First, it's going to hinge on the algorithm and the identity formation through the algorithm. If you're not autistic, you don't get likes. But if you have a problem, that is your identity. More and more people say, "That's your angle. That's your edge. That must be you." But what you're seeing is a confluence of what we're going to call hyperpersonalization with the pathol pathization of development. So bear with me. When I was a kid, I would have an idea and everyone will remember this. You'll think you're the first person in history to ever have this idea and you'll think you are unique. Then you're going to go read a novel like Dosstoyki and you're going to say, "Oh, someone 200 years ago thought the exact same thing I did." That act of recognizing you are part of a communal that your ideas, your emotions are not unique and you are part of a larger story is a key part of development and growth. Digital technology makes everything so hyperpersonal that most people are only ever fed their own ideas and thoughts. They never find a way to externalize to plug their thoughts into the rest of the world. So they genuinely start to believe I am the only one with this thought. So what you start to get is you get you get people who mistake normal emotions for mental maladies is oh I there's too much noise that bothers me. No one else must be bothered like me. I have no recognition that everyone else in the world has the same exact problem. It's just me. Therefore I must have a diagnostics. I must be autistic.

[00:30:10]So they're they're not able to link their own personal thoughts and ideals with the recognition that that is a universal thought and ideal that you are not unique. You are part of us and that's okay. You don't need to be special in that sense. But then combine that with then the the path pathization of development. A lot of what we do is imagine you're a kid and your pet dies.

[00:30:35]Every single pet in the history of the world has died. So that is a universal thing. If you have a pet, your pet will die. Only now though are we starting to treat that as traumatic. It used to be that's that's a part of growing up. You are now experiencing a very normal life.

[00:30:50]And now it's your pet died. We need to coddle you. We need to protect you.

[00:30:54]Maybe you need to go to therapy. Maybe things are not okay with you. That hyper coddling and that hyperpersonalization lead people to believe and genuinely identify with I am divergent. I am different. I have a disorder. When realistically, no, you don't. you're very normal. You just haven't recognized that yet.

[00:31:11]>> It's just bizarre to me. I mean, the desire for Gen Z and younger to be oppressed in some way, to be a victim in some way, like they actively search for ways that they are a victim and they yearn for it. Like they deeply, deeply want to be afflicted by something. It's not just, you know, hey, I I want to it's, you know, I feel like millennials, there was this everybody wanted to be the best, you know, and I'm not saying that's great either, but everybody wanted to be the best. Everybody wanted to win. Everybody wanted to make the most and do the most and go to the best school and be on the top. And I think that was generationally for millennials, like that was a big thing. And millennial burnout, I'm sure, is a real thing, too. It's like we're constantly striving, striving, striving. We went through the financial collapse of like 2008 through 2010 when most of us were graduating and going to college. And it's like those things formed us like you got to be scrappy. You got to fight and you got to be number one. Gen Z totally different. Gen Z wants unlimited paid time off. Gen Z wants to be a victim. Gen Z wants a mental health day.

[00:32:12]Gen Z wants to rot in bed all day because they think that that will benefit them. That that's self-care.

[00:32:17]It's so weird to me. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other. I'm sure there's problems with both. But when you look at Gen Z and younger and their desire to have something wrong, why >> that is I've and as much as people hate to hear it, that's I bring that back to tech. It's a lot of our identity is formed by the culture, the context we are raised in. And you're absolutely right. Our culture was raised to believe or our excuse me, our our generation was raised to believe if you're not the best at something, then you lose. If you don't have a million followers, you're not cool. If you don't have a million stores, you lost.

[00:32:59]I re man, I'm living it same as you are.

[00:33:02]I do not want that for my daughter. I want the smallest world possible for my daughter. I genuinely we're going to be moving to Italy soon cuz I if she just grew up in one village for the rest of her life doing one craft in one store, great. You don't need to do this massive life like we did. But I think what happens is in response to our massive life, we tried to protect the next generation, our kids, in a way to say, "You don't need to be as crazy as us."

[00:33:28]But the way we protected them built a whole new world within which now they're hyperprotected. And the online world just feeds right into that context of you are not okay, you are not healthy, you are not safe right now. And there's a a really good book um uh called Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier. She makes a really good point where she's basically lays that out that up until now parents parented and we got help from other parents. If I was having a problem with my kid, I'd call my mom and say, "What the heck did you do with me when I was doing this?" But for some reason, our generation, we didn't trust our parents enough. So, when we became parents, we turned to psychologists for advice instead of asking other parents, "What do you do when my kid acts up?" We didn't want to be seen as mean or evil or bad. We ask psychologists, what do you do when a kid acts like this? And of course, a psychologist is going to say, well, that's a problem. You've traumatized them. You've done that's their job. They have to look for problems. Otherwise, they're not doing psychology. And so, I think we farmed out parenting to psychology enough to just basically overcodle our kids and put them in a context where they believe identity is suffering. There your identity isn't what you stand for. It's what is happening to you and against you. and the world is in charge of fixing that. And so again, I think that's totally our fault for building the world within which they were raised.

[00:34:53]And now we're just seeing that's that's what happens when we farm parenting out to Sykes and we build digital worlds where all they do is get fed sobb stories and and tales about why they're why they're they're hurting so much right now. I don't know. It's a difficult balance, but I feel like we've leaned as a culture and society, we've leaned far too much into mental health and therapy. And I know that that's going to make some people pissed off to hear, but just you mentioned it, trauma.

[00:35:20]Some people think that they've gone through trauma. And we hear it all the time, too, on on TV and reality shows like, "I have PTSD from this." No, you don't. People who went to war and had their legs blown off have PTSD. You having to wash the dishes and take out the trash is not PTSD. It is not trauma.

[00:35:37]It is not oppression. But they've they've grown to believe that. And now I think we're pushing so many people. And I don't know, you're actually far more educated on this than me. This is just my personal observation that it feels like reality TV, social media, popular culture is pushing everybody into therapy. And I don't know if it's I don't know if it's helping everybody. I think some people have no business being in therapy. I don't think therapy for all is a good idea.

[00:36:07]>> Therapy will always come any anything will always come with side effects. And I think therapy was a really big push in the '9s into the early knots to say if you weren't in therapy, you weren't being cool. And so we've kind of moved that on to our kids. But what is the the the side effects of therapy are hyperfocus. Anytime you hyperfocus on a problem and you have to keep talking about it again and again and again, that problem typically gets worse is rumination. Anytime you're asked every 10 minutes, how are you feeling? You start to feel worse because you're now ruminating on, I don't know, how am I feeling? It's an interesting kind of the number one way to make sure kids do drugs at school is to institute an anti-drug campaign. the number one way to make sure kids start bullying each other. Institute an anti-bullying campaign. When you force people to focus on a very specific thing, that becomes part of their daily thinking. And that becomes more likely to manifest. Now, does that mean we don't say don't bully, don't do drugs? Of course we do. You just don't turn it into the end all beall. That's kind of what happened in schools with well-being.

[00:37:16]Schools today have more well-being programs than ever before than ever in history. we were focused more on on on emotions, on emotional regulation, on executive function. Yet, at the same time, emotional dysregulation is going up. Mental impairments are going up.

[00:37:32]We've never been more focused on teaching well-being, yet we're seeing a decrease in well-being that we've never seen before. And that's the problem.

[00:37:40]That's the side effect of too much therapy, of too much thinking about this stuff. So, I I think you're right. Now, bring it back. I I think an interesting way to kind of frame that is exactly what you were saying. I think our parents were pretty harsh and we made the decision we don't want to be as harsh as our parents. So we swung the pendulum so far this way to say well we're going to be friendly which is going to come with its own side effects and we're seeing them now. So hopefully the next generation is going to swing that pendulum hopefully closer to the middle and start to realize being harsh is okay at times. Being friendly is okay at times, but you cannot be only one or the other. There has to be parenting involved where yes, sometimes I'm the mean one. Sometimes you will not like me. Sometimes I will not allow you to do XY Z and you're going to have to live a normal life. I um I was thinking my wife the other day, this is a couple years ago, she went to Nepal. She's a psychologist. She went to Nepal um to work with women there on resilience, that concept. She called me about 3 days into her trip and she said, "These women need resilience training about as much as I need another handbag, which is to say I don't." Even though they never knew the word, they' never heard the word resilience and never been taught it. They forged it through fire. So, this is where you see well-being, resilience, grit, all these things we really desire. You can't teach it. You have to live it and experience it. I can tell you all day till the cows come home how to act when you get an F. But unless you actually get an F, you'll never know what it feels like or how to get through it. So some things I think we've mistaken that if we talk about it, that will help train them for it. And in so doing, we've stopped them from actually experiencing the thing. And that's actually stunting their development.

[00:39:26]>> Yeah. And I think they've learned how to weaponize it to get out of doing things.

[00:39:30]I talk about this.

[00:39:31]>> They're good. They're good at playing.

[00:39:33]They know how to tug our heartstrings.

[00:39:34]>> I have a lot of Jenzie people that I work with that are fantastic and they buck the trend. And you know what? I see this and I on Jenz all the time, but I do it out of love. And I'll tell you why. Because the people that I work with for the most part, at least at kick that are genz, they are exceptional genzers, okay? And I think for them, I'm like, this is your opportunity because the rest of your generation is such that you can stand out. Like this is your chance.

[00:39:58]Like all these people are talking about having a selfhelp day and they, you know, they need to bed rod and all this stuff. And it's like, but you guys are out there making hay while the sun is shining. So you people are going to excel and you're going to be the best and you're going to be the CEOs because you guys have something that a lot of people in your generation don't have.

[00:40:14]You have a little bit of grit, tenacity, and so you're going to rise to the top.

[00:40:18]So it's an incredible opportunity for genzers who are are not like their peers. They have the opportunity to excel far beyond them. And I think that's great for them. And those that are doing it that I work with, like I think that they're at a good spot. So that's not about the people that I work with. But then there are people that I just see in Gen Z and even, you know, extended family members that I have that are like, >> "My anxiety cripples me from doing this.

[00:40:43]I I need to I I can't be in this situation because it's bad for my mental health." And they use it as an excuse and people allow it.

[00:40:52]>> And it's well, you don't want to be seen as the person who denies. What if there was a genuine problem? 10, let's say 10 people come forward with a mental health problem. Nine are fake, one is real. You You don't want to be the one who says no to all of them because there was that one genuine in there. So, we just say yes to everything. I think Gen Z, and you make a good point. I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha especially, as they get older and as they're entering the workforce and they're now going to be in charge of a lot of things, they're going to start to realize just how decrepit a lot of their education was. And now, and I want so I want to make clear to anyone Gen Z or Gen Alpha listening, none of this is your fault. This was done to you. We You never asked to have a computer shoved in your face for 6 hours a day at school.

[00:41:41]You never asked to be plopped in front of a TV instead of interacting with your parents. This was done to you. And I and I I I like to think we started all this with the best of intentions. We thought all this would be useful, but now we're starting to learn that we made some mistakes. And so I hope as they get older they get a little bit mad at us and they start to push back and say look I do not want this for my kids because that was horrible or we need to fix education because that is no longer working for not being able to read a novel is not beneficial to me as an adult. We need to fix that stuff. So I I I hope they know we're not ex as as you said if we're on you it's it's out of love and it's out of Maya. It's we did this to you and we're hoping that you can step back up and kick us in the teeth and say do a better job.

[00:42:27]>> Yeah. Well, I just it's weird to me um how many young people are so sad.

[00:42:33]>> It's they're so sad. They're so sad. And I just I don't remember being in my early 20s and being sad like that. You know, you think when you're in your early 20s, you know, maybe maybe life's not great financially, like you're still getting your bearings, you're figuring out what you want to do with your life.

[00:42:51]There are hard moments, but you generally like that's the happiest time of your life because you're having fun and you're, you know, you're out of your parents house and you're doing things and you're having a good time and you're meeting new people and you're smiling and you're having fun and it's like it I don't know if I see the same amount of joy in young people. I don't know what makes them happy.

[00:43:11]There's definitely a significant decrease in in joy and this is where you start to see the mental health problems really start to kick up. Um I I was thinking that the other day. What do you need for kind of joy and development is you need structure and you need boundaries. You need to be told no so that you now have an aspiration to prove yes. So when we were growing up, when my generation was growing up, the percentage of us who drove when we turned 16 was right around 90%. When we hit 16, you could not stop us from driving. The day I turned 16, I was out of that house. Why? Because my entire life I was told no. Can you drive me to my friend's house? You can ride your bike or walk. Wait till I'm old enough to drive. I'm going to do it. Can you drive me to the movies? No. You can take a bike or walk. Oh, I can't wait to drive. Those boundaries made me mad at my parents and mad at the world, but gave me so much joy when I now hit that stage. Ah, this is freedom. This is what I get to do. The percentage of 16-year-old kids today who are driving is somewhere, I think, around 40%. I don't know exactly, but it's very low.

[00:44:20]And everyone's like, why aren't 16-year-old driving anymore? And they're trying to come up with these answers like, oh, maybe because Uber is really good or they really like public transportation cuz yeah, everyone loves the bus. No, the answer is because they've never had structure enough to make that a goal for them. From the time they were young, we drove them everywhere. We drove them to school, to their friend's house. Now they hit 16.

[00:44:43]Why would they want to drive? We're going to continue to do it for them. So this there needs to be a certain level of no in order for you to fight through to then find that joy, to find that aspiration, to say I am free. I'm 20 years old. I can do things I've been told my whole life I'm not allowed to do. and now I can try new things, test things out, see who I am. So, I think by trying to make childhood a little more free instead of more structured, we've actually made it harder for early 20somes to find that kind of joy and freedom that we we experienced growing up.

[00:45:16]>> Oh, well, give me something to end with an optimistic note for the younger generation and for our education system.

[00:45:23]You said that you're packing up heading to Italy. I don't know if they have air conditioning there. So, good luck.

[00:45:29]>> That is I found that out the hard way. Get used to sweating. That's what I learned.

[00:45:35]>> But just in terms of our American education system, do you see bright spots? Do you see areas where it's like, no, things are looking up. We're out of the co era. People are learning these hard lessons and we're going to make a shift.

[00:45:46]>> Yeah. So, I I came out with my book, The Digital Delusion, that outlines the problems with tech and learning in December. And I I released it in December because I wanted it to be out before the legislation cycle started for this year. And when I released the book, there were three states that were discussing bills or laws around edtech.

[00:46:08]And so that's why I'm like, cool. Those are the states I want to work with.

[00:46:12]Since that book came out tonight, today as of now, I think there are 31 states with bills or laws concerning edte now uh under discussion. So yeah, I within 5 months I did not expect that at all.

[00:46:27]Within 5 months, the number of people of states of of schools and leaders who are saying, "Wait a second, maybe we can fix this. Maybe we can do better." has just blown me out of the water. So if you would have asked me 6 months ago, what's the bright spot? I'd have hemmed and hawed. Today though, I am I yes, people are paying attention and it seems like people want to do well by education, which is perfect. when it's people are no longer saying, "Hey, this product exists and they're going to give me money, so let's put it into schools."

[00:46:56]And they're now saying, "This product exists. Does it work?" And if the answer is no, then we're not going to put it in our school. And that's a huge step in the right direction. So, I think I think we we are we've we've made the mistakes and now we're we're hopefully starting to rectify them a bit.

[00:47:10]>> I wish we could go back to the early 2000s, but I don't think I'm going to win on that. So, maybe, you know, nostalgia is back though, doctor.

[00:47:18]Nostalgia. I'm telling you, you when it comes to education, you you that's exactly what it seems like we're doing.

[00:47:23]We peaked right around 2005 to 2010.

[00:47:27]Then everything started to slip with tech. And what you're seeing is a lot of schools and districts are saying, "How do we get back to the early knots, which is exactly what you're saying?" And the answer is is simple. We we were already doing it. So there's sometimes you have to build a new infrastructure to change.

[00:47:43]Sometimes you just have to tear down an infrastructure to go back to what you were already doing. And that's what we got here is we we 20 years ago we were doing better. So it's we don't need to buy anything new. We don't need to invest in anything new. We just need to return to what already exists in schools. So I think we might actually educationally start to see that.

[00:48:00]>> Well, it's good for my ego, too, because I graduated high school in 2010 and you're telling me that things went to after that. So I feel pretty good about myself.

[00:48:08]>> You were right there.

[00:48:10]>> I mean, we had our problems, too, right?

[00:48:12]But I'm I'm gonna take it a feather in my cap. I was the, you know, my time period was the last time when things were good. And you know what? If you need me to speak at schools to tell you about how things used to be in the good old 2005 to 2010 days, I am game for it.

[00:48:28]And we'll teach them also how to get around having your cell phone. You put it in your backpack and you pretend it's a calculator. And even then, we had to, you know, we had to have some ingenuity to be able to hide that cell phone. And that was also good here. You know, now they just get to have it. So there there are things, but I think we need to go back there and uh nostalgia is hot right now. So we'll see if it makes a difference. But thank you so much for diving into all of this. I loved your testimony and thank you for sharing it all. I think it's super helpful and good luck in Italy. Um bring some ice packs.

[00:49:01]>> We'll do. Thank you so much.

[00:49:03]>> Thanks so much, Doc. All right, that is it for this episode of Tommy Lren is Fearless. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe to support that YouTube channel, Tommy Lren is Fearless. Full episodes of this show are on outkick.com and Fox Nation. Make it a little bit more challenging for yourself. Search for Outkick and then try to find it because that'll be good for your cognitive abilities. Uh or you can just do the easy thing and follow us on the Instagram page, Tommy Larenis Fearless.

[00:49:28]Audio is also available wherever you get your podcast. Spotify, Apple. You can listen on the go. And don't forget to watch the Big Weekend Show every Saturday and Sunday 5 to 8:00 p.m.

[00:49:37]Eastern on Fox News from Nashville. God bless. And take care.