Attention Crisis: How leaders can fix focus and happiness in an AI Era -psychologist Jonathan Haidt

0:00 So, we don't have 10 years.

0:02 We have maybe 1 year.

0:03 We've got to [music] fix this.

0:04 We've got to raise consciousness.

0:05 We've got to understand Yes, AI is going to help adults do things more easily,

0:11 but children have to do hard things thousands of times.

0:16 And AI is saying, "Hey, take a shortcut.

0:17 Don't write that paper.

0:18 Don't read that book.

0:19 I'll summarize it for I'll write it for you." That is a recipe

0:21 for the absolute [music] destruction of human

0:23 capital and the destruction of future human flourishing.

0:31 Welcome to Meet the Leader.

0:33 I'm Linda Lacina and I am very excited to introduce you to Jonathan Haidt.

0:38 He is a social psychologist and a professor

0:41 at the New York Stern School of Business.

0:44 He is also a best-selling author and you

0:46 might know him from his work The Anxious Generation,

0:49 but he's also done a fair amount of research

0:51 on civil discourse and how we can find happiness.

0:54 Well, today we're going to uh pull all of that together

0:57 and look at how we can find happiness in an ever-changing,

1:01 fragmented, digital age.

1:03 How are you, John?

1:05 Fine, Linda.

1:05 Thanks for having me on.

1:06 Very good.

1:07 So, why don't we get started here and you

1:09 can kind of set the scene for all of us?

1:11 Why don't we get started?

1:12 For For For those uh who aren't familiar with you and your work,

1:16 can you just give us a a sense of your area of study and why it interests you?

1:19 Sure.

1:20 So, I'm a social psychologist,

1:21 which means I look at how we influence each other,

1:23 how there's all kinds of emergent properties in society.

1:26 And early in my career I studied moral psychology

1:29 and then political psychology and then why are we so divided,

1:33 especially in the US, but many other countries too,

1:35 we're seeing rising political polarization, which causes political dysfunction.

1:39 So, that was the main track of my research until 2015 because I began to notice,

1:44 as many of us did uh in higher education in the United States,

1:47 that all of a sudden the students who were born after 1995,

1:51 we now call them Gen Z, were doing very, very badly.

1:54 Very anxious, depressed, increasing rates of suicide and self-harm.

1:59 So, I've been studying that since 2015 and while there are many causes of it,

2:03 I now believe that the biggest cause

2:06 is the massive technological transformation that we all

2:09 went through between really 2010 and 2015 when

2:13 we moved everything onto smartphones and social media.

2:15 That, I believe, is causing democratic dysfunction.

2:19 It's causing mental health declines,

2:21 especially among the young, and it's causing educational declines.

2:24 Test scores are dropping as well.

2:26 So, that's what I'm studying now.

2:27 What is happening to us and what do we do about it?

2:29 Very good.

2:30 Well, and so with all of that, um you know, we have this AI age where all

2:34 of this new technology is freeing us from rote work

2:38 and supposedly making it easier for us to do

2:40 all the things that only humans can do, the things we can do best.

2:43 In that world, do you think that we'll finally crack happiness?

2:47 Mhm.

2:48 Um crack it in the sense of destroy it, yes.

2:50 I think if we don't take care,

2:52 if we go on the path we're going on, it will be extremely hard for anyone No,

2:56 for most people to have a flourishing life.

2:58 So, here's what I mean by that.

3:00 The causes of happiness, we know,

3:03 come not from material prosperity, although that helps.

3:07 It comes from getting the right relationships,

3:10 healthy relationships between yourself and your work,

3:13 yourself and other people, that is strong, supportive human relationships,

3:17 and yourself in something larger than yourself,

3:19 a sense that you're embedded in a meaning

3:22 system in which you can find coherence and purpose.

3:25 Those are the foundations of human happiness in any age.

3:28 What is AI doing?

3:30 It's going to make it extremely good

3:33 for a few people who will be coordinating many AIs.

3:37 We're going to have extraordinary income inequality

3:39 as a few people use the technology.

3:43 But since AI will soon be able to do almost everything better than humans,

3:46 especially once we get it put in robots, it's going to be very hard, I think,

3:49 in the future for people to find meaningful work.

3:52 I'm especially fearful for young people,

3:54 my children's generation, teenagers now.

3:56 What entry-level jobs will there be for them

3:59 in a few years when they're on the job market?

4:02 AI is going to make it extremely difficult to have meaningful relationships.

4:05 From now on, children will be growing up with chatbots as their best friends.

4:09 They're not going to learn the skills of human interaction,

4:12 those are already declining, and AI will decline them much further.

4:16 Young people will have sexual relationships with AIs.

4:18 They will not learn how to have sexual relationships with humans.

4:21 And ultimately, I believe those relationships will be unsatisfying.

4:25 And finally, your relationship to something larger than yourself,

4:29 social media has already ripped to shreds any shared sense of coherence,

4:36 meaning, facts, truth.

4:38 Whatever happens, we will not be able to understand it collectively again.

4:43 In the United States,

4:44 there will be a left reading and a right reading and never the twain shall meet.

4:48 And even within that, it's fragmentation all the way down.

4:51 So, I suspect that AI will crack happiness.

4:54 It will break it so that it will be much harder for people to obtain.

4:57 Sure.

4:58 Well, in your mind, what do people get wrong about happiness

5:01 when we talk about this that might even fuel this gap?

5:05 So, in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis,

5:08 I explored three hypotheses about happiness.

5:11 The first, the most obvious, the most simple-minded,

5:13 is happiness comes from getting what you want.

5:15 And if we can just give If people can get what they want,

5:18 material prosperity, cars, good clothing, food, entertainment, they'll be happy.

5:25 No.

5:25 Entertainment and pleasure are valuable parts of life,

5:29 but they do not bring happiness.

5:32 We adapt to them very quickly and then we feel empty.

5:35 One of my great fears about what people are thinking about AI is,

5:38 "Oh, don't worry about it.

5:40 There's going to be so much prosperity that we'll just give UBI,

5:43 universal basic income.

5:44 We'll give everyone so much money." That guarantees mass meaninglessness.

5:50 That means that our young men, in particular,

5:52 are just going to be hooked up to porn and video games and whatever comes next.

5:56 And if they are not able to be productive, to do something useful,

5:59 they will be mired in the depression

6:01 and sense of meaninglessness that they're already in.

6:04 So, let's put that aside.

6:05 Material prosperity is not going to make us happier.

6:08 In fact, I believe it's going to now, for the first time,

6:11 begin to make us less happy, although,

6:12 of course, it has helped the increase until now.

6:15 Second happiness hypothesis, happiness comes from within.

6:18 This is what the ancients said.

6:20 This is what the Buddhists said.

6:21 This is what the Stoics said.

6:22 And there's a lot of truth to that one.

6:24 That one's a very good hypothesis psychologically.

6:27 And that's true as far as it goes.

6:28 People will need to work on themselves,

6:30 but what I found in my research is that ultimately, it's not even from within.

6:36 It's actually from between.

6:37 It's from getting the right relationships between yourself and your work,

6:40 yourself and others, yourself and something larger than yourself.

6:43 And if AI and technology were to help those three relationships,

6:47 then it would help us be happier.

6:49 But I believe AI is going to block each of those three relationships,

6:52 leaving each of us in our own individual pod,

6:54 consuming mass quantities of entertainment,

6:57 which will be so much more gripping and beautiful than it is today,

7:00 so people will never leave.

7:02 And Aldous Huxley's vision in Brave New World will come true.

7:06 If we did everything right, right?

7:08 And we'll get to some of the changes we can we can make.

7:10 But if we did everything right, what would the world look like?

7:13 How would it be different?

7:14 A different version of the future.

7:16 Mhm.

7:16 Yeah.

7:17 So, if we were to do everything right, what would that look like?

7:20 Well, first, let's start with what needs to be done.

7:22 So, the There's several really basic things.

7:25 The first and most basic is that these industries,

7:28 I social media is what I'd focused on.

7:31 I try not to say tech cuz tech does so many wonderful things,

7:35 but social media and now AI,

7:37 which is so much richer and more powerful than social

7:39 media and it's actually the same companies to some extent,

7:42 those companies have have operated with no restraints,

7:46 no legislation in the United States, nothing, zero, ever to restrict them.

7:51 There is no other consumer product that is used

7:54 by almost all children that already has a body count,

7:58 a death count in the thousands at minimum,

8:00 that is causing mass destruction of human capital.

8:04 There's never been a consumer product

8:06 in which there was no regulation, no lawsuits.

8:09 They have never faced a jury.

8:10 They have never lost a case against all these parents whose children are dead.

8:14 So, there is zero accountability

8:17 for these companies that are transforming our society,

8:20 hurting millions of people, and doing whatever they want.

8:24 So, that's the first thing.

8:24 Governments are going to have to say, "You know what?

8:26 You break it, you fix it.

8:27 You're responsible for the people you're damaging." That's the most basic thing.

8:31 It's accountability.

8:32 Another is that we're going to have to protect childhood,

8:35 especially through puberty.

8:37 Right now, we let what happened 10, 15 years ago,

8:41 we let Silicon Valley run an experiment on our children.

8:44 They said, "How about we give all our toddlers iPads so that they

8:47 go through their early years swiping instead

8:49 of interacting?" That's not working out well.

8:52 Kids have tremendous developmental delays,

8:54 language delays, behavioral problems, uh attentional problems.

8:58 So, we've already disrupted early childhood, mid-childhood.

9:01 Uh and then, when I started this, it was teenagers who were on social media,

9:05 but now it's 7 and 8-year-olds are on TikTok.

9:07 So, now children go through puberty not going through

9:11 the experiences that they need to to develop themselves socially,

9:14 sexually, and intellectually,

9:16 but prisoners to engagement loops, uh addictive algorithms.

9:21 So, we are completely messing up the most

9:23 fragile and important periods of brain development.

9:26 We did it with social media.

9:28 It's been a complete disaster around the world,

9:31 and we're about to do it again with AI.

9:33 Only it's going to be much more powerful and much faster.

9:37 So, we don't have 10 years.

9:39 We have maybe 1 year.

9:40 We've got to fix this.

9:41 We've got to raise consciousness.

9:42 We've got to understand Yes, AI is going to help adults do things more easily,

9:48 but children have to do hard things thousands of times.

9:53 And AI is saying, "Hey, take a shortcut.

9:55 Don't write that paper.

9:55 Don't read that book.

9:56 I'll summarize it for I'll write it for you.

9:58 That is a recipe for the absolute destruction

10:01 of human capital and the destruction of future human flourishing.

10:04 And what impacts are these also having on adults being able to to focus,

10:09 to pay attention, to do hard things?

10:12 What effects will this have on adults?

10:14 When I was doing the research for the anxious generation,

10:16 which I published in 2024, I was totally focused on young people.

10:20 That's where we'll get the biggest bang for the buck.

10:22 That's where the most damage is happening,

10:24 where changing brain development during puberty.

10:26 We've got to stop that.

10:28 And I didn't really look at adults because

10:30 A, we didn't have the evidence very clearly,

10:32 and B, it's really hard to pass legislation to tell adults what to do.

10:36 I don't want to do that.

10:38 But boy, do we have to pass legislation to protect minors, children, okay?

10:43 But since the book came out, wherever I go,

10:45 wherever I speak, I'm talking about the children,

10:48 and whatever adults I'm talking to, they say,

10:50 "You know, it's happening to me, too.

10:52 I can't focus.

10:53 I'm distracted.

10:53 I'm more anxious when I'm on social media.

10:55 It makes me self-conscious.

10:56 I'm So, it's really clear the rewiring of social

11:01 relationships to pull them away from direct one-to-one communication,

11:06 private communication, a telephone call, face-to-face.

11:09 When we've pushed all of that down and and pushed it

11:12 all onto public interactions mediated by companies that we know are mercenary,

11:17 that we know hide the research they've done which finds harm,

11:21 that that has been a disaster for human relationships, and we're all feeling it.

11:26 I now believe that while I focused on mental

11:28 health as the primary locus of destruction from social media,

11:33 I now believe that I got that wrong.

11:35 That actually it's the attention fragmentation,

11:38 it's the disruption of cognition, attention, it's the difficulty reading books.

11:42 I can't read a book anymore.

11:44 There's so much going on, so many things to click.

11:46 I'm distracted.

11:47 It's very hard for me to pay attention for a long time.

11:49 And And so many adults are having the same thing.

11:52 There's even research showing that people are less able to read a paragraph,

11:56 adults now, less able to read a paragraph

11:59 and answer simple questions about it afterwards.

12:02 We can't focus.

12:03 So, in the age of AI, as our machines are getting smarter than us very,

12:08 very quickly, we're helping it along by making ourselves stupider.

12:12 This does not bode well for the human future.

12:15 Some of these technologies that are driving fragmentation are

12:17 also sort of driving these problems within the discourse,

12:20 how we're able to relate to one another.

12:21 You've actually co-founded a thing called

12:23 the Constructive Dialogue Institute in 2017.

12:26 What is that and what kind of resources is it developing?

12:29 So, how does all of this relate to civil discourse,

12:32 civil dialogue, and political polarization?

12:35 My early work was on how our differences in morality,

12:38 especially left versus right, are driving us to an increasingly polarized world

12:43 in which we each have our own informational system,

12:45 our own facts, and democratic politics, a liberal democracy,

12:51 which is the greatest way to live together ever found by human beings.

12:56 It It It's the achievement of the Enlightenment

12:58 era to find ways of living together with diversity,

13:01 with immigration, granting people the freedom to live the lives they want.

13:06 This was the great flowering especially in the second half of the 20th century.

13:10 But what's happening now?

13:12 Uh since social media took over in the early 2010s,

13:16 what we're seeing is increasingly fragmented worlds of facts or belief,

13:21 increasingly tribal politics, maybe not in every country,

13:24 but certainly in the United States,

13:26 uh we're we're seeing in many European countries,

13:29 we're seeing the left become increasingly extreme,

13:32 focused on identity, identitarianism.

13:35 We're seeing the right getting increasingly extreme,

13:37 focusing again on identity, identitarianism.

13:41 The people who were here 100 years ago are the the real Americans, we're told.

13:46 So, this is a recipe for disaster in liberal societies,

13:50 and this is what's happening in many places.

13:52 So, what I've been trying to do uh since 2016 and 17,

13:56 since Donald Trump was elected and our splits became more magnified,

14:01 is to use moral psychology to help people develop skills to talk

14:05 across the divide and to understand people on the other side.

14:09 This has been my mission since 2012 when

14:11 I wrote a book called The Righteous Mind.

14:13 The Constructive Dialogue Institute offers a program that you can use.

14:17 It's ideally in classes in universities,

14:19 but it'll work in high schools, it'll work in companies,

14:22 it will work in church congregations,

14:23 that teaches people the basics of moral psychology,

14:26 why do we hold the views we have,

14:28 and it teaches them the skills of understanding, first listen,

14:32 first ask questions, first understand which moral foundations they're using,

14:37 why they feel that their view is morally imperative.

14:40 Once you understand that, you can speak to them with respect,

14:43 you can learn yourself,

14:44 and you're better able to persuade them if you still want to persuade them.

14:48 So, the technology is amplifying our divisions and increasing rage,

14:54 and what we're trying to do at CDI is teach interpersonal skills

14:58 that will make young people better equipped to go out into the jungle,

15:02 the political trench warfare that is American society and many other societies,

15:08 and be prepared to navigate it.

15:10 People who are maybe experiencing some of the resources

15:13 that you guys could put together through CDI,

15:15 what's maybe a habit or change that they might

15:17 make after kind of going through one of your programs?

15:19 What's something that they would be doing?

15:21 Well, the the first thing if you're going to talk to someone,

15:24 it's Let's suppose a lot of the times

15:26 you have a disagreement with your own parents.

15:28 That's what we often see, or your grandparents,

15:31 or your cousins, or or your friends.

15:34 And we're seeing people nowadays, especially more on the left,

15:37 cutting off people that they disagreed with.

15:40 And this is a shame because again, human relationships, close connections,

15:44 are the most important foundation of human happiness and flourishing.

15:48 And as our technology is fragmenting us,

15:50 we don't want to amplify that by having people cutting each other off.

15:54 And so, if you're having a conflict with someone,

15:57 let's say you're on the left and they're on the right or vice versa,

16:00 the first thing you would want to do is learn about their view.

16:03 You can either read about it, or you can ask them.

16:06 So, start with curiosity, and if you start with curiosity, it's not charity.

16:12 It's not that you're trying to be nice to them.

16:14 Ultimately, will make you smarter, better connected, and more effective.

16:19 So, start with curiosity.

16:21 Ask questions first.

16:23 The next step, I believe, is acknowledge something that they're right about.

16:28 They're always right about something.

16:29 There's something you can say, "You know, you guys,

16:31 your side, you really care about you know,

16:34 family, or marriage, or social stability,

16:36 or you really care about inequality, or the environment, and you're right.

16:41 You know, you're right that those things are declining.

16:43 We're in trouble." If you start by acknowledging

16:46 that they're right about something, it works magic.

16:49 It tells the person, "This is not a war.

16:51 You're not just out to attack me and prove me.

16:53 You actually respect me." And that is the key.

16:55 That opens their hearts, and now you can actually talk.

16:59 And what about happiness in general?

17:01 Are there things that you recommend,

17:04 changes that people can have in their in their habits

17:06 and their daily routines that can maybe get them out of bad cycles?

17:10 So, what can people do to be happier?

17:13 Um I've taught a course actually since 2006 at the University of Virginia,

17:17 and since 2014 at New York University.

17:20 I've taught a course called flourishing.

17:23 And I used to go through, and I still do.

17:24 I go through the foundations.

17:25 Like, let's get these things right.

17:26 You've got to You've got to have exercise and movement.

17:29 Your body needs movement.

17:30 Talk briefly about nutrition, not too much junk food and sugar.

17:33 I mean, sleep is an important foundation.

17:36 If you're not sleeping 7 hours a day,

17:38 so there's all kinds of things that you need to do,

17:40 and that's been true for decades.

17:42 All right.

17:43 But what I've discovered in the last 5 years is

17:46 that if we don't start with digital habits, then all is lost.

17:50 Now, this is especially true for the younger people, for my undergraduates,

17:53 because so many of them are on social media 4 to 7 hours a day.

17:57 4 to 7 hours a day.

17:58 Imagine you're a college student.

18:00 You move to New York City to go to NYU, and what do you do?

18:04 You go to classes, and you sit on your bed and scroll.

18:07 And that's it.

18:08 What a waste of a college education.

18:10 What a waste of your mind.

18:12 And so, what I've discovered is that anyone who is

18:15 on social media for 3 or more hours a day,

18:17 or who's on their phone for 7 hours a day or more, and that's a lot of them,

18:22 I won't let them work on anything else until they work on that.

18:25 And the simplest trick, if you're on social media,

18:28 or video games, or investing sites, anything that you go to habitually,

18:32 anything that operates like a slot machine,

18:34 which gives you variable ratio reinforcement, get it off your phone.

18:38 If you have to be on Instagram for some reason, do it only on your computer.

18:42 It's when you have these addictive apps on your phone

18:44 that the phone may move to the center of your life,

18:46 take it everything over, and at that point, that's your biggest problem.

18:49 If you don't work on that, I can't help you.

18:52 Um once I interviewed a man who the he he

18:55 changed the the first thing he did in the morning, the first thing he touched.

18:58 And so, he stopped picking up his phone,

19:00 and he made a rule that he the first thing he touched had to be another person.

19:05 So, it had to So, he had to either pick up his baby,

19:07 or it had to be something had to be alive, or he had to touch his dog,

19:10 or he had to, you know, you know, hug his wife or something.

19:12 People don't even realize sometimes that they're reaching for the phone.

19:15 Is there a question they should ask themselves

19:17 to maybe recognize that they're even doing it?

19:18 So, um what habits can you develop

19:22 with your phone to increase your chances of flourishing?

19:26 One thing that I've learned from teaching undergraduates and MBA students

19:30 who are in their late 20s is that almost all young people,

19:32 and a lot of older people, the very first thing they do when they wake

19:36 up in the morning is check their phone for notifications.

19:39 They don't get out of bed, they don't go to the bathroom,

19:41 uh they don't make coffee, it's the phone.

19:44 And what's the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night?

19:47 Same thing.

19:48 It's the phone.

19:49 And And do they do in between?

19:51 For a lot of them, mostly it's the phone.

19:53 That is not a life.

19:54 That is not a life with relationships.

19:56 That means you are never fully present in human interactions.

20:00 So, one of the things that I strongly encourage all of my students to do,

20:03 and I encourage all adults to do,

20:06 make a list of the first five things you do after you open your eyes.

20:10 And look at it and say, is that really what I want?

20:13 And find ways to change it.

20:14 Make a list of the last five things you do before you close your eyes.

20:18 And look at it.

20:18 Is that really what you want?

20:20 And what everyone finds is when they do

20:23 that, when they give themselves space to wake

20:25 up and to set the day and to choose what they want to happen that day,

20:30 set your intentions, you have a much better day.

20:35 If you don't do that, you open your eyes,

20:37 you look at your phone, and your phone will now control your thinking,

20:39 your cognition, your thoughts, your priorities,

20:41 and your actions for the rest of the day.

20:42 You'll constantly be interrupted.

20:44 You'll never have deep work, and you won't really amount to anything.

20:47 So, willpower is overmatched.

20:49 Willpower is not enough.

20:51 You can't just say, "I'm going to look at my phone less." You can't just say,

20:55 "I'm going to be present in my social No, you cannot That's not enough.

20:58 The phones, the apps are designed by people who studied behaviorism.

21:01 They studied gambling and gaming addiction.

21:04 They use techniques from Las Vegas in designing these apps,

21:07 and they are too strong for our willpower.

21:10 As Angela Duckworth writes, she's the wrote the book Grit,

21:13 you have to do behavioral change, change your environment,

21:16 and then you can change your thinking and your and your mental habits.

21:20 And where can people go for more information?

21:22 Where can people go for more information?

21:24 The central hub is anxiousgeneration.com.

21:28 That links out to all other sites.

21:31 Also, if there are children in your life between 8 and 13 years old,

21:34 we have a brand new book out called The Amazing Generation,

21:38 which brings the kids on board.

21:39 They're very excited to read it and to learn about what's happening to them.

21:42 You can go to constructive dialogue.org

21:45 for information on civil discourse programs,

21:47 and you can go to letgrow.org for information about how

21:50 to give your kids more freedom and independence in the real world.

21:54 That is all the time we have today, John.

21:56 Thank you so much.

21:57 This was amazing.

21:58 My pleasure.

21:59 I I hope it's helpful.

22:00 This is a global problem.

22:01 Absolutely.

22:02 And thanks [music] so much for you for listening and watching.

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