Doctor Mike On Anxiety & Social Media | Conversation w/ Jonathan Haidt

I've noticed concept creep with gen Z's suicidal ideation.

BOY do I love this video and I’ll be buying this book today. My sons are 5 and 7, and one of the greatest challenges of my parenting life is teaching them that short term stress is GOOD. It isn’t fair? You’re right. Let’s move on. You banged your knee? Sorry to hear that, let’s move on. You lost the board game? If you tried your hardest, I’m okay with that. I am trying to teach them to move past these short term stresses in a world where more and more people want to feel safe and protected and coddled as often as they possibly can.
This video was excellent.

Doctor Mike went to a speak to white supremacist Ben Shapiro? I will remember this. I hope everyone google who is Ben Shapiro.

I feel this is somewhat paternalistic. The experience of trauma is extremely personal. Even middle class folks can have high ACEs scores. The key around traumatic experiences is whether children have someone who notices them and helps them.
I really do not agree that children these days are being raised to be weak and anxious. If you only pay attention to social media you might think that, but in real life that is hardly the case. It is not my experience in working with young people.

Post traumatic growth is definitely a thing. But it can come right along with PTSD. The assumptions in this video is that people have friends they can turn to, or lives they can invest in (but suffer from chronic illness), or family connections (when perhaps most of their family has died or became estranged). Everyone is different. And empathizing with a person's own experience with trauma has been an important change in psychology. It has also made society more aware of how adult behavior can affect children and other adults.

Also religiosity within the family is traumatic to those in the family. We, as a society, need to identify the trauma and help people through it.

Just discovered your channel recently, and after seeing this discussion with my lord and savior Jonathan Haidt, I think this'll be a safe place to stick around.

Reading hard copy books helps with sleep.

YOU PRACTICE WAT ON YOURSELF AND PIETENTS !!!!!!!!! (jk just for the memes)

68 years old. Never signed up for a FB. Turned out I was right about despising FB from day one. 😊

There is a ton of chronic illness in the African-American community. I'd say injustice is expected. A lot of this book is based on the perspectives of upper-middle-class white people. CBT totally works with people that come from these communities but one must work on the realities of the environment and context for an individual. Trauma is real if shootings and young deaths are a constant. I am wondering what creates post-traumatic growth. The anecdotal stories are great but do we have anything beyond self-report studies? I enjoy this social psychologist but he seems to be coming from a very specific place.

I needed it thank You My Love❤❤❤

This video becomes more relevant and more important every year. Thank you.

I’m shocked how much humility a giant as John brings to this conversation. Kudos

Please keep up the good work!

I personally think the age for social media should be 18. I know that seems preposterous, but had it started out that way it would be seen as normal. Unfortunately no one could predict how badly these apps would affect some kids. No one younger than the age of 18 is even remotely equipped to handle the complex mental consequences the use of social media causes. And beyond that...these apps are having very real and very negative effects on adults as well. Feeling like a failure bc you're not as pretty, well-off financially, well traveled, etc.

watching this in 2023 and it's so ridiculously prescient , it's actually scary.

in the pursuit to do great we fail to do good :D

I think that you have decent points, however I cannot condone you taking the tone that discourages people to seeking mental health help. You appear to be implying that when students "Flooding mental health center on campus" becuse they are catastrophizing, is them being weark and shortsided. The answer for people who are suffering is to go seek help. You say it youself you are not a clinical health psychologist. I can tell you the peopel that come for help do so mostly only after their suffing is so bad they cannot function. They may need an intervention that helps them to be more resillent but they will not get the intervention to be more resilient unless they seek help. Honestly I think your theory has merrit, but dont mix it with shaming people for seeing help.

Haha this guys is sitting on social media in a channel suggested by the algorithm and creating case against social media promoting his new book 😅 .. go figure

I see a lot of value to what they're saying but I have concerns - for one thing, while being resilient is often healthy and useful, it's also become weaponized as a means of upholding false meritocratic narratives, framing those who are abused or marginalized but 'keep a stiff upper lip' as being heroic and in their 'resilience' are deemed to demonstrate that abusive structures should be permitted to thrive unchecked.

If they are truly going to extend the analogy, they have to acknowledge that sometimes the immune system needs support, and sometimes, the immune system is not the only determinant in whether or not someone is negatively impacted, even unto the point of fatality, by the 'virus' or disease that is attacking the organism. Sure, growth and strength are great but it that doesn't make them a magic solution. If it was just all about toughening up, we wouldn't have as many people my age (50) and older dealing with trauma that's we've 'powered through' because we definitely weren't coddled (although every generation thinks each generation has it easier, and is more spoiled.)

I think that the key is in precisely the nuance they are talking about and how it relates to that pivotal difference between short term "stress" which doesn't mean trauma - it can be uncertainty, confusion, fatigue, overwhelm - and chronic stress, which as they note has no functional benefits. Chronic stress - which has certainly also been a result of decades of people not being coddled, too, is the issue, and being able to identify when a source of stress and a stress reaction have crossed that line is why we need to have a grasp of nuance, and an understanding of the fact that this is a dynamic process. The all-or-nothing keeps not working for us, but we just keep swinging from one extreme to the other.

We've become so stressed about stress we now falsely conflate any degree of discomfort with "trauma", and the marketing machines that power our economy and our politics make sure that we are willing to do just about anything - and more importantly buy just about anything and follow just about anyone - who promises that we will never have to be uncomfortable again, even while they sow the very self-doubt and fear and mistrust that keep us feeling in constant "need" of something to "fix" us in the eyes of everyone around us, or to make us believe in a specious promise of an idyllic world (whatever that happens to mean to the target audience.)

We need to pay attention, to stop all gallumphing to one purported "solution" to another and to understand that nuance takes patience and listening, and decentering ourselves in our interactions with each other, and we need to stop expecting that we will always - or even should always - get what we want, when we want it, the way we want it and react to that not being that case with extremes, whether it's extremely simplistic "answers", or products, or ideologies, or any pithily packaged promises of perfection.

Now I want a Dr. Mike and Jordan Peterson podcast.

My bullying certainly created some interesting memories, but the bullying did not cause my trauma. My trauma was caused by my parents being emotionally distant, "hot and cold", which turned me into a pick-me who was easily targeted.

I have a problem with the very premise of this video... Have anxiety and depression skyrocketed, or is it just an issue we're more aware of now? There literally is no data from previous generations, so our answers are only guesswork. To say it has skyrocketed and base the entire video off of that is making a huge leap.

Very insightful and intriguing. thank you for this.

I work in childcare and the changes I have seen in behavior pre vs. Post COVID is wild. It seems like a large group of young kids find it difficult to play make believe or figure out how to entertain themselves, and there is also a huge rise (in my opinion, from what I’ve witnessed) in separation anxiety in children; before COVID a kid would cry when getting dropped off MAYBE once a week, or every couple weeks. Now it’s pretty much every day, multiple kids a day. I’ve also noticed a rise in selfishness (which, in kids it’s hard to qualify that, I’m judging mostly on inability to share or stealing toys from other kids), as well as a drastic drop in patience (I know kids aren’t very patient in general, but I feel like it’s gotten worse since they’re used to instant gratification). And while I believe that technology is a HUGE contributor to this, my coworkers and I have also noticed a large uptick in parents giving children whatever they want and not punishing/disciplining bad behavior. And I truly feel that it is to the detriment of the children. They will grow up believing they can get whatever they want whenever they want and that they can behave poorly without consequence. I really do love my job and it breaks my heart to see this trend in the kids, I truly worry about their futures.

Trans extremists penetrating schools is another reason for the youth mental health crisis!

When I became a mom I let my kids do most of what I did as a kid. I say most because I did stop Mt oldest from trying to climb a tree at five years old like I did😅

WTF Mike

Born in 1969. I was bullied to the point of physical and mental abuse from 1984 to 1987. I wouldn't wish my high school existence on my worst enemy. I have no good memories of that hell hole.

Thats nice and all but nuance has brought nothing good in my life. I find very few people who care about nuance compared to the amount of people, on all sides, who just want black and white echo chambers

Are these on spotify?

Love the orange shirt.

I know this came out a few years ago, but MAN was this good! This is still such a relevant topic! I haven’t finished all your videos yet, so I don’t know if you ever did a follow up, but if you haven’t, I really hope you do! I feel this is something that needs to continue being discussed because as time goes on, it seems like it’s only becoming more critical for us to be educated about this.

love this discussion

There's a workbook called 30 Days Without Social Media by Harper Daniels that was effective. It helps to take a long time away from hypnotical media.

Relating to Anti-fragile -> Within the field of cybersecurity, this concept applies almost across the board. Essentially, without stressing (pen testing for example) a system or network you cannot be sure of its security. The back and forth of hardening and attempting to breach a network or system is instrumental in improving security.

Just thought it was an additional example of the concept of Anti-fragility.

What I really can’t stand ( often in younger people) is that they r not capable of being guilty… guilt is a wonderful thing… when u r guilty u r responsible for something n able to change it… when u r not the whole world is just oppressing u n u can’t do anything against it…
People who r just blaming the world or others, r not able to do anything to make a change n that’s just sad.
I m sorry but it s often your own fault… n even if not: a part of you is there to blame too… just take it, forgive yourself n get over it ❤❤❤

Can you do an update video/interview to reflect the changes that have occurred since the pandemic?

As a mom, I absolutely love this. Thank you for both of your insights and helping me understand more of the things I should watch out for with social media and children.

Excellent conversation!

I've had this view for quite a long time. People are becoming fragile. Men are becoming weak (minded). Opposition is not a bad thing, and hard work is good for the character. Coddling children and young adults is churning out an entire generation thatbis ill equipt to handle the NORMAL stresses of life.

This is an awesome vid, it really helped me. Thank you for putting this together

This is starting to make me wonder if I'm actually autistic or if I'm just that fragile and that's why I've learned social skills so late in life and only started reframing in my 20's. As far as the trauma concept-creep, maybe it's that we've been so coddled and protected emotionally that empirically we are over primed for trauma, and so react to all pressure as trauma, because with that low baseline of emotional skills or cognitive training we are actually traumatized by these usually low-level scrapes. My mom was definitely a fixer, and that gave me a ton of anxiety because i didn't have the skills to manage or problem solve later in life

Lately, instead of browsing books and finding authors, I browse podcasts and find authors worth reading

I'm now at the point where I don't care if I get better anymore I suffer every day but silently because I find it really hard to open up to anyone

It's my opinion that this guy is a plant. He was given a book and a platform to promote it because parents are tired of social media and are writing their politicians asking for the abolition of social media and the elimination of screens in schools. The US Government and the Tech Industry doesn't want that to happen. Now is not the time to give up the fight. Keep writing your politicians and telling them that social media is a scourge to society and that the kids have no business being on chromebooks at school.