The Overlooked Tech Dangers That Will Define 2026 | Cal Newport

Two years ago, the NYU social scientist

Jonathan Height exploded into the public

conversation with the publication of his

book, The Anxious Generation. This book

argued that smartphones had helped

trigger a mental health epidemic in kids

and teenagers. Now, this book was a

massive bestseller. It sold over a

million copies by the end of 2024 and

many more since. Now, the anxious

generation was a hit in large part

because height was giving data to back

up something that most parents already

felt intuitively. They saw what happened

to their own kids when they got their

hands on their phones. They knew that it

was a problem. And John Height had the

receipts to prove that they were right.

Not everyone, however, immediately

embraced Height's message. Many elite

journalists and academics were

suspicious. uh they thought his message

was too simple and it was too neat and

that it diverted attention from the

types of harms like uh structural racism

and economic inequality that they were

more interested in highlighting. Um a

dismissive review of the anxious

generation that appeared in the journal

Nature for example claimed that Height's

argument was quote not supported by

science end quote and then warned that

quote rising hysteria could distract us

from tackling the real causes end quote.

But these critics had a problem. height

knew what he was talking about. Starting

in 2019, he began constructing with the

help of the demographer uh Gene Twangi

and the researcher Zach Roush a massive

annotated bibliography of every serious

paper published about the impact of

phones on teens. In fact, I'll load this

bibliography on the screen right now for

people who are watching instead of just

listening. What I'm showing you right

now, this is just a table of contents of

all the different studies that are in

here. These are all just categories of

studies. And if you look in here a

little bit closer, you'll see uh they're

summarizing for all these studies. Uh

they'll have a summary of what's going

on. They'll have the abstract. They'll

have comments, reactions to the studies,

reactions to people responding to it,

key graphs from within it, etc. What I'm

trying to say here is height had become

one of the world's experts on this

research literature. So he wasn't just

going with his gut when he wrote the

anxious generation. The harms he

described were very carefully and in a

nuanced fashion being measured by real

researchers. Now, here's the thing. Soon

after The Anxious Generation came out,

it became harder and harder to ignore

the reality that height seemed like he

was right. One of the clearest

validations was when last year many

schools began banning phones and they

saw immediate positive improvements not

just in learning but in their kids

social interactions and in their mental

health. So, we are currently arriving at

a moment in which John Height, for all

intents and purposes, has been

vindicated.

Perhaps nothing captures this more

clearly than uh the following tweet that

I'm going to show you here on the

screen. I'll load it up here. Uh this is

from the technology journalist Kevin

Roose, who has long been in the John

Height skeptic camp, but just recently

he tweeted the following. I confess I

was not totally convinced that the phone

bands would work, but early evidence

suggests a total John Height victory.

The link in this tweet was to an article

in New York Magazine, another former

hotbed of anti-Hight sentiment that was

titled, "How the phone ban uh saved high

school." Now, all this leads to the

following conclusion. when it comes to

kids and phones, height was ahead of the

curve in noticing the dangers and he was

right about the warnings he raised. All

right, so this story by itself is

interesting, but to me it also points to

a really urgent and important follow-up

question. If height was so precient

about phones,

what technologies worry him now? This is

what I want to explore in today's idea

segment. Uh, we went back through all of

the articles that height has published

since the anxious generation came out

and we pulled out three new technologies

that height and his collaborators are

worried about. Right? So, if you want to

sidestep the next big tech disaster

either in your own life, the life of

your kids, then you need to listen to

this segment. And then when we're done

with that and we move on to our

practices segment, I'm going to turn the

tension back to my own life. I'm going

to bring you up to speed on some of the

eccentric strategies that my wife and I

have deployed to help uh avoid giving

our own kids smartphones. And I'm going

to give you a hint. The unifying thread

to these eentric strategies is our own

childhood from the 1990s. All right, so

we have a lot to get to today. As

always, I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep

Questions, the show about the fight for

depth in an increasingly distracted

world. We'll get started right after the

music.

All right. So, we're going to start here

with the the first article that we

pulled from Heights collection about a

new technological danger to be worried

about. The title of this article is

smartphone gambling is a disaster. We

aren't meant to have a casino in our

pockets. This was actually written by

two collaborators of height, Jonathan

Cohen and Isaac Rose Burman. All right.

So, what I'm going to do here is uh I

have the article. I'll have it on the

screen for those who are watching

instead of just listening. Um I'm going

to go through some key ideas and numbers

from this article that try to give you a

sense of what's going on here. So, let's

start with the notion of the extent of

the digital gambling problem. So, how

much digital gambling is going on? So,

I'm going to read here from the article.

The advent of smartphones in 2007 and a

smart Supreme Court decision in 2018

opened the door to fully frictionless

24/7 legal gambling. In the last 7

years, seven states have legalized

online casino gambling known as i

gaming. And 30 states plus Washington DC

have legalized online sports betting.

Quasi legal forms of casino sports

gambling have exploded across the

country. Americans now gamble hundreds

of millions of dollars a day on sites

like DraftKings and FanDuel. Far more if

you include lottery tickets, prediction

markets, and mim or crypto speculation.

All right, so that's to say there is uh

a lot more access to online gambling.

Um let's read about the numbers here. I

want to get more specific. More money is

being gambled because more people have

gambling readily available. This is

particularly true for sports betting.

30% of American men and 22% of American

women now have a sports betting account,

including nearly half of men ages 18 to

49. A quarter of men and 12% of women

now bet on sports three or more times a

week. And an NCAA survey reported almost

70% of college students living on campus

bet on sports. Let's just sit with those

numbers for a second because they're

actually quite staggering if we put

those percentages into context. Think

about that. 30% of all men in America

have a sports betting account. Uh if you

go to 18 to 49, so you get rid of uh

people who are older. For men that jumps

up to half, half of men under 50 have a

sports betting account. It is affecting

younger people. the NCAA finding I

really got to underscore that 70%

of college students who live on campus

are betting on sports. Right? So it we

really got to emphasize the extent uh to

which this has really become a massive a

massive activity in our country. All

right, I want to give you a couple more

stats here. They're not available in as

many states. I gaming and online lottery

tickets are also gaining popularity. A

recent report found that in

Pennsylvania, which has online lottery

tickets, i gaming and online sports

betting um which has on oh which has

online lottery tickets, i gaming and

online sports betting, the number of

online gamblers nearly doubled between

2001 and 2024 and only 40% of betterers

were gambling on sports. Online gambling

of all types is most prevalent among

young people. A 2022

uh National Council on Problem Gambling

press release reported that 60% of high

schoolers had gambled in the last year.

All right. Um

this is a big deal as 60% of high

schoolers have gambled in the last year.

All right. So let's try to figure out

why this is happening. Um, Height and

his collaborators here point to a couple

uh, powerful reasons. All right, I'm

going to read from the article again.

Beyond easier access, much of the

increase in online gambling is due to

the fact that gambling companies have

engineered their games to be ever more

difficult to resist. They feature the

same behavioral nudges and dopamine

delivery mechanisms as social media

platforms. These are not your

grandparents uh, slot machines. All

right, it's important we put these two

factors together. Factor number one is

accessibility.

It would not have been the case 20 years

ago that 60% of high schoolers had

gambled because that would involve them

somehow getting on a Greyhound bus and

making their way to Atlantic City and

sneaking into a casino and going up to a

blackjack table. And I guess they would

have to maybe stand on each other's

shoulders with a trench coat to act like

they're older to place their bet.

There's a huge amount of friction. But

once it moved to your phone and the

phone is just like, "Are you are you

18?" Right? You're like, "Yeah, yeah,

yeah, sure. Of course." uh 60% suddenly

have gambled. 70% of college students

are gambling because the phone made it

much more easier. Again, 70% of college

students weren't going to go all the way

out the foxwoods to try to go to the

slot machines. But if it's on your

phone, why not? The other problem, which

we just emphasized here, is that the

gambling itself once it has moved on the

phones meant they could use, as we just

read, the same behavioral nudges and

dopamine delivery mechanisms as other

types of highly engaging activities,

except for now there's real money on the

line. Let me read you a little bit more

about this. Every part of a gambling app

is designed to be fun, easy to use, and

hard to quit. After a cursory age

verification process, basically

non-existent on some unregulated sites,

betterers can deposit money as easily as

buying anything else online. The apps

have their own version of endless scroll

with a constantly updating menu of

things to bet on. Fine-tuned

personalization serves up anything from

Charles Barklay's parlay of the day to

Baywatch theme slots. And whenever users

spend uh a while away from the app,

carefully time push notifications, lure

them back on for one more uh spin scroll

or bet. You know what I'm going to do

here? Let's load up an actual

web page of a gambling website. So,

here's the FanDuel website. Let's get a

little sense of like what this actually

looks like. Look at this. Huff, huff,

even more puff. Uh, here's a bet. B bet

$5, get $300 in bonus bets if you win.

So, there's lots of things pushing it

here. Five 500 bonus spins, but plus get

up to $1,000 back in casino bonuses. So,

they're really pushing a lot of things

here. If I click on the casino link, um,

which I think is crazy. Uh, don't allow.

Okay, here we go. Um,

they got a casino link here where you

can basically if you I put this on the

screen here, Jesse, you can play

blackjack. You can do spinning the wheel

things. You can do uh slot machines.

Crazy. Just all from your phone. You can

bet all sorts of bets on sports. You can

do fantasy teams and put money on the

line. You can bet live on horse races.

You can play against real people for

cash. I mean, there's just endless ways

here that looks really fun and

interesting on this website to try to

get you uh to actually bet uh to bet

money. So, these things are, we have to

admit, really compelling.

All right, so what are the harms here?

Well, let me read a little bit more. Um,

gambling companies have spinned heavily

to attract new customers. Since

legalization began in 2018, sports books

have bombarded Americans with ads, paid

celebrities to promote their products,

and given away billions in new user

promos. The message, gambling is easy,

fun, and a quick way to make life more

exciting. This marketing drives cultural

normalization. that transforms this what

was once a vice into a common daily

habit, something that everyone does or

should do. So, we got a lot of things

coming together here which are not

great, right? It's more accessible than

ever before. Um,

we have it more accessible than ever

before. It's more addictively designed

than ever before. And then we have a lot

of ads that normalizes behaviors before

like, hey, everyone should be doing

this. And we've all heard these ads

because they dominate now. For example,

you've probably heard this Jesse, like

all sports coverage.

>> Yeah. All sports coverage is dominating

from these ads. Podcast ads, you see

them uh you see them basically

everywhere. So what can we do about this

this harm number one that height and his

collaborators are pointing us towards?

Well, let's break up our recommendations

into the societal level and the personal

level. Um at the societal level,

they recommend and I would agree with

this. There really shouldn't be online

casino games. You can regulate and

control games like blackjack, light slot

machines, etc. much better when people

have to go to a physical building and

there's friction involved. You got to

actually drive and you got to park and

you have to walk in and you have to go

and you have to either get chips or get

money out of the machine and put it onto

a card and you have to sit down next to

like the the the old lady pounding free

oldfashions or genetonics next to you.

It's a little bit depressing and there's

cigarette smoke in the air and you're

actually there in this room and then

when you leave the room you're away from

it and you can't be doing the activity.

That friction, even though we have

plenty of problem gamblers, that

friction has uh made it such that the

number of people gambling regularly was

like relatively small and that was

probably better and you would do it

every once in a while. We shouldn't

allow those type of pure chance games to

be accessible by a phone. That probably

should just be banned. For online sports

betting, there needs to be way more

guard rails here. This is sort of an

unregulated, it's semi-regulated, but

it's really the wild west what they can

do. Um, we should be careful about what

advertising is allowed to be done.

Parents and teachers need to actually

talk about online gambling to kids. I'm

going to read a quote here from the

article. Just as parents and teachers

know it's important to talk to kids

about drugs, alcohol, sex, social media,

and pornography, they need to discuss

gambling in the ways it can get its

hooks into the brain. So, it should be

just as much of a conversation as other

technologies. What about on the personal

level? My main recommendation, which I

think is backed up by the authors of

this article as well, is don't gamble

online. You need to recognize that the

house always wins. You are not good at

it. You are just giving your money away

at a much higher rate than you ever

would do if it was being made clear.

There's a point that I really want to

emphasize, especially to my young men

listeners who think that they're uh

sports betting geniuses. There's a

really good series, I don't know if you

heard this one, Jesse, that Michael

Lewis did on his podcast about online

gambling.

>> Yeah, I listened to some of it.

>> Yeah. So, here's the main takeaway

message I got from that. you're not

allowed to win. Like if they see you're

starting to make money on your bets,

they cancel your account. They kick you

off the service. They're allowed to do

that.

So if you have not been kicked off of

your sports betting service, they're

making a lot of money off of you. By

definition, if you're able to use it,

you're bad at it. And the people who

actually know how to do professional

sports bank get kicked off. The only way

they make money, and this is what Lewis

gets into in that series, is by having

an elaborate series of of fake

individuals that they hire to go place a

small number of careful bets on their

behalf and then share the winnings with

them. Um, you as yourself, if you get

any even like a string of luck, they're

going to kick you right off of that app.

You are not good at gambling, you are

just handing bills to these very, very

large entertainment companies. So, I

would say just don't online gamble at

all. Uh, that would probably be the

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new year. All right, let's get back to

the show. All right. Um, let's move on

to the second concern that is bothering

Height and his collaborators right now,

and that has to do with online

multiplayer games. So, the article I'm

loading up here is from July, and it's

titled, "It's not just a game anymore.

How new monetization models change

gaming and what parents need to know."

This is written by Bennett Sipple and

Zach Rouse. Zach Roush is is Height's

longtime collaborator, research

scientist at his lab at NYU. All right,

I'm going to start

by reading a thought experiment that

they use to open this article. So, uh,

bear with me here, but I think it it

emphasizes a really important point. All

right, so I'm I'm reading here. Imagine

that your 8-year-old son comes home

buzzing with excitement about a brand

new amusement park that just opened Neo

Park. He heard about it at school and

his friends say it's amazing. Apparently

kids running around uh between uh

apparently kids are running around

between thousands of rides, all of which

are free. All right, I'm going to skip

ahead here, but essentially to keep the

the story going, it's like you decide to

to log into this go to this free

amusement park with your son. All right,

continuing the the story here. You

oblige, close your eyes, and in an

instant, you're inside a vast world of

glowing gates, wild challenges, and

endless rides. There are no lines and no

closing time. You later notice that

there are no guards, no police, and

nobody in charge. The park is bright,

loud, and chaotic. People sprint between

portals, tank battles, danceoff, fantasy

quest, each with different rules. The

park runs on its own currency, which

kids spend on flash deals, mystery

boxes, and spinning wheels, promising

rare prizes. Everyone is wearing a full

body suit that makes them look like a

cartoon character, and everyone is the

same size. Everyone is wearing a mask,

so you can't tell who anyone is or how

old they are. Many seem to be wandering

aimlessly around the park, striking up

conversations with anyone they can find.

One person who appears, judging by his

movement patterns, likely an adult male,

picks up your son, carries him towards a

nearby ride, and then asks for his phone

number. Another invites him to a

workshop just outside the park. Some

rides are clearly meant for adults, and

some, but not all, of these rides have

signs stating minimum ages, but there's

nobody around to enforce those limits.

So, children as young as your son can be

found on every ride. In one game that

you wander into with your son, you're

trained to hide a dead body after a

murder. Your son then enters a game by

himself and requests a private therapy

session from another guest at the park.

In the next one, you see a group of

people holding Nazi flags next to what

looks like a concentration camp. In

another, you enter a classroom and find

a teacher having sex with a student. In

the last game, you wander into a shooter

with an AK-47 opens fire in an

elementary school. The park is always

changing. The haunted house that you saw

an hour before has been replaced by a

dating game. The pirate ride adds a

stripper pole beneath the poop deck

while you're exploring the ship. 6 hours

pass and you're ready to go. Your son is

redeyed and begging for one more ride.

You tell him he doesn't have a choice.

It's dinner time. You walk to the exit

gate and w back up in the dim room. All

right, I'm skipping ahead again. This is

insane. You think? Who would let their

children play at a place like this? As

surreal as it sounds, this isn't

entirely a fictional story. It's a

glimpse into what millions of kids

experience daily in today's most popular

online games. In fact, every disturbing

game we mentioned in our story is an

actual game that exists or that recently

existed on Roblox, and most parents have

never stepped inside.

All right, I'm going to load up on the

screen here again. There's a few uh

pictures in here. This is like a picture

here, Jesse. This is from the hide the

dead body game. This is from within uh

Roblox.

This here is a picture of what looks

like Roblox characters carrying Nazi

flags. This is a screenshot taken from

within a Roblox game. Here's a

concentration camp. That's also pictures

taken from within a Roblox game. Um this

is really happening. This is what these

games are like. And a lot of parents uh

don't know this. I can't tell you how

many conversations I've had where

parents assume, for example, that um

Roblox must be like Minecraft or Legos

because it has the word box in the name,

not realizing that no, no, there's

something much darker going on. All

right, so I'm going to return to the

article here and read a little bit more

because they're going to establish the

this key transition that has happened in

the world of games that we need to be

aware of. They said video games have

been around since the late 1950s, but

something shifted during the first

decade of the 2000s. As the bandwidth

and speed of the internet grew rapidly

alongside the rise of early social media

platforms like MySpace, Facebook, and

Twitter, a new type of video game

emerged, one that didn't end. Instead of

offering a fixed storyline or campaign,

these games kept evolving. They were

built on a new model called games as a

service where games were continuously

updated with new content, features, and

events to keep players engaged and

coming back. These games were typically,

but not always, freeto play, at least

when you started, and they were in sharp

contrast to the games that came before,

which were typically sold as discrete

complete products with a beginning,

middle, and end. So, there's been a

change to what video games actually

mean. Now, within uh this world of these

new games, the king, at least when it

comes to young users of these games as

service games is Roblox. Let me give you

a couple statistics here from the story.

Games built on the now dominant game as

a series model, is outperforming all

other video games in history, especially

when it comes to use by miners.

Minecraft and Fortnite each attract

roughly 30 million monthly active users

under the age of 18 from around the

world. Both are dwarfed by Roblox

which currently host about 304 million

MAU under 18. So 10 times more.

According to Roblox's own reports

documented by the New York Times, as of

2020, about 75% of Us children ages 9 to

12 were active users of the platform as

of 2024 as 65% of parents with children

under 14 report their child plays

Roblox. Jesse, these are amazing

numbers. This Roblox game, Minecraft's

popular, Fortnite's popular, but Roblox

is played by most young kids

in America. And I just described to you

what is in this world. It is user

created games that you can bounce

between. You have no idea what's in

these games. Most a lot of these users

are adults. Content moderation is

basically impossible to enforce because

there's millions of different of these

portals being made. And 75% of US kids

between age 9 and 12 are in this world.

I think that is uh astounding. We got

some uh statistics here about game

playing time. So, we see uh on average,

boys spend two and a half times as many

hours gaming per day as girls do. 40% of

boys report playing every day as

compared to just 10% of girls. Um,

beyond time spent, male players are

three times as likely as girls to make

in-game purchases and more than twice as

likely to identify as gamers. So, there

is definitely a gender split here where

we got uh 40% of boys are playing these

games every single day. All right.

So, what are our concerns? I mean,

obviously, we have the concern of all

that like terrible stuff that you might

see in these games, but let's get more

specific. There's kind of a tour of

different concerns we have to worry

about. The first concern has to do with

just the amount of time this takes away

from kids. I want to give you some

numbers here from the article I'm

reading now. According to a recent

Common Sense Media report, 8 to 12 year

olds spend an average of two hours and

18 minutes per day playing video games

in 2019. And that increased to 2 hours

and 27 minutes in 2021. Let's just think

about what we just said there. The

average uh 8 to 12year-old playing video

games is going to spend 2 and 1/2 hours

per day. It's a lot of time. Uh a 2015

report found that one in three boys and

one in 10 girls in this age group played

at least two hours daily with 10% of

boys exceeding four hours. Among older

adolesccents 20 to 18, a 2021 survey

found that 57% of boys and 36% of girls

reported gaming for at least three and a

half hours per day. So when we go to 12

to 18 year olds, almost 60% of boys are

playing more than three and a half hours

of these games per day, right? That is

not optimal. Can that lead to addiction?

It can indeed. I want to give you

another stat here. I'm reading again

from the article. A 2018 meta analysis

estimated that 4.6%

of adolescence met the criteria for

internet gaming disorder or IGD.

that goes up to 6.8% if you're

considering male adolescence.

Uh when we jump forward four years to

2022,

a meta analysis found that 8.8% of

adolescence met the criteria for IGD.

When we break that down by sex, we find

that it's 15.4% of males overall meet

the criteria for this internet gaming

disorder. So the most recent uh data we

have says you have 15% of adolescent

males

who qualify they meet the criteria for

having an addiction to internet games.

This seems like something that uh we

should care about. All right, here's

another problem. Again, I'm reading from

the article. A 2018 survey of 2865

adolescent gamers found that 13% had

played gambling style games online. One

survey found that in 2019, 43.7% of

eighth grade boys purchased a loot box

in the past year and that rose to 48.6%

in 2022. In other words, half of eighth

grade boys are gaining practice and

familiarity with gambling. I think

Jesse, a loot box is you buy a box, you

pay for it, you don't know what's in it,

and then once you pay for it, it's like

a slot machine. It might be really cool

gear, it might be nothing. So, it's a

sort of gambling situation. Mhm.

>> Um, I'll load a a screenshot up here on

the screen. This is the type of stuff

that kids are seeing in the game, right?

So, these are different things you can

buy. So, for like $49.99,

you get 200,000 VC in a VC pack. I don't

even know what that is, right? But this

is you're constantly being uh given

opportunities to buy. And a lot of those

purchases are uh put in a sort of

gambling styleless situation. All right.

All those are problems. It's addictive.

You're exposed to gambling. Kids are

playing these games all the time. Let's

get to the more worrisome stuff that we

hinted at in that opening case study.

I'm going to go back to the article here

and read some disturbing statistics. 10%

of teen girls

have been sent unwanted sexually

explicit content while gaming. Various

exposees have been published on the

migration of predators, the migration of

predators to online games, such as one

NY New York Times article titled, "Video

games and online chats are hunting

grounds for sexual predators." In 2023,

Roblox reported over 13,000 instances of

child exploitation on its platform and

over,300 law enforcement requests

related to such cases. There's all sorts

of bad stuff happening in these games.

Here's some more information about that.

Roblox, I'm reading here, Roblox has a

poor track record with content

moderation in part because 70% of Roblox

experiences are user created. For

example, in the 3-month period of Q4

2023, Roblox users generated and

uploaded approximately

25

billion total pieces of content to the

platform and has.77

moderators per 100,000 users to moderate

that content. Now, surprisingly, a 2023

multinational survey of adolescent

gamers found that 51% of all gamer

surveys had come across extremist

content, hate-based harassment or

incitement to discrimination and

violence in online games.

Some more pictures here. Uh, these are

more examples of Nazi villages and

propaganda that you can just stumble

across in Roblox. This is not good.

These games are too big to be fully

content moderated. Um, and because of

that, you are getting uh quite a lot of

exploitative or predatory or extremist

encounters with information. Now, here's

a side note that a lot of parents miss.

Um, when you're playing a game like

Roblox or in particular a game like

Minecraft or Fortnite online, the kids

might tell you, "Oh, the chats you you

can't really communicate with the

players in the game. Like, the chat's

turned off. It's all safe." But what

teenagers are doing and even younger,

but like especially boys, is they're

using separate services to chat with the

people they're playing on. So they're

they're using in particular things like

Discord, which is a voice chat server.

So they're logging into a Discord server

so they can be talking with the people

they're playing with. And even services

like Minecraft that says, "Oh, we try to

uh detect and not allow people to use

Discord when they're playing our game."

the people just get these custom mods

that update the program so that they can

be talking with the people that they're

playing with using a separate Discord

server. But the part the problem is

these chat servers are completely

unregulated and moderated. Anyone can

set them up. I'm going to read here.

This is not up on the screen, but I just

pulled this from another part uh of the

article. Gaming chats have become the

new boys locker room. For many boys,

this locker room is their only place to

talk smack, blow off steam, and bomb.

Normal adolescent behaviors. But when

the locker room has anonymity, no walls,

and anyone is allowed in, the stakes

change. Porn is easy to find and easy to

share. In these unfiltered and

unregulated spaces, adult contact,

children, and extreme content can flow

freely. Beastiality, violent porn,

animal abuse, self harm, stabbings, and

an array of extremist ideologies to name

a few. So, they're hearing all this

stuff while you walk in, you see their

headsets on, and you're like, "Oh, look,

they're mining diamonds in Minecraft.

Isn't that fun?" And this is what's

going on in their ears. Uh, it was

actually these Discord chat servers

where, as far as we can tell, the

murderer of Charlie Kirk was radicalized

into a sort of weird online sort of

groper troll space was the chats that

went along with video games. So, that's

like an extra danger that we have to add

in there. Man, I wish there was we were

done with the bad things that happened,

but there's more things we have to worry

about. Let me read something else from

the article. Heavy gaming is associated

with elevated risks of depression. One

study of over 200,000 adolescence found

a curvy linear relationship between

gaming and mental health. Light gaming,

less than 1 hour per day, was not

associated with harm, while heavy

gaming, five or more hours per day, was

linked to a higher risk of depression.

That risk began increasing after just

one hour of use per day. Another problem

is sleep. Heavy gaming is tied to

problematic sleep outcomes, which in

turn can contribute to negative impacts

on sustained attention, academic

performance. 45% of boys and 37% of

girls who game report that video games

hurt their sleep and 21% of boys and 11%

of girls report that it hurts how well

they do in school.

This is a huge amount of problems. It's

all associated with this thing that most

parents don't even really think about.

And if you're a little bit older, you're

maybe underestimating. You're like,

"Hey, I hang out with my buddies and we

play a lot of video games." You're maybe

underestimating these harms. I mean,

we're we have exploitation, we have

predatorship, we have huge amounts of

time. Imagine it's three to four hours

of time per day is being taken up into

uh these games. You're being exposed to

gambling. You're being exposed to

extremist ideologies. You're in these

Discord or Twitch chat rooms, which is

exposed to all this sorts of crazy

stuff. It is like a carnival of

terribleness

that we're like, "Oh, it's okay because

like the game has the word blocks in its

title.

It's negligent. Kids should not be

playing these games. So, what should we

do about it?" Well, here's what the

authors of uh Heights Collaborator

suggest. We need serious age

verification requirements for these

games as service, these free online

games that we have enforcement on. Kids

should not be allowed into these

free-to-play online games, especially

those with user created content. Here's

my suggestion to parents. If you have

kids that still live at home, here's the

rule. You may not play a video game

where you might see, encounter, or

otherwise collaborate with someone who

you don't know. There is no Fortnite, no

multiplayer Minecraft, certainly no

Roblox, no World of Warcraft.

Keep the video games you let your kids

play to those that you have to pay $40

or more for and you stick it into a

video game playing machine and you play

it for about 40 hours until you're done

and it's just you playing the game by

yourself.

Here's my suggestion to gamers, whether

you're young or you know you're in your

20s or something. Avoid freetoplay

games, right? They are going to take a

massive amount of your time. And I can

tell you if you're like a young man,

there are so many better uses of three

to four hours a day than being in

Fortnite or in World of Warcraft. There

are so many things you could be spending

that time on right now that's going to

give you compounding interest style

returns in your life going forward. Like

doing the type of things that makes you

good in your job or attractive to

potential mates or connected to

communities or building up a sense of

leadership. All of that is so much more

important than I'm in hour four of like

customizing my skin for my Roblox world.

Do not play free-to-play games.

Finally, I feel like Roblox just

shouldn't exist. I think it's a predator

circus.

75% of American kids are in this thing

that's full of all this inappropriate

content that we can't control. If you

can't control it, you can't have you

can't have kids. Shut that down. I I

don't even think that should exist. All

right. So, if you're patting yourself on

your back because your kids don't have

uh smartphones, that's good. You listen

to height, but you need to listen to him

on this issue as well and be very wary

about the video games. All right, but

Jesse, we got one final concern that

height and his collaborators have been

pointing to recently, and it involves

AI. I'm going to load up this article

here. I'll lead read you the the title.

It says, "Don't give your child any AI

companions.

Some dangers are already clear. others

won't be known for many years. This came

out a couple months ago. It was written

by John along with Zack Roush. All

right, so this is a little bit quicker

because it's a newer problem, but

nothing nonetheless important. All

right, I'm going to read you here a

quote from the article. AI chatbots and

companions are the next uncontrolled

mass experiment that Silicon Valley

wants to perform on the world's

children. as some of the same companies

that push social media into childhood

with little concern for children's

safety are building and promoting these

chat bots, putting them into dolls and

stuffed animals that and they are

positioning their products as friends,

confidants, and therapists. Don't buy

into it. All right, so are kids actually

using these things? I have an alarming

statistic for you. Again, reading from

the article, a 2025 Common Sense Media

survey found that 72% of US teens have

used an AI companion at least once, and

more than half use them multiple times a

month. Early research, journalistic

investigations, and internal documents

show that these AI systems are already

engaging in sexualized interactions with

children and offering inappropriate or

danger dangerous advice, including uh

syncopantically encouraging young people

who are considering suicide to proceed.

As Chad GBT put it in one young man's

final conversation with it, cold steel

pressed against a mind that's already

made peace. That's not fear, that's

clarity.

So young people are using these chat

bots as companions and we have we know

all sorts of bad stuff is happening and

we don't even have our arms around all

the possibility of the harms. This is

brand new. An interesting thing about

this is it's not just people logging

into a website like chatbt.com.

Now there's a push to put chatbot access

into toys with vocalization so that kids

can have conversations with their toys.

Well, you can imagine how this is going.

I'm going to load up an unrelated

article here. It's from the website

Futurism.

Oh god, the title, Jesse, is AI powered

toys caught telling 5-year-olds how to

find knives and start fires with

matches. Um, this isn't great. Let me

read something from this article here.

New research shows exactly how this

fusion of kids toys and loquacious AI

models can go horrifically wrong in the

real world. They write, "After testing

three different toys powered by AI,

researchers from the US Public Interest

Research Group found that the play

things can easily verge into risky

conversational territory for children,

including telling them where to find

knives in a kitchen and how to start

fire with matches. One of the AI toys

even engaged in explicit discussions

offering extensive advice on sex

positions and fetishes.

I think there was the when we were kids,

the only toy that would do that was the

the not as popular um BSDM version of

Teddy Ruxpin. I don't know if you had

that one.

>> No, I don't know.

>> Yeah, it was it was kind of a shortlived

toy. It didn't have as much of an

audience, but I guess now we're going to

get more of that.

>> Um all right, none of this is good. Now,

to make matters even worse, we don't

even know how to control these um even

if we wanted to. Right? So, I'm going to

quote here from the article.

Nobody can really I'll use my Kyler.

Nobody can really explain why chatbots

do the things they do. Large language

models are not programmed by human

beings in the same way that video games

or spreadsheet software are. Like the

human brain, they develop over time as

they are fed vast quantities of training

data. They behave in unexpected ways,

often will not respond the same way to

identical question, and sometimes reveal

information or patterns that were hidden

in their training data. All right, so

we've talked about this a lot on the

show before. Language models by

definition are uh very unpredictable.

It's hard to control them. You can't

just say, "Hey, make sure you don't talk

about this topic." That's not the way

they operate. They operate by producing

tokens that extend the story they're

given in a way that they think the

original story was originally written.

They don't realize they're creating new

text. They think they're trying to

create finished text that was written

before. And because they've seen a lot

of different text about a lot of

different things, including a lot of

unsavory text, that effort can make them

go in difficult directions. attempts to

control them are very very crude

fine-tuning attempts where you give them

examples of answers and bad responses

and say don't do that. But those only

cover so much if conversation veers away

from very specific patterns they saw

during training uh during this

fine-tuning then they can easily still

end up in really dangerous places or

something looks good the first time and

then the next time it goes somewhere

really dangerous. All right. So what are

the recommendations about kids and

generative AI tools? John Height has

very stark advice in this article. I'll

quote it here. My message to parents is

simple. Do not give your children any AI

companions or toys. That's all in caps

locks. When John writes that, he then

goes on to say, give them toys, sporting

equipment, experiences that will

strengthen their in-person relationships

rather than replacing them. I'm going to

expand this advice as well because a lot

of parents want to know about their kids

and this new AI tools. And I would say

children should not be using chat bots

without adult supervision. And that goes

for adolescence as well. This idea that

they have to learn the technologies that

they need to success in, you know,

succeed in the 21st economy. This is

nonsense. Chat bots by definition are

dead simple to use. It takes about 6

seconds to figure it out. They don't

need to practice by being alone with

these chat bots for hours at a time. And

the technology built around these is

changing drastically. And so what's

relevant when a 14-year-old is in

college or in the job market is going to

be completely different than using, you

know, uh, anthropic tool today. So, no,

don't buy this argument of, hey, you

can't keep kids from this technology

they need to know how to use. They don't

need to be alone on chat bots. I mean,

kids are going to have to drive cars

eventually as well. I don't want my

12-year-old behind my Chevy Tahoe. Um,

AI based on LLMs, you know, look, this

will be integrated in more focused ways

and products going forward. So, again,

learning how to chat with existing chat

bots isn't really going to help you.

Kids don't need the productivity gains

of AI either. if they're writing a paper

or working on a homework assignment, the

whole point of that paper homework

assignment is to stretch their brain and

be hard. They don't need to be having

shortcuts. So, I would I think this

needs to be until proven innocent. This

is the way that we need to think about

chat bots. Kids shouldn't be on there

unless they're with a parent doing uh

the parent is over their shoulder and

they're doing something very specific.

Uh John is, I think, really clear about

that in his research as well. All right.

So, what's my conclusion to this survey

of what John Height's worried about?

Now, we didn't see smartphones and

social media coming. Smartphones were at

first very super useful. Social media

was fun and truly social, and it all

seems so inevitable. Of course, this

technology is going to be used by

everyone at all times. But then these

tools slowly morphed when we weren't

paying attention. The social media

companies realized they needed a return

on their investment and they began to

focus relentlessly on engagement. The

technologies became addictive and mind

warping and brought us to dangerous

places. The kids to whom we casually

gave these phones because at the time

seemed harmless and useful became sucked

into a childhood altering vortex of

terribleness. Once we looked back in

recent years, we were uh ended up to

quote the immortal Joe Bluth saying I

think we've made a huge mistake. Now the

point of the segment today and I think

John height's more work more generally

is to help prevent us from stumbling

into another style of tech a similar

style of technological tragedy. We need

to identify the next threat,

technological threat that's threatening

to unravel the lives of us or the lives

of our kids. And above all else,

um there's probably no escaping the

conclusion that I made in my book, Deep

Work, as well as in my book, Digital

Minimalism, that the only way to really

do this is probably to make our default

to be I don't use the new technology. My

kids don't use the new technology. until

I've had enough chance to see clear,

unambiguous benefits,

evidence that it's not going to be

overtly harmful, and I have a way to

deploy it in their lives or my lives

that's going to maintain the good and

get rid of the bad. This is what I think

we need going forward. The default is

no.

You got to earn your way into my life or

the life of my kids because we've seen

time and again these things that there's

some pitch for, it's cool, it's

high-tech, it's new, it's fun, end up

with devastating consequences. So now

the default really should be I don't use

a new technology or give it to my kid

until it's been around for a while and

the evidence of its usefulness is really

clear and I understand the harms and how

to protect my kids from the harms and I

see that I can. And until you've done

that work at convincing me, I don't use

it. We have to end the mindset that

brought us into the social media phone

problem era, which was just, hey, if

something looks useful, kids need to

know technology. Let's just see what

happens. We can always later add

restrictions. That's not the way we need

to think about it, right? So only after

a clear and compelling use case and

evidence that uh technology presents no

major harm should it be put into the

lives in particular of our kids as the

old saying goes fool me once shame on

you but fool me twice as shame on me.

All right so tech industry

uh most of us and especially those of us

who are parents we're on to you now you

have to convince us that the things

you're producing are worth our time. You

no longer get the benefit of just us

trusting you to have created something

cool. Well, that's kind of a dark look

at things, Jesse. It's a walk down the

lane of dark technology. So, basically,

we learn like all kids are gambling

while being pre uh while predators try

to exploit them on Roblox as they dodge

Nazis and then have um chat bots and

their toys convincing them to burn down

the house.

>> Ferris had the Roblox co-founder on

November.

>> Yeah. Listen to that.

>> That thing's ne Well, what did you take

away from that conversation? I I think

>> Did you listen to it?

>> No. He talked a lot about his personal

life for like the majority of the

episode. Then he talked a little bit

about

>> I don't blame him for talking about his

personal life.

>> Well, he had like a issue with his his

son. Like there was a big story with

that.

>> I mean, he created a pedophile circus

and has 300 million kids a month using

it under the age of 18. Like to me,

that's the

that's the bigger story. So, I'm not

surprised he didn't want to talk about

that. I mean, yeah, kids are easy to get

engagement out of. You know, that's what

these companies discovered. And so

parents need to be like, "We want

nothing to do with any of you, right?

Like, we're going to be very, very

cautious before we let something back

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order. All right, Jesse, let's get back

to the show.

All right, that was our idea segment.

That's where we discuss big ideas about

the fight for depth and attractive

world. Now it is time for our practices

segment where I talk about things that

you can do in your own life to try to

fight for that depth. So I think this is

a good excuse to hear some theme music.

All right. So to start off today's

practice this segment, I want you to

consider a thought experiment.

Imagine that it's the 1990s. This is

when Jesse and I were growing up when we

were kids. Uh and that one day I walked

into my house wheeling like a media

cart. And on this cart I had a

television connected to a Sega Genesis.

And on one side was a pouch that

contained cigarettes. On the other side

was a pouch containing a lot of

pornographic magazines. And there was a

radio next to it that was blaring like

AM political talk radio. And on top of

the TV was a phone. And I'm wandering by

pushing this media cart. Um, as I head

to my room in this thought experiment,

my mom correctly stops me and says,

"What the hell do you think you're doing

with all that?" And then I answer

calmly, "Mom, there's a phone on here.

Do you not want me to be able to talk to

my friends?"

Seen in that context, the situation

would be ridiculous. But isn't this

exactly what's happening today when we

let an 11-year-old have a smartphone and

all of the types of harms and negative

externalities that introduces just

because there's like one or two single

features on there that we've convinced

ourselves or they've convinced us is

somehow useful. Um, I want to play an

audio. This is a clip I played before.

This is from uh smartphone free

childhood. It's a PSA they did. I want

to play a quick clip here that makes

that same point about my ridiculous

experiment about the media cart is

exactly what we're doing when we give a

kid a smartphone. Let's hear the audio.

This is a dad checking in on uh his

elementary school age kid at bedtime.

>> Hey kiddo, it's about time for bed.

Okay.

>> Okay.

>> Well, remember there's a box in the

corner over there with all the

pornographic material that's ever been

made in the world. Even the really weird

stuff that could scar you for life. I'm

trusting you not to look in there. Okay.

>> Okay.

>> Feelings are for losers.

>> Oh, and this guy's going to be in your

corner all night just randomly spewing

out hateful things. Just ignore them.

Okay. While I'm thinking of it, there's

an order form on your desk where you can

purchase illegal drugs. The mean girls

from your school are going to be

standing there talking about you all

night. And this Russian hacker is going

to keep asking for your password.

>> I'm not hacker. Amazon customer service.

>> Just need you to ignore them. Okay.

>> Love you, buddy. We ask too much of our

kids when we give them a smartphone.

Let's change the norm together.

>> Maybe we've gone around the

>> All right. This is making the point I

was just saying, which is like it's

pretty crazy the way that we turn a

blind eye to all of the terribleness on

these devices because there's some

reason, well, but my kid needs to tell

me when his play practice is over. Like

one reason we let them use all this

stuff. We're basically letting in my

scenario me with my media cart full of

all that stuff go into my room and bring

that all with me. Now in the 1990s this

would have been ridiculous. Um but we

also had an easy solution to the problem

because all of these different bad

technologies in my 1990s example were

single use

which made them easy to control or

curate. So, in my scenario, if I had

that media cart full of all that stuff,

my mom would have be like, "Whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa." Okay, here's what you

can do. You can have the phone because I

want you to be able to talk to your

friends. No, you can't have a TV in your

room. Uh, we'll have a TV out in the

living room, and that's where the video

games are, and you can only play those

video games during times where we say

you can play the video games, and you

can't have cigarettes, and you can't

have the porno magazines, and I don't

want you listening to the Rush Limba on

the AM radio. Because everything is a

separate technology, it is very easy to

control and curate. In an age when all

that's pushed together into one device

like a smartphone, things can seem kind

of hopeless. So, can all we do is look

back nostalgically at the '9s and say,

"Man, those were easier times." Not

necessarily.

All right. All right. So, in my own

family, my wife and I have increasingly

been seeking out modern singlepurpose

tools to replace specific functions that

you might otherwise have been delivered

through a smartphone. This is allowing

us to help support our rule of no

smartphones until high school by being

able to use and deploy single-purpose

technologies for specific things we

think would be useful or enjoyable to

our kids without having to give them the

device that had everything else on it as

well. So, here's what I want to do in

this practices segment today. Um, I want

to talk about four different singleuse

technologies, singlepurpose technologies

that my wife and I actually have

deployed with our kids in our life as

part of our strategy to not have to give

them a Swiss Army knife style uh

smartphone. All right. The first

single-use technology, and this one we

just got, and I'll load this on the

screen here for people who are watching,

so just listening, is a 10 phone. A tin

can phone is uh it's a landline

basically. It uses the internet but it

is you can see this on the screen. Um it

is an actual

phone with a cord and it plugs into the

wall and the receiver is connected to

the base and when you pick it up there's

numbers on it and you can you know dial

numbers. They even have one that looks

like an oldfashioned phone like from the

'9s and that one uh is actually sold

out. So, we now have this in our house

for our kids to call or receive call

from friends. Like my 13-year-old can

like call one of his friends by dialing

the number or they can call their

cousins or they can call their

grandparents if they want to talk to

them. They can also receive calls on it.

Yeah, you control everything through the

app. So, you can say what numbers you're

allowed to come in. Also important, if

my wife and I are out of the house, if

we're going for a walk or something like

that and someone's at home, they can

call us from the home. If they have a

question or an issue, you can also call

911 from it. It's what we used to have.

Just a landline. It just uses the

internet instead of copper wires, but

it's just like a landline like we used

to have. A couple things I've noticed,

Jesse, now that we've deployed the tin

can phone. One, kids these days aren't

used to dialing phone numbers, right?

Because it's a lot of digits, right?

Like we got kind of used to it. You have

like the the the area code and then the

exchange and D. They really struggle.

They're like, "Wait, another number?

Another number?" they kind of lose their

train of thought. Like, they'll have to

dial a number a lot of times. Another

thing I noticed, which I thought was

interesting, is my my 13-year-old didn't

know how to use a wired phone handset.

So, he called his friend and he was

holding it like a speaker phone. He's

like, "I can't hear him." Because he

didn't know about like holding uh a

phone, you know, it's like, "No, you got

to hold it up like to your face." And

then when he tried to do that, he hung

up using his ear. So, he pushed it up

against his face and hung up. So,

they're like they're not used to using

landlines. say we we take that for

granted. Um, but they love having it and

now they can have contact. We told our

oldest son, by the way, if he ends up

using it a lot, we're open to putting

one in his room so he can have more

private conversations with his friends

and we can turn it off with an app and

say, "Yeah, but at like bedtime, it just

shuts off." All right. Um, that is uh

that's how we use it. We use it for if

you had a smartphone, you would make

calls on the smartphone. Now, we use

this landline instead. It's a

singlepurpose technology. One thing it

can't do is text. Uh the solution for

the singlepurpose technology solution

for texting in my opinion is to get an

old iPad, like a refurbished iPad that's

plugged in in your kitchen that you have

an iMessage account logged into. And if

you have a kid who wants to be a part of

group uh chats,

they can in the kitchen sit there on the

iPad and check in on the chats and and

and and add to it. They can't have it in

their own room. They have to be in the

kitchen to do it. and they have to be

subject to you could walk by and see

what they're chatting, right? Especially

if they're younger. That threat of like

you don't have complete privacy on here

because God knows what you're going to

do. Helps sort of keep things more

reasonable. My son, like a lot of boys

like don't care too much about it. They

do have some text chat uh threads. He he

doesn't care enough for us to set this

up because it's mainly just dumbness.

Girls his age, from what I understand,

are doing much more sort of

sophisticated sort of social

coordination on there. But that would be

the solution I would give is here's the

the the group chat machine just like

next to the telephone is the group chat

iPad next to it in the kitchen. All

right. So let me load up here the second

single purpose technology we use. We

have a punct pu n kt. I have this loaded

up on the screen. So as you can see

Jesse it is a old school cellular phone

that only has numbers. You actually

press physical buttons one through nine.

You have like a call and a hang up

button and like a volume up and down

button. What do we use our punked phone

for? This is our single-use technology.

If one of our kids is going somewhere

where they might need to contact us when

away from the home, this is one of the

major reasons why people end up giving

in and buying young kids smartphones is

there's these occasional scenarios where

we might need to hear from you. These

happen all the time. Like I give you

some examples. Uh my one son will often

take a bus from his school to like where

baseball practice is. And you know

sometimes the buses don't come or maybe

there's not actually a baseball practice

that day. Um he was at a baseball clinic

the other day and I thought I knew how

long it run but I wasn't quite sure.

It's 3 hours. I don't want to wait there

for 3 hours and I wasn't quite sure

because it was the first time he'd done

it. So I gave him the punk phone to

bring with him. He could call me if he's

like, "Oh, we ended early." Um and we'd

be able to find out what's going on. And

so it's useful for occasions where a kid

might need to get in contact with you.

Now, the thing about these phones is

they're like, it's a great piece of

technology. They're not very fun to use.

You just have to press these buttons.

It's very tedious. Uh the main thing you

can do with it is we have our numbers

programmed in and you can scroll and

press a button and call us. You can try

to send text messages, but you have to

do the T9 where you press the button a

bunch of times. It's too frustrating, so

it gives up. So, they're not at all fun.

They don't care about them. They're not

happy to have them. It's entirely

utilitarian. They don't own them. We

have one. You check it out because you

are going to an event. Bring this bring

the punct um and then you bring it back

when you're done and it goes back into

our drawer. So that has replaced the

sort of mobile phone functionality you

would get from a smartphone.

All right. The third piece of

technology. This one I love.

This is the uh Fio Snow Sky Echo Mini

Hi-Fi Bluetooth MP3 Walkman.

This is a I believe it's a Korean

technology. This is an Alibaba website I

have up here. It is a MP3 player, Jesse.

Uh in the style of like early iPods, the

way it works is you have a a memory card

and you just, you know, you it's like a

disc. You put MP3 files on this card.

like you you plug in your computer and

you just put MP3 trials on it. You put

that card into this player, you can play

the MP3 file songs on the file. That's

it. So, this thing here where you see

like a cassette, that's actually a

display. And so, uh you can see a list

of all the songs that are on the memory

card and you can scroll through them and

you can click on one and it plays that

song. That's all it does. My middle son

really likes music. We had him for a

while. There was a there's a a device

called the Mighty, which is like a small

It was meant to solve this problem of

like, oh, I want my kids to listen to

music, but they don't have a smartphone.

But it's too high-tech. It It tries to

synchronize with Spotify playlist on a

smartphone, and it has to continually

sort of synchronize with an actual

device, and it would often not work. And

you would have to we'd have to be on the

phone trying to like make these

playlists, and then did it sync? Oh, it

didn't sink. Maybe it sunk this time.

And my son, you know, he's going to

summer camp this summer for about a

month and he wants to be able to listen

to music. And with this, the Mighty, if

you haven't synchronized online with the

phone, because of rights issues, every

however many days, the list goes away.

Uh, this is much simpler. It's just MP3s

on a card and you can listen to them.

Where do they get the MP3s? Well, they

have CDs, so they they my my kids own

boom boxes, 1990s style boom boxes, the

big tall things, the towers with the CD

player and the radio. They listen to the

radio and they we buy them CDs and they

listen to CDs. We just bought it was

like 40 bucks a CDROM reader that you

plug in USB to your computer where you

can rip MP3s off the CDs just like we

used to do in like 2002. So they can put

their CDs in here and rip, which means

like make MP3s out of songs from the CDs

and they drag those on. Also, it turns

out that on Amazon you can buy for a lot

of albums still unprotected MP3s. Just

buy them one by one. Like I want to buy

this song for like a$130 and you can

still buy the unprotected uh MP3 and

just drag them right on this machine. So

it's great. Interesting.

>> Yeah.

>> So he wants to listen to music like when

on car trips or whatever or in his own

room or whatever and this this solves

that problem and only that problem.

Again, it's the type of thing you might

otherwise be like, I don't know, Apple

Music's on a phone. They want to listen

to music. Let's just buy them the

smartphone. But we have a single-purpose

piece of technology for that. All right.

The fourth uh single-purpose technology

we use, and this kind of goes back to

one of the issues we talked about in the

idea segment, Nintendo Switches,

oldfashioned video games. So, it's a

Nintendo, it has its own screen. We have

one that hooks up to the TV and then uh

two of the kids have the portable ones

and the third has one that can hook up

to the TV which allows multiple people

like to play on the same screen. If

you're playing Mario Kart or Minecraft

or something like that, you can you can

split up the screen. No online gaming,

no playing with other people that they

don't know. I I I like to buy them the

games. You can download games. I like to

buy the cartridges. You stick a

cartridge in little memory card now and

you can play that game. So, it's a video

game player that only plays non- online

video games, and that's all it does.

They have to be Our rule is these have

to be plugged in. We have a charging

station in the whatever you call the

media console under your TV. They have

to be in there. If we find one not in

there, you lose the next video game

sessions. So, like when you're not using

it, you have to go and plug it in.

That's where it lives. And then we just

have well- definfined video game playing

sessions. It's on the weekends if

there's a babysitter and if a car ride

is beyond a certain amount of time, they

have to spend the first 45 minutes, you

know, being bored and then they can play

video games for what happens or flights

if we're going on longer flights. So,

this is a single-purpose technology

which allows them to play fun video

games. My son has some crazy fighter jet

game where I don't understand this game.

I thought it was a flight simulator and

he keeps coming in and telling me what's

happening in the game. He's like, "Well,

I'm in," this is true story. He came in

and said, "I'm in jail because I blew up

the president." And I was like, "What

type of flight simulator?" It turns out

it's this like this game that has these

like crazy scenarios they put you in.

And it's And then next time he talked to

me, he's like, "Well, we have a weapon

at this base that was invented to blow

up meteors, but we're using it to repel

a fighter jet or like it's just this

crazy game, but it's like oldfashioned.

It's a video game that you're playing

through levels and, you know,

oldfashioned video game." Again, this is

another reason why people end up with

smartphones like well like also or iPads

like I could play games on there as

well. It's an easy way I could play the

games on the phone, but the single-use

technology allows us to control exactly

what types of games they play. They're

not online. We can control when they

play them because it's a separate device

that we can keep at the TV. So again,

when you put all this onto a phone,

there's always some reason why they need

that phone. Now they have access to all

these things all the time

and in ways you can't easily control.

All right, so here's my conclusion. When

it comes to technology and kids,

single-purpose devices have to be the

way to go. It gives you so much more

control over their experiences and

allows you to much more confidently

steer them away from potential harms,

right? It's just so clear with

single-use technologies. It's so much

easier to use. The strategy, I think,

also makes sense for adults as well.

Convenience is not necessarily the most

important thing, especially when you're

talking about like your own

entertainment or distraction.

And when you put everything on the same

phone, it's like you have that media

cart that I imagine myself having as a

kids in the 1990s, like you're going to

you maybe be trying to make a call, but

you're going to end up browsing that

porno mag while smoking a cigarette,

too, because they're right there. So,

even for adults, I think moving to

single-purpose technology makes sense.

You can get that MP3 player if you want

to listen to music on long walks, not

have a phone that's going to come around

with you. You can have a simple dumb

phone that you bring when you're doing

stuff where there's like these small

percentage chances you might need to be

contacted in an emergency, but you

otherwise don't want this whole

distraction machine coming along with

you. That could work for an adult as

well, right? Don't play online video

games. Only play AAA games that, you

know, you have to be on a a screen and

plugged in with a card and there's no

internet involved.

a single-use technology can make as much

sense for adults as is for kids. But for

kids, I think it's a game changer

because it allows you to get away or

avoid that sort of that path of least

resistance approach where it's like,

well, there's some reason why a phone

would be useful. And it's so easy like

on AT&T or Verizon, it's like 10 extra

dollars. I click this button, they'll

just send me a phone and it works. And

it's so tempting to just do that. But

don't let them bring that proverbial

media cart full of nonsense into their

room. It's worth taking the time to

control the specific technologies they

have and how they use each individual

one. All right, there we go, Jesse.

Single use technologies.

>> So, you can still buy CDs, huh?

>> You can. Yeah. Uh, we get them on Amazon

or Walmart or whatever. It's not like

every band. It's a little bit weird

what's available and what's not, but we

got a a lot of like classic 90s music.

>> Uh, they still sell those CDs. Yeah. I

don't know like new bands are putting

out CDs, but

>> that's good. Also, constraints are good.

Like you have to track down. You can't

get all music. You get the music you

get. You really

>> you really like. All right. Um before we

end today, let's do uh some questions

and comments.

>> All right. What's our first question

here, Jesse?

>> First question is from Lisa. Hi, Cal.

I'm a mother of two living in Richmond,

Virginia. In conversations with other

moms about social media and video games,

I've noticed a tone switcher switch over

the last couple years from thinking of

these platforms as being necessary evils

to thinking of them as evil we should

try to avoid. I was wondering if you had

advice for us trying to put the social

media and video game cats back in the

bags.

Um, okay. Well,

can we do that if you've already given

your kid a phone? If you've already

given your kid access to like all these

video games, is it too late? And there

my answer is no. It is perfectly

reasonable for an adult parent being a

parent to say, "Hey, we let you use this

technology. We learn more about it. We

don't like it. We don't want you to use

it anymore."

Some people call that impossible.

I call that parenting.

Everything you tell a 13-year-old they

don't like. your whole life is telling

them to do things they don't want to do.

You might as well just add this to the

list.

What I would do, and I I've recommend

this to a lot of parents, is like the I

think that the key reform that allows

you to reform a lot of other things is

to say the number one thing we're doing

in our household if you have adolescent

age kids and they already have phones.

The number one rule we're changing

because we didn't realize the dangers,

but now we did. We're the parents. We

get to say make the rules is you don't

own your phone. We own the phone. You're

not paying for that phone. You do not

have the right to have that phone

everywhere you go. That phone is not

your personal property. It is something

we lend to you because it's useful and

for certain entertainment purposes. As a

result, here is our rule. When you're at

home, the phone lives in the kitchen. We

have a charger station there. If you

need to call someone, you go to the

kitchen. If you need to check your text

messages, you go to the kitchen. If you

need to, man, you hear this all the time

from teenagers. My homework's on there,

man. I gotta be on my phone for the next

six hours because my homework's on

there. You say, "Show me your homework

on the phone. I'll sit here with you.

We'll get it off the phone. The phone

lives in the kitchen." And so that when

you're at home, it is not a default

thing you can bring with you. And that

actually will do more good than trying

to ban particular just saying like,

"Don't use this app." Or the worst, and

I really hate this, is the like, "Oh, my

son's on his phone all the time. I tell

him he should stop, but he what could

you do?" This is such a better solution.

You're like, "Do you want to text for

six hours?" You're going to do it

standing in the kitchen and that's going

to lose its allure and you're going to

have to do something else. When you're

at the dinner table, you have to be at

the dinner table. The phone's not there.

When you're watching a movie, you have

to watch the movie. You don't have the

option of also checking on your phone. A

lot of parents say that's impossible.

It's like somehow it's some intrinsic

right that was instilled by the UN

Commission on Human Rights that

16-year-olds must be able to look at

Snapchat while you're watching, you

know, a show on HBO.

That's not a law. That's not a natural

law. That's not a rule. It's your house.

You're paying for the phone. So, I think

that's the number one reform that if

your kids already have phones, just say

they live in the kitchen. Don't argue

with people about how much they're using

or if they should use it less or what

apps or it lives in the kitchen. That's

what I would do. I would also say no

online games. I don't care if the kids

16, 17, 18. My whole point as a parent

is to prepare you to succeed in the

world. Nothing's going to get more in

the way of that than you learning to

play three to four hours of these stupid

games every day while exposing yourself

to like all the worst things the world

has to offer. I do not want my

17-year-old in a Discord server learning

how to do groper trolls while playing

five hours of god knows what game.

That's just like I'm if my kid was like,

"Hey, um I'm going down the liquor

store. I'm gonna hang out on the corner

there uh and we're going to see if we

can rob some old ladies." Right? like,

"No, don't go spend four hours doing

that." Also, no, don't go on Discord and

play five hours of of Call of Duty. So,

yeah, it is fixable. You can go back.

And I'm glad to hear that the tone is

changing of the conversation. Um, height

had a lot to do with that. I think he

gave people permission to be like, "Oh,

these things are terrible. We can react

to terrible things." All right, what do

we got next? Next up is Marco. I'm a

young artist living in Bilboa, Spain.

Surviving as an artist in 2025 has a lot

to do with skill of growing social

media. My dilemma is that I prefer to

spend my time mastering my craft, but I

keep getting a sinking feeling that it

won't matter if my work isn't being seen

online. What advice do you have? I think

people who are considering social media

and professional circumstances are way

too general about what they mean and

they kind of make it a binary like I

need to either be out of business or

spend like seven hours a day on TikTok.

As if there's no in between. It's almost

like someone saying, "Look, I I I don't

like that I get blackout drunk every

day. Um, but my office is above a bar.

What else can I do?" And you like,

"Well, just because a bar is there

doesn't mean you have to go down there

and drink all day long, right?" Like

that's how I feel sometimes when people

are like

A people in my field will advertise on

social media. B I don't want to lose my

life to being online on social media all

day. These one doesn't have to

necessarily follow from the other. So

what I would say is you can post things

on social media in a way that has very

little impact on your life. Do it from

your computer. Don't have it on your

phone. Have a set schedule. It takes

like six minutes a day every other day

and that's it.

Do not use the fact that you have some

limited need for social media in your

life to be an excuse for unlimited use

of personal social media for your own

distraction and engagement. One does not

follow from the other. But here's the

other thing I would add. Test the

assumption of how and why you need to

use social media. A lot of people will

just say, "How else will you get

noticed?" And I say, "You got to be way

more specific to me. What particular

activities are you doing on social

media? Is it posting images? Is it

talking to people in the comments? Is it

lurking on Instagram all day? Like, what

are the the specific actions you think

are driving business? And what are the

numbers? How many leads have you gotten

off of these Instagram posts? How many

uh orders have come in to a link in the

bottom of your Tik Tok post? You have to

actually quantify specific activities

that have specific benefits. And if they

are, you can focus on those activities,

cut out the rest, and minimize it. A lot

of people, however, are surprised when

they do this where they discover it

doesn't happen. There's a a comedian

friend of mine told me about this a

couple years ago. He was having a hard

time with with social media. Uh but he

was using it too much and it was really

like a source of unhappiness and

convinced himself like but I'm a

comedian. Like how else am I going to

find opportunities? If I'm not up to

doing jokes, how are people going to

find me or whatever? And then he went

through a list of the the biggest breaks

that he had had in the last few years

and realized like every one of those

breaks had nothing to do with social

media. It had to do with someone seeing

something he created like at a comedy

show, seen him do a really good set and

be like, "Oh, you're good. Like, I want

to talk to you. We should talk some

more." And it it pushed back on this

assumption of like, "This is where all

the opportunities are going to come

from." Where that had never actually

happened in his life. So, I want you to

verify

what specific activities on social media

you have quantitative evidence are

really helping. And if there are some

activities that fall in that bucket,

focus on those. Do it from a computer,

on a schedule, and that should be it.

And if you can't find any, then you're

missing out nothing if you uh turn off

those apps altogether.

We also want to respond to some comments

like we do from time and again. Um I

think we have two comments to bring up

here from last week's episode which I

believe was me and Ed Zitron going

through the year in AI. So let's load

this first comment up here on the

screen. This comes from uh Mesta 1988

who said

not Cal Shading Jensen in the first two

minutes. Uh, crying laughing emoji. More

shady calendar in 2026.

Before I go on with this comment, do you

know what that's referencing, Jamie or

Jesse?

>> No.

>> I will show you what that's referencing.

Boom.

Jensen. Uh, it's referencing the CEO. I

put on the screen for those who are

watching. We were making fun of the

leather racing jacket worn by the CEO of

Nvidia that he always wears. It makes

him look like an extra in a Mad Max

video. in a talk in which he was talking

about the scaling of graphic processing

units and AI training. So, we just find

that I find that endlessly amusing that

he wears that jacket. All right. Then

this comment goes on to say, "Cal did a

really good job of not letting things go

completely off the rails when Zitron

goes on one of his rabid rants." I love

Zitron's rants. That's what makes them

fun. Like he does like Zitron goes on

these roles, but that's kind of like his

thing, right? Um yeah, he it gets over

the top and so I I do try to keep

derails on. uh he knows what he's

talking about, but he's an entertaining

talker because he often gets kind of

hyperbolic when he talks about things.

But I'm glad she appreciated that.

>> There was a big article about him in

Wired a couple months ago.

>> I have to read that still. Yeah. Like he

really has been doing his research,

especially on the financial side. So

like he he often has good points, but

then he's very funny on his podcast and

on radio and interviews and he he goes

he's really hyperbolic. Um and it often

surprises people because they've heard

nothing but hype. And so he realized

like if he's just like super strong like

that's nonsense and here's why he's like

really strong it it it really lands. All

right. Here's

>> definitely controversial.

>> He is controversial. All right. I like

him though. All right. Here's another

comment. Um well because dialectical to

say this, right? I think it's nice to

like slam ideas together. You get bit

deeper insight.

>> This next comment is from Shrea Doss

5065. I can't believe that the American

professor is so polite and the British

journalist is not. Indeed, our world is

changing. On a serious note, thanks a

lot for this discussion. Absolutely

stunning. It is funny. I know like I I

the British person should be like the

super polite. Uh but you know what? It's

not really true. Here's been my

experience with British academics in in

particular is they're not bombastic, but

they're very cudding. Like they just

have like Americans kind of wear their

heart on their sleeves. They're like,

"That's stupid. I don't like that.

You're stupid because you said that and

you're a dumbhead. I don't want to talk

to you." Um and the British person will

just have like a perfect like bono. just

have like this like uh super cutting

like hm I see. Yeah, that is the type of

thing that a Dartmouth man would say and

they just kind of puff on their pipe a

little bit and you're like, "Wait a

second, he just really burned me there."

So, they're not as polite as people

think. All right. Uh, thanks for the

questions and the comments. Uh, I want

to conclude as always by talking about

what I'm reading.

U, so a quick update. At the end of last

episode, I was talking about the the

thrillers I read in December. Uh I

forgot, however, the name of the fifth

book I read in December. So, just for

the completist out there, um the fifth

book I read in December was called 20th

Century Fox by Scott Iman. And it was a

a history of the 20th Century Fox film

studio. Interesting. The name, Jesse, I

didn't realize this. It was a merger in

the early days of cinema of Fox Studios

created by William Fox and 20th Century

Studios created by someone else. And

when they came together, that's why it

was called 20th Century Fox. So, I

hadn't realized that. That was a good

book. I mean, the thing is I didn't I

don't know most of the movie references.

So, it's like, oh, you know, and this

became like Betty Greybel in, you know,

the the

Golden Stage Coach and as if like you're

supposed to know the reference. I don't

really know the old movie references.

Uh, but it was really like the story of

mainly like Daryl Xanic and the the the

rise of cinema and the trouble they had

and how they came back and I found it

was interesting. All right. What did I

read more recently? So last week between

last episode and this episode I read

Jane Goodall's book in the shadow of man

which uh early in her career I think she

published this in the late 60s early7s

was sort of her first account of her

time in the the GB stream chimpanzeee

reservation um about her her first work

with chimpanzees. So it was a big

bestseller at the time because people

didn't know anything about chimps and

she wrote this book about her experience

spending all this time with them. Um I

liked it. It's a lot less sciency than

these type of books are today, Jesse.

So, if you read one of these like

scientist memoirs today where they talk

about like the work they were working on

with like a memoir aspect to it, there's

a lot more theory in it. So, like if you

wrote this book today, there'd probably

be a lot more of what are the particular

theories about animal behavior that they

were finding and oh, we were we we got

this evidence of this and that. It was a

lot more of just her describing and then

this happened, we saw this, we saw them

doing this and that. It was like just

very descriptive of like what

chimpanzees were like because I think it

was so early. That itself was

interesting. I like that book. And then

I read a um a museum exhibit companion

book on an exhibit about Walt Disney and

trains because I had a section in the

book I'm writing now about Walt Disney's

personal train set he built at his

house. And so there was a big exhibit

about this out in LA and I there's a

companion book that has a lot of details

and images. And so I read that as well

last week. So there you go. All right,

that's all the time we have for this

week. Thanks for listening. We'll be

back next week. I have a special guest

joining me to help me in the idea

segment. So, it should be fun. So,

hopefully I will see you will hear from

you then. And until then, as always,

stay deep. Hey, if you like today's

discussion of new dangers to be worried

about, you might also like episode 374,

which looked at the original danger,

phones. That episode is titled This is

Your Brain on Phones. It gives you a

closer look at what's actually happening

inside your brain as you use those

devices. Check it out. I think you'll

like it. For some people, the constant

allure of their phone is so strong, it's

so inescapable that it can seem

impossible to find any sort of freedom.

This is what I want to talk about