How Social Media Broke Democracy and Childhood
June 19, 2025
50 min
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406 of 513
June 19, 2025
How Social Media Broke Democracy and Childhood
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Talking Feds with Harry Litman Episodes Around June 19, 2025
Episode 406 of 513 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
How Social Media Broke Democracy and Childhood
Summary
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt joins Harry Litman to discuss his bestselling book "The Anxious Generation" and how the shift to smartphone-based childhood around 2012 triggered a mental health crisis—especially among liberal girls. Haidt explains his moral foundations theory, why Americans can't agree on basic facts anymore, and how social media created a "curse of Babel" that's undermining both democracy and child development. Plus: his four practical norms for rolling back the phone-based childhood and why we may be accidentally training kids for authoritarianism.
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