Democracy in the Next Cycle of History | Jonathan Haidt
What this covers
Jonathan Haidt sees that we have entered a social-psychological phase change that was initiated in 02009 when social media platforms introduced several fateful innovations that changed the course of our society and disintegrated our consensus on reality.
In this conversation with Long Now co-founders Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, Haidt presses on questions of technological optimism, morality vs ethics, teen mental health, possible platform tweaks that could reduce the damage and just how long this next cycle of history could last.
Prompted by Haidt's piece on Why The Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, this discussion offers a behind the scenes look at the thinking going into Haidt's next book; release slated for the fall of 02023.
Jonathan Haidt's mission is to study moral psychology and use that knowledge to help important institutions and systems work better. The institutions and systems he works on are: universities, corporations, liberal democracy, schools & families that are overprotecting kids and social media. Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is author of several books including The Righteous Mind, The Coddling of the American Mind and numerous articles and essays.
“Democracy in the Next Cycle of History” was given on September 27, 02022 as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:
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Social media platforms optimized for engagement, particularly Twitter, have fundamentally degraded democratic institutions and social cohesion since 2014 by amplifying outrage, enabling mass reputation destruction, and making institutional complexity unmanageable; recovery requires regulatory intervention on platform architecture, restoration of free-range childhood, and institutional renewal during what may be a historical inflection point.
- Social media enables reputation destruction at scale with no accountability, creating fear that makes open debate and institutional function impossible
- The shift from broadcast to fragmented media created by cable and social platforms has enabled political polarization spirals on the right and illiberal coddling dynamics on the left
- Gen Z mental health crisis correlates with social media adoption, particularly for girls, creating structural weakness in the next generation's ability to self-govern
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Education and literacy campaigns won't solve social media problems because humans have built-in conformist bias (doing what most people do) and prestige bias (copying prestigious people); therefore, social psychological manipulations targeting which people are 'cool' will be more effective than teaching people about social media dangers.
“i'm just writing to the part of my book now where i'm talking about learning out learning heuristics and i'm drawing on joe henrich's wonderful work um on gene culture coevolution and how we have built into us biases for learning we have uh conformist bias we do what most people are doing and we have prestige bias we do what if everybody else is pointing to so and so we'll all copy him too”
Around 2014-2015, universities experienced a qualitative shift when social media enabled coordinated movements to get professors fired for questioning received wisdom, making academic debate effectively impossible because anything said could trigger reputation destruction campaigns.
“weird stuff started happening in 2014 we saw students suddenly objecting to words and books and speakers... then in october november of that year many universities kind of blew up and and this new culture came in and it's a culture that could not have happened without twitter and other platforms”
Children learn democratic skills—negotiating preferences, enforcing rules, understanding fairness—through thousands of iterations of free play with peers where rules are constantly negotiated; video games and social media do not provide this synchronous, collaborative, rule-generative experience.
“kids need to be outside playing um with each other and then we stop that in the 90s...kids need to learn the skills of democracy what game should we play well let's how do we figure out whose preferences how do we enforce the rules well this was an infraction but it was an accident like so kids need to do that thousands and thousands of times”
Humans are 'hive creatures' like bees; we need webs of shared meaning to cooperate effectively; we cannot function as a single global hive because cooperation requires competition (groups competing creates social cohesion), and humans are prone to tribal division as described by James Madison (even trivial distinctions kindle mutual animosities and violent conflict).
“we are hive creatures too we have to have webs of shared meaning and could we have well fine why don't we just have a big global web of shared meaning why don't we all be together as one that can't work that can't work because how do we cooperate we cooperate with death when we're competing that's what brings people together”
Polarization began rising in the late 1990s, driven in part by cable television (particularly Fox News starting around 1996) which radicalized the right more than the left; broadcast media in the mid-20th century had been a temporary period that provided 'incredible centripetal force' as a binding factor in the country.
“the degree to which people on each side hate or fear the other side that was pretty level in the 70s 80s and 90s and it only begins to go up in the late 90s in part because of the kinds of events you're talking about the republican party begins to radicalize now here fox news plays a big role”
Online, children can access pornography, buy heroin, and obtain guns with far fewer barriers than in the physical world, despite society's extreme caution about children's physical safety; this asymmetry in protection suggests digital harm is undervalued relative to physical risk.
“right now um you know kids can go anywhere pornhub wherever they want you know we're so careful in the physical world but online you know buy guns heroin or not whatever you want”
Social media platforms like Twitter have a unique destructive quality compared to older cable news because they fragment groups, make people afraid of each other (not just polarize them), and enable any individual to publicize and report others with no accountability or need for evidence, context, or nuance.
“twitter has social media in general uh and and slack also these have a unique quality it's not just increasing polarization it's fragmenting and making people afraid of each other”
Humans are cultural creatures and have a long childhood (slow childhood) because our brains are 90% done by age five but we need a long period of cultural apprenticeship; this requires learning through play, which is how mammals learn.
“humanity has this funny thing called um called the uh slow childhood we other animals just grow as fast as they can and they reproduce we grow fast for a couple years and then we actually slow down our brain is 90 done by the time we're five at least in terms of size and we slow down we have a long period of cultural apprenticeship because we're cultural creatures so during that period kids need to learn learn learn and how do they learn from play”
Real name authentication (rather than anonymity) should be a parameter of social platforms to prevent bots, Russian agents, and coordinated manipulation attacks; this is distinct from content moderation and is more fundamentally about platform architecture.
“i think the important thing is that they be authenticated as a person what i mean by that is right now um anyone can open any account as many as they want on the major platforms um i had a conversation with mark zuckerberg he to his credit he reached out to a bunch of people who were you know critics i think it was back in 2019 and just before my meeting with him i created a fake account for my daughter who was 11 at the time i just lied about her age”
Facebook and Twitter algorithms capture advertising revenue that previously went to mainstream media networks, forcing cable news to coordinate with social media and use labs to find the most outrageous trending stories daily, making mainstream media much more toxic and effective at making people angry.
“what happened to cable tv once uh facebook took all of the um facebook and twitter got all of the you know the ad revenue um everyone had all of the networks have to now coordinate they they sync up with social media and if you look at any right wing talk show now they have an incredible lab that finds them the most outrageous story of the day every day and it's just whatever's trending on twitter”
The left has adopted a set of beliefs and practices (particularly around victim status and trigger warnings) that are crippling its children by making emotional fragility valorized; in contrast, the right (despite its militias and actual threats) has not adopted overprotection coddling practices, making its children emotionally stronger.
“there is actually a big left-right difference the left is much more overprotective of its children so um the right is much stronger than the left uh and this is something van jones noted”
There is no evidence that trigger warnings are helpful; when mental illness becomes valorized as a marker of victimhood status (under frameworks that teach people to see the world as divided into oppressors and oppressed), girls are encouraged to emphasize their anxiety, depression, and mental illness, which makes everyone fragile and creates pressure on others to avoid upsetting them.
“there's no evidence that trigger warnings are helpful well sometimes these things just sort of pass away um and the odd notions go through that everybody turns out to have been abused as a child”
What is inevitable (in Kelly's view) are certain technological directions (AI, connectivity, urbanization); what is not inevitable is character, ownership, control, regulation, and role of these technologies—these are choices with high leverage.
“i wrote the book the inevitable what's inevitable are some of these things coming along what's not inevitable is the character of them who owns them how they're controlled how they're regulated what role they play those are choices that we have and they make a huge difference”
Boys' mental health has also gotten much worse since the early 2010s, but there is no direct causal link to video games or electronics that can be established through studies; correlations exist overall but are weaker than for girls and social media.
“boys mental health has has gotten much worse since the early 2010s as well but i cannot link it to social media or to electronics directly there's correlation overall but i don't have i've not found studies that show problems for video games whereas for social media and girls it's it's it's very clear”
Trolls currently evade accountability by creating multiple accounts; if platforms required account verification, trolls couldn't simply open 10 new accounts after being closed, making sustained harassment economically infeasible.
“right now there's a very small number of people they're almost all men there's research on trolls a troll is almost always a man who enjoys harassing people being an um very small number of men but one troll can ruin thousands of people's day and trolls especially are nasty to women and black people and so if we care about people's experience online we would try to cut down on trolls yeah then facebook twitter you know sure you know eventually if you're trying to kill someone eventually they'll close your account you just open 10 more accounts so um so that has to stop”
The extreme voices on Twitter have 100x more influence than they would have had pre-social media, while the average user is reasonable; the extremes have disproportionate power because algorithms amplify engagement (which extreme content triggers), not because of inherent population distributions.
“the average user of twitter is perfectly reasonable but the extremes have a hundred times more influence than they ever could have before twitter”
There is a mental health crisis in Gen Z and other age cohorts, with girls aged 10-20 showing a 50 to 150 percent increase in depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide; the oldest Gen Z are now 26 and show no signs of outgrowing this, suggesting permanent developmental damage from going through puberty on social media platforms without developing normal social skills.
“if you look at young girls in particular it's between 50 to 150 increase uh in depression anxiety self-harm and suicide gen z is extremely fragile um and now the oldest of them are 26 and it's not as though they're suddenly gonna say oh well i'm not i'm gonna outgrow that”
Mark Zuckerberg has reached out to critics (including Haidt) to discuss concerns; Haidt demonstrated that Facebook's age verification is trivial to circumvent (creating an 11-year-old account using his daughter's name by lying about age), showing the platform lacks even basic identity controls.
“i had a conversation with mark zuckerberg he to his credit he reached out to a bunch of people who were you know critics i think it was back in 2019 and just before my meeting with him i created a fake account for my daughter who was 11 at the time i just lied about her age i'd use her name i just can i create an account by lying yeah very easy to create an account on facebook and instagram”
Trolls are almost always men (a very small number of men), and one troll can ruin thousands of people's experience online; trolls are especially nasty to women and Black people, so if we care about people's online experience we should try to cut down on trolls.
“there's a very small number of people they're almost all men there's research on trolls a troll is almost always a man who enjoys harassing people being an um very small number of men but one troll can ruin thousands of people's day and trolls especially are nasty to women and black people”
The post-war institutions created for an era of mass media cannot work in an era of 'distributed everything,' so turbulent transition is inevitable whether or not social media was invented; however, the timescale could be 20-30 years for a normal cycle or 100-200 years if it resembles the printing press transition.
“in part this is inevitable there are these cycles of history and the post-war institutions that were created for the era of mass media can't work in the area of distributed everything so um we're going to have to go through a turbulent period there was no even if social media was never invented we were gonna go through this”
Basic architectural changes like requiring real names/authentication and blue-check verification for human users would make social media much better, and these are relatively easy to implement compared to more complex AI-based solutions.
“i think that um other basic things like we just talked about like demanding that people be true names and verifiable i mean even in twitter i would like to have a function where um i would only be able to see and retweet blue check marked real people yeah real people that's right they'll be huge yeah great these are the sorts of architectural changes that i think are important”
Technology is helping autocracies achieve more effective totalitarian control; China operates TikTok with content that boosts patriotism while allowing the US version to make Americans angry at each other and mentally ill, and autocracies like the Soviet Union and Mao's China lacked the technology to control everyone all the time with the efficiency modern tech enables.
“china is able to control what happens they have tip talk in china but it's got it's got much more positive stuff it sort of boosts patriotism and they're thrilled that our tick tock is just making people so angry at each other and so mentally ill so so china is the example of using technology to achieve a totalitarian dream the soviet union and mao's china they just didn't have the technology to really control everybody all the time”
Americans stopped letting kids play outside unsupervised starting in the 1990s (coinciding with the end of the crime wave), even though crime had dropped; by 2006 people were being arrested for letting their children play in parks because no one had seen an unsupervised child outside in 10 years, creating a generation of overprotected, weak children who never developed normal social and democratic skills through free play.
“kids used to play i grew up during the crime wave stuart maybe you grew up before the crime wave but you know there was a lot of crime in the from the mid 60s through the early 90s but kids went out to play suddenly when the crime wave ended in the 90s just by coincidence that's when americans freaked out about child abduction and we stopped letting kids out”
Edmund Burke was right that social order is very hard to build and very easy to destroy, and that wisdom demands caution about rapid change; the current era is destroying social order 'right left and center' through lack of respect for institutions, democratic institutions, epistemic institutions (science and journalism).
“i think the conservatives are right that social order is very hard to build very easy to destroy and right now we're destroying it right left and center there is very little respect for institutions for democratic institutions epistemic institutions journalism science”
We may be approaching a world where it becomes permanently impossible to share common stories; this would happen if technological acceleration continues unabated and society fragments into increasingly small, incompatible micro-bubbles of meaning, creating 'anomie' (normlessness) that is a vision of hell.
“there is no one there's no common understanding when 9 11 happened there was a general understanding that we were attacked by al-qaeda and that's probably the last time that that will happen we can't with the current technologies everything is shredded social media is good at creating little micro bubbles of meaning but we'll never again or not never again in in the next five or ten years we're not going to have any ability to have shared stories”
Video games in moderation (2-3 hours per day) are not harmful to boys and may be beneficial because they are synchronous (involving real-time communication with others), constitute actual play rather than asynchronous posting, and fulfill boys' evolved drive to practice team-versus-team competition in preparation for conflict.
“if if boys are playing two three hours a day no problem at all um for a couple of reasons one is that it's synchronous synchronous is is good kids need lots of synchronous activity um asynchronous is bad um secondly it is play it is actual play whereas posting on instagram is not play”
Online anonymity (especially pseudonymity on platforms like the Well in the 1980s-90s) created harassment problems even before social media; moving toward real-name requirements could reduce harassment but faces legitimate privacy concerns for political dissidents and marginalized groups.
“we did not have a true anonymity we had a sort of pseudo anonymity where you could have a handle and so i'm increasingly in favor of basically no anonymity except under very certain circumstances”
Population is heading toward implosion in the long term, which is a challenge, but urbanization and AI developments are largely positive forces likely to improve living conditions globally.
“we have one challenge which in the long term is the population implosion but other than that i think that that this moment will be looked back on as an amazing time to be alive because it's really just the beginning of all these things”
The Democratic Party is not 'the stupid party' because when there is an 'awoke wing,' the moderates almost always win the debates, preserving the party's ability to think normally.
“people on the left keep attacking me or you know just criticizing me saying how can you say you know look at the republicans look what they're doing and i say you know you're right you're right that is the stupid part of the democrats are not the stupid parties”
The Republican Party has become the 'stupid party' in the sense that it has lost the normal dynamics of internal debate where some people argue for one position and others argue for another; instead, questioning Donald Trump results in immediate political death (as seen with Liz Cheney), creating an inability to think that is 'incredibly dangerous' for a two-party system.
“the republican party is the stupid party and what i mean by that is not that they're unintelligent but that their dynamics are such that if you if you question donald trump if you say that oh you know i'm going to vote for impeachment um you're dead you're politically dead”
Political violence will increase: organized militias on the right (accelerationists wanting collapse) and potentially left-wing violence if the right takes control of government.
“i think we're going to have a lot more political violence we're getting some now um but i think it's going to be much more like the 60s and early 70s with a lot more political violence coming first perhaps from the right which has organized militias that are called accelerationists they actually want to bring out the collapse but we may if the right takes control of the government we are going to see political violence coming from the left as well”
Project Liberty (initiated by Frank McCourt) proposes a Web3-based architecture where people can control their own data, retain ownership of their information, and easily build applications that are healthy for democracy rather than exploitative; this represents the kind of architectural innovation (not just policy tweaks) needed to solve social media problems.
“i've just gotten involved recently with what's called project liberty if you go to project liberty dot io uh it's an initiative uh started by frank mccourt uh who founded the the mccourt school the georgetown and it's a proposal for an architect a web 3 based architecture on which people could build applications and businesses where it would be sort of automatic that people can control what they give out people retain ownership of of their own information with current with web 2 once the information is out you can't get it back but there i'm just beginning to learn about this but i think this is the sort of innovation the sort of of like not just like what are we going to change in twitter but what could we change in the underlying architecture of the entire technium so that it's easy to build applications that are healthy and good for democracy”
Historical cycles (traced through Ibn Khaldun, Peter Turchin, and cliodynamics) show that hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times; this cycle typically spans four generations, and Turchin predicted in 2010 (published in Science magazine) that the crisis would hit around 2020.
“the internet meme that captures it hard times make strong men strong men make good times good times make weak men weak men make hard times so there are cycles to history four generations typically um after a great catastrophe people come together and they create new institutions”
A 'Geneva Convention for the culture war' is needed to explicitly protect certain institutions (schools, doctors' offices, K-12 education, universities, restaurants) from political culture war battles, designating them as professional rather than political spaces and insisting on professional ethics.
“i think we need a geneva convention for the culture war that says we channel you know you know like you know they had chemical weapons they decided you know what this is just too terrible let's not use chemical weapons i would say you know what you know schools our children doctors like let's not do culture war there let's just you know insist on professional ethics and get politics out of those areas”
To recover from the current trajectory within 20 years, three key changes would need to occur: (1) restore free-range childhood by passing laws protecting parents (as Let Grow has done in four states), (2) major government regulation of platforms focusing on user authentication and reducing virality rather than content moderation, and (3) a mass cultural movement creating shame/contempt for people who live their lives performatively on social media.
“we've got to turn off the spigot on mental illness in kids we've gotta so i would imagine uh everyone joined let grow.org they gave them money we were able to pass more laws we were able to restore free range childhood so the generation after gen z grows up better able to compromise”
Haidt predicts catastrophic political failure in American democracy within the next 10-20 years if present trends continue; he is pessimistic about the next 50 years but understands this fits historical cycles where great catastrophes are followed by periods of institutional renewal and social capital building.
“i think we're gonna have catastrophic political failure you can't predict and here i've got my friend phil tetlock standing over my shoulder saying john nobody can predict anything so but you know if present trends continue and polarization rises and gen z becomes ever more fragile and mentally ill and trust in institutions you know so i i think we can't keep going the way we're going for 20 more years”
Silicon Valley tech people tend toward autism and Asperger's spectrum traits; this is not an insult but a fact about different minds having different talents, and it's important because minds brilliant at creating tools are often least likely to understand the social interaction nuances and difficulties their products cause.
“silicon valley is incredibly smart tech people are incredibly smart and now they do tend towards asperger's and autism and this is important it's not just this is not an insult this is just a fact about different minds having different talents and so the kinds of minds that were so brilliant in creating these tools are also the kinds of minds that are least likely to understand the nuances of social interaction”
The current moment is a historical turning point where individual and collective decisions about technology use, investment, and regulation have more influence on the future than any point since perhaps the 1930s-1940s; this is frightening but also very exciting.
“we have a chance to matter like the things that we do the decisions we make the choices we make and how we use technology and where we invest our money and how we treat people the choices we make now can have more of an influence on the future than i would say at any point since maybe the 1930s or early 1940s this is a turning point in history it's actually very exciting it's frightening but it's also very exciting”
There is real hope that technology, suitably integrated with teams of politically diverse and neurodiverse people, could create game-changing architectures that lead to the best societies and democracies ever; this might not happen in the 2020s but could happen in the 2030s or beyond.
“i think we need neurodiversity in silicon valley uh but but ultimately yes there is real hope that um that that tech suitably you know enmeshed in teams of people and and and and political diversity and neurodiversity really could come up with game-changing architectures that bring us to this this promised land i'm with you guys that that the tech could in theory give us the best societies ever the best democracies ever that could happen it's not gonna happen in the 20 in the 2020s but it maybe it'll happen 2030s maybe it won't be till the 2090s”
Throughout human history, wherever we look globally, at the lowest levels of Maslow's hierarchy (shelter, clothing, basic needs), there is total convergence: everyone wants air-conditioned rooms, indoor plumbing, WiFi, sneakers, and t-shirts; but at the top levels, there is divergence in meaning and purpose.
“almost like uh a you know the um hypothetical math loss hierarchy this pyramid which he actually didn't draw but we all blame on him that there was a almost a total convergence at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of everybody in the world every young person that i could see wanted to live in a air-conditioned box with indoor plumbing and wi-fi wi-fi being the most essential and we were wearing sneakers and t-shirts i mean it was like and they were studying exactly the same things in school the curriculum was exactly the same it was a universal so there was this convergence at the lower levels of shelter clothing and those needs but i felt that there was kind of a divergence at the top about what it means about the meaning thing”
The past 10-15 years have shown we can all retreat from social media (moving from Facebook to Instagram to TikTok), and globally there's no evidence that outrage-driven platforms are keeping people engaged forever—there are signs of fatigue and withdrawal.
“do you find that happening worldwide is is that in other words because the outrage because of the fact that outrage seems to be the single emotional tone that people just get tired of and decide um you know i don't really want it anymore um do you do you find that happening around the world in any degree”
Real names/authentication platforms will emerge naturally as an alternative to anonymous platforms, with LinkedIn being an example of a successful real-name platform.
“i do understand there are arguments for uh for allowing people to be to not use the real name um i i would like to see certain platforms will emerge and have emerged like like linkedin where you have to use your real name”
The lesson of the hero's journey from mythology is 'participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world'—we cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy and say yes to life.
“joseph campbell... from his study of mythology and of the hero's journey a lesson he took from from studying human humanity's tendency to to put everything in these big hero stories he said the lesson of the hero's journey is participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world we cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy and then he says the the the worries approach is to say yes to life yea to it all”
Let Grow (an organization co-founded by Haidt and Lenore Skenazy) has succeeded in getting laws changed in four states that protect parents from arrest for allowing their children to play unsupervised in parks.
“we've basically given our kids what you might call uh experience blockers uh once they get on a phone they're all on it all the time the boys are on video games which are not as bad the girls are on the visual platforms which are really bad and childhood is partly over the free play is over um and so i co-founded an organization with lenore skines you called let grow if you go to litgrow.org and we've gotten laws changed in four states there are four states now where you can't be arrested just because your kid plays in a park”
The article 'The Coddling of the American Mind' was co-authored by Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, published in the Atlantic in August 2015, describing emerging campus culture changes related to objections to words, books, and speakers.
“my friend greg lukianov and i wrote an article about this called the coddling of the american mind in the atlantic in 2015. uh it came out in august and then in october november of that year many universities kind of blew up”
In the 1950s-60s, advertising (particularly subliminal advertising) was the major cultural concern; fears about manipulation gradually shifted from threat to manageable nuisance as people learned to cope; similarly, people might learn to use social media skillfully over time.
“when i was a kid in the 50s and then into the 60s advertising was the big uh bugbear and vance packer did a book the hidden persuaders and there was all this idea that uh there was subliminal advertising going on... but everybody was afraid and worried about that and we tried to protect children from advertising... and then by and by you've got sorted out and one could probably figure out a history of how long it took for that not to frighten people so much anymore it went from a threat to a nuisance and we can manage nuisances”
YouTube and how-to tutorials are changing humanity in extremely positive ways by making everyone capable of learning how to do absolutely everything; this is a genuinely transformative technology for knowledge democratization.
“likewise on youtube i understand there's uh pathological parts of youtube but uh kevin kelly and i pay attention to the how-to youtubes and they are brilliant they are changing humanity in the most positive way possible everybody is capable of learning how to do absolutely everything”
Stuart Brand has had a positive experience on Twitter that is productive for his research; he uses simple tools to mute disruptive people and hasn't needed to block anyone despite 45,000 followers, suggesting Twitter can be used productively by skilled users who manage attention boundaries.
“i'm having a great experience on twitter it's a major part of the research i'm doing for a book it's um relatively easy with the tools given me to mute somebody who starts getting personal or weird um i haven't had to block anybody 45 000 people paying attention supposedly but um so there's enough enough of a traffic it's easy to sort of keep steerage way to keep it sane and productive for me”