Honestly with Bari Weiss · The Free Press

Kids Don't Need Phones with Jonathan Haidt

November 18, 2025·1 hr 20 min·5 clips

A girl searched for exercise tips and within two years was hospitalized with a heart rate of 25 — her family was told she would die.

The premise is blunt. The host treats smartphones and social media as a big reason many kids feel more anxious, tired, depressed, and hooked. Haidt brings the practical hope. His work, especially The Anxious Generation, is framed as a push to bring back play and get screens out of schools. The live New York City setting gives the conversation some heat, with the host channeling audience urgency into sharper questions about homes, schools, technology companies, and political will. Pinterest becomes the concrete example. Haidt says the company's CEO read the book, reached out, and raised the age to 16 for social contact with strangers. That costs customers at first, but Haidt says the tradeoff reveals a plain truth: teenage girls prefer platforms where men are not sending them pictures. Then the conversation moves to AI. The host asks what happens after a decade or two of loose smartphone and social media exposure. Haidt's answer is grim. He says powerful companies were allowed to test products on children without guardrails, control conditions, or real liability. Section 230 sits close to the argument. He separates the rule itself from interpretations that, in his view, helped platforms dodge responsibility for what they show users. His AI warning lands harder. Haidt thinks society could make the same mistake in the next two or three years as children gain more AI friends. The ending turns civic: solving this together would make him more hopeful about democracy, because it would prove people can still do hard things together.

As heard by us

A clear warning about phones, AI, and childhood.

Jonathan Haidt is framed as the one turning a broad complaint about smartphones and social media into a practical argument for change. The episode stays close to what families, schools, and tech companies can do: bring back play, keep phones out of schools, and ask for…

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Why you'd press play

You want the sharpest case against handing kids over to phones and AI.

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