via Vox: Full Q&A: NYU’s Jonathan Haidt explains the problem with Gen Z
By Eric Johnson
On the latest episode of Pivot, NYU’s Scott Galloway spoke to his colleague from the Stern School of Business, Jonathan Haidt, the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind.
In the book, Haidt and his co-author Greg Lukianoff argue that Generation Z — the group born after 1995 — have been raised to avoid taking risks and to earn “prestige points” by objecting to subjectively controversial jokes in the workplace. He claimed college professors like him are now walking on “eggshells” because they’re afraid of being reported and shamed by their students.
“My prediction is that all the problems that we have on campus, the endless conflicts over words and clothing and food, these endless conflicts are coming to you in corporate America,” Haidt said. “Depends on the industry; I hear they’re already there in journalism and tech actually, but I think they’re gonna enter just about every industry. I mean, maybe not mining or something, but any industry that hires smart kids from the elite schools, especially in the Northeast and West Coast, is going to be importing this conflictual attitude.”
Scott Galloway: Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I’m Scott Galloway, here without adult supervision, as Kara Swisher is in Kauai on vacation. Kara, Kauai, and vacation are three words I would never imagine in the same sentence. But Kara, we hope you’re enjoying yourself.
My co-host today, Professor Jon Haidt, a social psychologist, professor at NYU Stern School Business, a colleague, and the author of multiple best-selling New York Times … author of the Happiness Hypothesis: The Righteous Mind. And most recently, The Coddling of the American Mind, which we’ll get to a little bit later. Jon, welcome to Pivot.
Jonathan Haidt: Thank you, Scott. It’s a pleasure to share the mic with the most charismatic and provocative professor in my building.
Go on! By the way, the building is just you and me. Right? It’s just three of us. Yeah, that’s a pretty low bar. That’s definitely tallest midget syndrome. And by the way, congratulations on your most recent book, which is, no joke, kind of blowing up. And you know how you can tell it’s really successful is people, our colleagues are really starting to resent you. If you get a Netflix series, we’ll start hating you. But anyways, let’s bust into some of the biggest stories of the week. And I’d love to get your thoughts.
Amazon passes Apple and Microsoft to become the most valuable company in the world. So some boasting here, I’ve been predicting this for several years and finally, it’s happening. I would argue that it’s kind of the baton been handed off from the iPhone to voice. Have you thought at all, Professor, about voice and what it might, how it might actually impact some of the things you talk about? The pervasiveness of technology in our lives and in our homes and our kids kind of growing up with this always-on technology?
I haven’t thought much about it. We only just got our first device, somebody gave us the Google, little Google thing. The only thought I have on it is that I’m very concerned, as we’ll talk about later, about the way that the touch technologies, I think, are a lot more addictive than, say, television screens that you and I grew up with. They’re interactive in a way, the way that slot machines are. And so far, I think voice is probably not going to be like that. I mean, conversation with the thing is, you know, kind of fun, kind of frustrating. But it doesn’t make people turn into, you know, the person sitting at the slot machine for hours on end.