It’s easy to get wrapped up in the chaos of day-to-day life and forget just how much has changed in recent years. But if we took a step back and considered what life was like just a couple of decades ago, we’d be mind blown at how different modern living looks today — especially as it relates to technology.
Back in 2024, Glenn Beck sat down for an extensive interview with Dr. Phil about the toxicity of our increasingly digital world. Given the expansion of artificial intelligence and social media algorithms in just the last year, their conversation is perhaps more relevant than ever.
“In 2002, the first text message hadn’t been sent. … We weren’t at all digital,” says Dr. Phil.
However, in the subsequent years, “We started to get much more into the internet, and then [2008-2009], it was like a bunch of C130s flew over and dropped smartphones on everybody,” he says, “and that’s when I saw as big a change in our society as has happened in my lifetime for sure — I think as big a change to mankind as has happened since the Industrial Revolution.”
Fast-forward to today, and the vast majority of people are “walking around with as much computing power in [their] hand as we had when we did the moonshot.”
This leap in technological progress has caused a lot of damage to the human soul. Glenn considers artificial intelligence’s projected growth over the next few years. “Man is not geared for that. I mean, we are animals and our instincts — everything — comes from millions of years of experience. We’re not ready for this,” he says.
“And it’s showing,” Dr. Phil agrees, “because if you look particularly at our young people who immerse themselves in this technology, we’re seeing the highest levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, [and] suicidality … since they started keeping records for that sort of thing.”
“Young people stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives and comparing themselves to that, but the problem was they’re comparing themselves to fictional lives [of influencers],” he explains, recalling times he’s had influencers on his show who have admitted that their lavish lives on social media are a far cry from reality.
These phony content creators are setting unrealistic expectations for the younger generations, who buy into the lie that life is fun and easy and then find themselves depressed when their life doesn’t measure up.
Compounding the issue is the tragic reality that most people walk around looking downward at their phones instead of up where real life is happening. When the iPhone first came out, Glenn immediately noticed this shift in behavior and warned that these smart devices were a dangerous “experiment on humankind.”
We now know from recent studies that he was right – smartphones are indeed rewiring the brain and harming the human psyche in ways we don’t fully understand yet.
Even more disturbing is the fact that those who are developing the algorithms that dictate the content we see should not be trusted. Dr. Phil points to a study conducted on a 13-year-old girl that proved that an algorithm is just a “money grab,” designed to get people “emotionally invested,” usually to their detriment.
“We’ve seen the information that the girls get anxious, they get depressed, their self-worth goes down. It hurts them to see [curated content],” he says, but “[social media companies] don’t care … so they continue to feed them upsetting content because they click more and get more ad exposure.”
“They’re victimizing your child consciously,” he warns.
To hear more of the conversation, watch the full interview above.
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