Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where free thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, associate editor Toby Young and

Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

In September 2015, around the same time Colette came into existence,

Atlantic magazine published an article arguing that

college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like.

That article blossomed into a famous 2018 book titled The Coddling of the American Mind,

and the two co-authors, Greg Lucianov and NYU Professor Jonathan Height, became widely recognized as experts on the transformations

in parenting, education and technology that have been encouraging children to feel more upset,

more vulnerable, and more lonely than the generations that came before.

Professor Hight, my guest this week, has continued his research on how social media,

Instagram in particular, is contributing to these problems, especially in regard to girls.

Many of his warnings have proven prophetic.

Recently in fact, investigative reporters at the Wall Street Journal have unearthed documents showing how executives at Facebook, which owns Instagram, have focused closely on getting young users hooked on their services.

And amid such concerns, it was also reported that Facebook's Instagram unit will be pausing the development of a special service known as Instagram kids for children under the age of 13.

Last week I discussed these topics with Professor Hite by Skype

video call. Here are excerpts from our conversation. A couple of years ago I

...