We are pleased to have with us Julie Albright, author of left to their own devices how digitial natives are reshaping the American Dream. Published this month by prometheus books. Julie albright is a sociologist digital and communication, a lecture in supplied psychology at the university of southern california. Julie albrights research is on the growing intersection of technology and behavioral systems. Her writing on digital culture, a number of scholarly articles, served as pure review or and National Science foundation, and the Research Council and variety of other professional publications. A sought after keynote speaker and consultant for insights Julie Albright has given talks at several energy conferences, served as a Research Associate at eharmony and appeared as an expert in National Media outlets, nbc nightly news, the wall street journal, the New York Times and in pr. In left to their own devices how digitial natives are reshaping the American DreamJulie Albright looks at the behaviors and morays of the nascent generation of Digital Natives. Those young people who never lived during a time without Digital Technology. Detailing in many ways the Digital Natives interaction with psychology is changed their relationships of people, places, jobs and other stabilizing structures to contend this generation in the process of a new way of life in the American Dream of past generations. Technology and connectivity has given Younger Generations an unprecedented opportunity to work or live anywhere. They are untethered from traditional aspirations, including increased isolation and loneliness and relationships, fragmented Attention Spans and what is more this rapid change, a widened chasm between Digital Natives and those brought up for the proliferation of Digital Technology the greatest generational gap in history. And appear go of rapid change, doctor albright offers fresh insight into the unintended effects devices have on family, community, business and society at large. Please background on approachi the subject. When using council and one is in sociology and a doctorate, marriage and family and sociology. In terms of the sociological trends happening in society and looking at the micro level on the ground, it impacts ourselves, our workforce, our relationship and things like that. It shifts back and forth between these two perspectives. Think about the context of what is happening and get into the more specific. One of the ideas than what is happening, i am sure youve seen the double helix of dna, youre familiar with that. That is one of the analytical trademarks in the book, the idea that two strands of dna represent Behavioral Technology and they are intertwined. The behavior shapes technology and technology shapes behavior. That is where we find ourselves now. Going forward, behavior and technology will never be torn asunder again. The double helix of dna and technology forms sociotechnical dna of society now. From that, new social behaviors, new ways of living, exploring and devices. One thing to think about, the second big idea, the cornerstone is we are coming untethered. When you think about what that means, millennials, Digital Natives, those that grew up in a world where there always was internet, they are in large numbers on hooking from things that were traditional for other generations. Things like getting married, like buying a home. Having children, going to church. These are the kind of behaviors that would have been routine, postworld war ii families. Younger people are unhooking from all these things and at the same time hyperattaching to Digital Technologies. If you look at what these things might mean, getting married, buying a home, buying a car, the American Dream. If you were to ask how you define the American DreamSomething Like that is usually in the description of how people talk about it and think about it. What does it mean when we are unhooking, stabilizing social structures and attached the Digital Technology and it is changing everything. Part of what is changing his childhood. Only 6 of kids play outside at all anymore. 93 of adults spend their time indoors so Digital Technologies really distanced us from nature and kids used to wander around, you might remember playing outside when you were a kid, did you do some of that stuff . Routinely. There is another aspect of that, if you go hiking and go to the woods, and get around them and all kinds of things. All kinds of things, you have to find your way back, navigate back home from wherever you were in there are all kinds of challenges and kids now are not doing that because their experiences are increasingly digitizing, what is happening now, kids are not developing an important quality and that quality is called resilience. The idea that you can bounce back from a setback, you can overcome adversity. They called 911, to call the police because of a disaster that was happening in their apartment. This idea that, not sure how to overcome things, it is a little disastrous consequence as a result of not having resilience in this Younger Generation. And they grew up in a world where there always was an internet but we have kids growing up with mobility, mobile devices, smart phones that are internet enabled, ipad, laptops and all that stuff. Kids are being these is given these devices. There is a band called the tubes. They had an album cover called Remote Control in the album cover was a wink and a nod to think about the evil impacts of television, people thought television was going to warp kids brains and they had a tv in the kids face in a little crib. I will show you a picture here, and this is a real product on amazon where the kid has an ipad in their face from day one. Party chairs have that ipad right there, we are feeding Digital Technology to children before they acquire their language skills. Neuropsychologists, neuroscientists know that there is something called brain plasticity the childrens brains are malleable like plastic and what you put into them, the influences and things youre exposed to shape the narrow pathways, what is the outcome when we have babies like you saw, acquiring Digital Skills before acquiring language. What will be the outcome of that . We dont know yet. That stimulation of videos on youtube, the input and stimulation happening, most parents say they have the tv on at the same time and most report both going at the same time. There is always stimulation, noise, sounds, visuals coming in. What does that do to attention and thinking and neural pathways being shaped by that input. It is determined on the horizon. That is where we are in terms of Digital Technologies and the city guided that. So we could say this was rewiring brains, these children are going to think differently than you do and that is where we are. And people are coming untethered. One of the reasons they are coming untethered is so many choices. You heard christopher say that i worked as a researcher with eharmony and help develop their product and helped the match People Better when i first started coming out by dissertation. Eharmony was a webbased matching service. Tenders and grinders and all these things, what people are swiping. It becomes a game. What happened is presented to young people, and unlimited sea of choices in front of you in terms of romantic relationships. Wouldnt you think this unlimited sea of choices, just the right choice for you. But what happens is, we see this in consumer psychology but there is a paradox of choice of foot and the idea is kind of funny. The more choices you have, makes it more difficult to choose. And the market where they are digging out samples of food or cheese, the table set up, and samples of jam and the first they had 24 varieties of jam and try anyone you want and then gave a coupon to buy a jar of jam after that. The second day it came back. Instead of 24 varieties they only gave 6 choices and the same coupon to buy a jar of jam. Common sense, you would think the more choices you will find, like apricot, whatever the jam is you will find that but it turns out that is not the case. When people were attendance as likely to buy any jam at all when they had more choices as opposed to when they had less. We are in a situation where there is a paradox of choice called choice overload. The more choices they had it is harder for us to choose anything at all. People are swiping swiping swiping, find someone a little harder, richer and more interesting, maybe someone i dont fight with. They dont end of choosing anyone at all. A new study just came out, half of americans are not in a romantic relationship and 65 of High School Kids never had a romantic relationship. If you go back to world war ii a lot of people married their high school sweethearts. One high school sweetheart, they dont have that. It is really changing the dynamics of everything. One of the reasons i brought that up, all the swiping swiping is easy come easy go. You can get a date so easily people just disappear. It is called ghosting, they take off and dont contact the person again, dont text and it goes to somebody at one time or another. The choice overload, is now happening in the workplace. There is this idea you go to an endless plethora of jobs available, people are ghosting their employers thinking they can get another one and another one and another one. This idea of this endless sea of choices is changing peoples willingness to commit to something. Theres something incrementally better out there. It is changing the dynamics commitment. And and it changes what adulthood means. There are sociologists that studied the markers of adulthood, the 5 markers and heres what they are. Completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent with a fulltime job, marrying and having a child. Back to 1960, by age 30, 77 of women at 65 did achieve all five of those markers by early 30s but if you fastforward now it is less than half of 30yearold women and a third of the men. We are living in a period of extended adolescence and that is part of the quality of untethered ring from these traditional markers. Some people say maybe we should just unhook from these devices and things like that but it is becoming harder and harder because in one sense they are addicted. I dont like that word. They have mobile phones available, they are baking in qualities that are similar to a one armed bandit slot machine and we talked about sampling fiction. Ever play the slot machine to do you pull the arm and things role and maybe you win and maybe you dont. I will try it again and the coins fall or the lights are going in the sirens because you won. That is exactly how instagram works, you are scrolling on the slot machine. Sometimes it is boring and nevertheless it keeps drawing you back in for more. The same behavioral drivers that are the most predictive of people coming back for more are based baked in so it is harder to put those phones down. Even the ding of an alert, a message, have you ever seen it go off and four people check the phones around you. Sometimes people are feeling a vibration that is not vibrating. Maybe there was, they want to keep checking and checking, people are checking, checking their phones thousands of times a day. The problem becomes this, going back to the horse and buggy days. The combination of devices, unhooking from the stabilizing social structures left particularly younger people, we are seeing the highest rates of anxiety, depression we have seen in full years. Im at the front lines of this, dont know if you realize this but in colleges, a quarter of students are on some kind of psychotropic medication for mental disorder. The key is coming untethered means coming on board, we dont have stabilizing social structure that are stabilizing peoples mental and physical health and so we need to reinvent that and how can we do that . As we pull away from these social structures how can we create new structures that provide stability to young people . We have a problem on our hands. That is the background on this project. I will read to you a little excerpt from one of the chapters so you can get a sense of the flavor and style of this book. This is called the untethered adult. Hopefully it will give you a sense of it. Chapter 3. The untethered adult, Greenwich Village new york city. It is a bit small, roy said with a wins as he unlocked the door to the apartment in the west village, my home for the next few days. Roy was drawn to new york by his dream of the bright lights of broadway ever since he caught the acting bug in high school yet moving to manhattan and making it there proved much more difficult than the dream. Tall, thin with dark hair, light eyes and pale skin, his protruding round ears gave him a mouselike appearance. After his acting career failed to launch he took a job at the apple store in midtown manhattan renting out his room on air b b, staying with his girlfriend. Roy seemed friendly as he rushed through a tour of the tiny living room and kitchen. When he swung open the door to my room, i caught my breath seeing how frantic it really was. This literally filled the whole room side to side. The only free space was a 4 foot wide area at the end of the bed to turn around in. Stepping inside i was overwhelmed for a moment but the smell of sweat, mens cologne and worn shoe leather, my heads one for a section and i searched for something to anchor me in the claustrophobic space, regaining my bearings. The room was actually for the marvel of urban organization. Every square inch was utilized and neatly organized. A small shelf jetted out from the wall next to the bed to hold a glass of water or cell phone and alpha closet system across from the bed held a small tv. Winter coats hung in descending order on the back of the door. And on risers so high that even at 5 foot 9 i literally had to jump to get in. Had i been any shorter i am not sure i would have made it. Rosa shoes line the shelf underneath. I was thankful for the windows overlooking the avenue of the americas that gave me some breathing room in this tiny space. Outside, the news was winter framed by a great black balcony. I can see every day life persisting below the snow. Trucks piled up and hustled things to intro through the snowbanks into Stores Across the street. People went past on the sidewalk with scarves and hats and shiny hunter beats against the cold. Many had sweated dogs ambling alongside. Roy rushed out by pointing out the travel sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner left on the bed, sitting neatly next to the shampoo atop the instructions was a small orange origami, i picks up a tiny bit of incongruous sunshine on this gray wintery day and turned it between my thumb and forefinger for a closer look and stepped back outside the room to look around. All three bedrooms opened onto a windowless living room. On one side large opaque plastic storage boxes full of neatly folded clothes were stacked floortoceiling against the wall. A brexit bar jetted from across to the kitchen serving as a dining table, and the alpha storage system below neatly holding their silverware, glass and dishes, pegged under the kitchen cabinet, spoons and spatulas and other equipment and that is already a collection of small cans cascading down the right side of the cabinet. A single diminutive and oddly angled bathroom hid behind the kitchen containing a small disaster, more like it was so dainty that only a small child could stretch out and it. Roy had three roommates and all three shared this tight space, a comparable appointment in los angeles, the room next to mine houston other air b b, strawberry blonde, i would come to new york during internship. Although polite and pretty she always seemed preoccupied with something. It seemed so strange that none of the roommates were ever there and instead two transient visitors occupied their space was next week two transient roommates would meet in their tiny space. Roy, his roommate and iris, a typical, untethered adults, young, professional, urban and on the move they would rather rent then own and are increasingly single. According to the 2010 census, almost half of manhattan some neighborhoods rising threes 2 thirds single. This uptick is not unique to manhattan but is instead of indicative of a larger trend sweeping the nation as millennials postpone or avoid getting married altogether, forming relationships, getting married and having a family were wellestablished aspirational goals from earlier generations. Getting married and having a family is legal, after world war ii, prided themselves on getting married and having a home in the suburbs with 2. 5 children, a dog and a Station Wagon in the driveway. These were not only markers of adulthood but symbols that one had achieved the American Dream. Marriage and establishing a family home are two of the steppingstones in a series of milestones put together for the transition to adulthood. Sociologists have studied this transition for decades and have identified five key markers of adulthood, leaving home, becoming financially independent with a fulltime job, marrying and having a child. We are seeing a shift in the achievement of these milestones compared to earlier generations and they say by the 1950s and 60s most americans viewed family roles and adult responsible it is as synonymous. For men the defining characteristic of adulthood with having the means to marry and support a family so for women it was getting married and becoming a mother. Most women in that area married before they were 21 and had at least one child before they were 23. By the early 20s most young men and women were recognized as adults both socially and economically. Young people