example, my company decided to cut expenses because we were losing money. What can I do with that? Nothing, right? There's no joke you can make about somebody who does the thing you're supposed to do. So the fact that it's in the Dilbert comic and we can all laugh at it and recognize it as funny — and I didn't change it much, just that Dogbert had to be re-educated — the fact that they would re-educate anybody is so ridiculous that it just stands on its own as, okay, that's just stupid.

All right, enough about that. Do you think that there's a phone addiction that we have and that the reason we check our phone so much is that the phones are really, really good? Is that why we check them? Because they're so addictive and they're good? That's what we all think, right? And it feels that way when I use my phone. It feels addictive. So it's perfectly reasonable to assume that's what's going on.

Let me throw out another possibility. Have you ever been with somebody you really enjoyed being with and then you know she hadn't looked at your phone in hours? Does that ever happen to you? If you're with people, or even just one person, and you're really happy with what you're doing, you don't even think about using your phone. So here's the provocative new theory: phones are not awesome. They're not addictive. People got worse. People started sucking so badly that spending time with them is just painful. But my phone never disappoints me. When was the last time you looked at your phone and it did not give you a hit? You know, it's like my best dealer ever. I'm like, I need a hit of some chemicals here. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Good. Okay. Scroll, scroll. All right, I'm happy now.

I've said this a lot, but I think that our changing preferences have made us all terrible to each other. In the early days nobody had much of an interest outside of what they were doing locally. So at the end of the day, how are your crops? Oh, my crops are good. How are your crops? I mean we basically had common references and people enjoyed each other because that's what they had. And now I think people are so picky about what they like and don't like. You put any two together and there's so much they disagree on because there's so much they think about and there's so many different ways to look at everything that we end up being like two porcupines who can't hug. You know, it's like — although I guess porcupines do reproduce. You ever wonder how porcupines reproduce? Let me turn it into a joke. It's already a joke. I'm stealing this joke. How do porcupines reproduce? Very carefully. Very carefully. All right, I'm just putting that out there.

Were you aware that the biggest cause of depression and suicide among the youth is lack of sleep? Did you know that? I heard this as data that if you look at lack of sleep it tracks directly to depression and suicide. Not too surprising, right? So lack of sleep is the number one cause of suicide and depression. What causes lack of sleep in 2023? Only the phone and screens. Just screens.

So I'm gonna go all the way here. I think social media should be illegal for minors. American social media and TikTok and everything else. Now TikTok should be banned in America, but the other ones, you know they're American companies and I think they should stay for adults. But I think that minors should not have access to social media after 9 p.m. What do you say? After 9 p.m., no access to social media. But my first choice is to ban it completely for young people. I don't think young people should have access to any social media. It's not like we don't know that it's dangerous.

Let me ask you this. Let's say Big Pharma came up with an idea and the idea was they were going to have you look at screens every night and you can do it as long as you want. You could stay up all night if you want. And then they do a study — this is Big Pharma, right, just a hypothetical — and they do the randomized control trial and they find out that the people who use their screens at night lose sleep and end up being depressed and suicidal. The people who do not use the screens have just normal lives and they're better. So would the government approve that product from Big Pharma?

If social media had been tested in a randomized controlled trial before anybody had access to it — and of course you can't do it — would it be legal? I don't think so. No. I think the health impact, especially on children, I think the health impact of social media would have made it banned if it had been a drug. And the reason that we don't call social media a drug is because we're stupid bucket people. Humans are stupid bucket people. Everything has to be in a bucket. What are you, conservative? Are you conservative or a liberal? Let me get my bucket. Oh, you're in between? No, you can't be in between. Nobody's in between. Get in your bucket, right?

So as soon as you say that drugs are a pill or an injection, then you say, okay, that's drugs. We'll treat drugs this way. We get all these rules for what a drug is. And then somebody invents social media, which is clearly a drug. All right, I won't even listen to an argument on this point. Social media is a drug that's just administered in a different way. Instead of a needle or a pill, it just goes in through your eyes as images. But it's absolutely a drug. And the fact that we don't treat it the way we treat the things that we test and do randomized control trials has nothing to do with whether we should or whether it makes sense. Has nothing to do with the logic, the reasoning, the priority. Has nothing to do with that. Has only to do with the fact that we reflexively put things in buckets and our medical bucket just doesn't have screens in it. And that's it. We put screens in the entertainment bucket when it should have been in the medical bucket. Nobody — there's not one person arguing the point. There's not a single person here who will argue that point. Yeah, it's a digital narcotic, right?

You tell me if we had considered social media a drug, it would not pass government approval. It wouldn't even come close. Not even close.

I've heard more people — I heard Bill Maher the other day that he can't watch a movie anymore because they're too long and boring compared to the quick hit of social media. I don't know if he was talking about other people or about himself, but he made the point. Now who was the first person you heard say that? I think I'm the first person you've ever heard say that, that movies are dead. You'll never be able to watch a movie again unless you're with somebody. It's more about being with the person. Yeah, yeah. So I was ahead of the curve on that, I guess.

So U.S. News, the periodical, the publication U.S. News, every year they do ranking of colleges and schools, I guess they do graduate schools and medical schools and stuff like that. Yeah, they're having trouble ranking medical schools because some of the medical schools are resisting b