“Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

— Jeremiah 6:16

What is happiness, and how can we get some?

Twenty years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to ancient wisdom and modern science for answers in his bestselling book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” Now, in a newly updated anniversary edition, he revisits that timeless question in a world transformed by smartphones, social media, and AI.

Haidt joined “Morning Joe” today to explore the sources of happiness, why children need room to struggle and fail, and how technology is crowding out the experiences that make us human.

JS: This book came out in 2006, before the smartphone era. What struck you most when you revisited it 20 years later?

JH: Two things. First, the ancient wisdom that has been passed down for literally 100 generations has held up remarkably well. And second, a year after the book came out, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and said, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” We had no idea how profoundly smartphones would reshape our relationships and even the nature of our consciousness.

WG: So what is the happiness hypothesis? What actually makes us happy?

JH: Almost every ancient tradition says happiness comes from within. But when you combine wisdom from the East and West with modern psychology, the best way to understand it is that happiness comes from between: We need to be embedded in relationships, in productive work that matters, and in something larger than ourselves.

JS: So many of the 10 great ideas in your book parallel biblical teachings: Paul writing about doing the very thing he doesn’t want to do, Jesus saying, “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Why do we keep falling short?

JH: The ancients were incredibly insightful about consciousness, the tricks our minds play, the quickness to judge, human relationships, adversity, and suffering. My early work on moral judgment was all about how our inner lawyer is always building the case against others and the defense case for ourselves. We are evolved, engineered to be hypocrites.

Mike Barnicle: One casualty of smartphones that we rarely discuss is eye contact. What happens when we lose that human connection?

JH: The guys who created all this technology are generally not known for being very good at social relationships. They don’t understand that just interacting isn’t the same as making eye contact with another human being. And especially our boys: Because they spend so much time on video games and porn, and now gambling, they’re losing social skills.

JS: Young parents especially need to hear this: Hovering isn’t doing your children any favors. Why does backing off matter so much?

JH: One of my mother’s parenting dictums — which she learned from a therapist long ago in the ’60s — was “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Don’t rush in to help, because it’s the struggle that causes the growth. Your child’s emerging social sense needs conflicts, exclusion, and setbacks, within limits. This is why we have childhood, to have those experiences.

WG: How do we reverse the damage from smartphones and technology and reclaim our attention?

JH: It starts with a recognition that we are Team Humanity. We often think if an alien invasion comes, maybe we’ll recognize we’re all in this together. Well, guess what? The alien invasion is here: AI is, in a sense, an alien entity. We’ve got to reclaim our attention first. That’s the prerequisite to everything else.

JS: When the next president takes on education reform, what part should screens play in classrooms?

JH: They were pushed in without any research to show benefits, and there still isn’t any. They’re so damn distracting that they seem to be causing the decline in test scores and reading. The tech barons themselves tend to choose schools that have no technology. So, for the most part, rip it all out of elementary and middle schools until it is proven to be useful.

JS: Many kids today can’t write a sentence or get through a book. What’s at stake?

JH: This technology is hurting their education in exactly the ways you describe. Basic skills matter, and books most of all. Once you give a child a smartphone, they crave the quick dopamine, and it becomes very difficult to read a book. If we lose books, if we lose the accumulated wisdom of humanity because all the next generation can do is consume little snippets on TikTok, then we’re done as a civilization.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.

MORNING JOE FAMILY MEETING

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CHARTS OF THE DAY

Source: Fox News poll of 1,202 registered voters conducted Oct. 9-12, 2026. Margin of error: ± 2.5 percentage points

WHAT THEY SAID

Willie Geist on Trump’s one-man show

“This is how Donald Trump views the presidency: You just do what you want. Congress is irrelevant. You don’t have to go to them for tariffs — or to start a war. Inside his own West Wing, Trump’s saying he didn’t really need to talk to his chief of staff or the FBI. It all comes from him and only him.”

David Drucker on the Trump Cabinet

“In the first term, there’s a learning curve for the president and everybody who works for him. Now, in the second term, everybody knows what they’re doing, but there’s a level of exhaustion, and the talent isn’t as good. Over the last few months, things have begun to unravel, with everybody looking over their shoulder and the president in a bubble of his own making. This is all going to show itself after the election — when everybody will have to deal with the fallout.”

Elise Jordan on James Talarico

“Talarico comes across as humble and willing to admit his missteps. He is not angry, and that’s such a big part of what voters are responding to. When someone shows a modicum of ‘Hey, I’m willing to work with the other side, and I’m not a crazy extremist,’ that goes a long way winning these crossover voters.”

The post “Don’t just do something. Stand there”: Jonathan Haidt and Joe Scarborough on raising children in the age of AI appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.