---
title: "Phone anxiety | Isak Rautio, Mikko Alasaarela | Negotiator 258"
titleOriginal: "Puhelinahdistus | Isak Rautio Mikko Alasaarela | Neuvottelija 258"
episodeNumber: "258"
guest: "Isak Rautio, Mikko Alasaarela"
datePublished: 2024-07-01
duration: "55:34"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis"
captionsVtt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep258-puhelinahdistus-isak-rautio-mikko-alasaarela/captions.en.vtt
captionsSrt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep258-puhelinahdistus-isak-rautio-mikko-alasaarela/captions.en.srt
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["free_speech_society","ai_enterprise_tech"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from the MacWhisper SBV transcript, YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. Chapter timecodes are taken from the transcript; no caption files are published with this page. Recorded in the same session as Futucast #465, which covers the same book from a different angle."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/524-puhelinahdistus-rautio-alasaarela-neuvottelija-258"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep258-puhelinahdistus-isak-rautio-mikko-alasaarela/
---
# Phone anxiety | Isak Rautio, Mikko Alasaarela | Negotiator 258

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=0s) A twin episode, and why Haidt convinced them
- [02:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=123s) Causation, not just correlation
- [04:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=243s) Where the mental health curves turn
- [06:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=365s) Games, and which kinds actually harm
- [08:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=486s) Antifragility and the curling parent
- [10:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=607s) What boys saw online before anyone was watching
- [12:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=727s) Body dysmorphia and internalising disorders in boys
- [14:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=850s) Algorithmic drift and diverging worldviews
- [16:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=971s) Silicon Valley, the like button and the first wave
- [18:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1094s) From buying a game to free-to-play
- [20:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1218s) Follower media and the influencer market
- [22:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1339s) The algorithmic feed, and fifteen seconds at a time
- [24:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1460s) Music, format and why short video trains the model
- [26:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1585s) TikTok as an instrument of policy
- [28:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1709s) The First Amendment problem
- [30:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1830s) Section 230, the DSA and platform liability
- [32:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=1952s) Algorithms as editorial choice
- [34:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2075s) Audience capture, and the creator's addiction
- [36:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2196s) Divestiture, and why the algorithm is the company
- [38:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2318s) Four hours and forty-eight minutes a day
- [40:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2440s) Why a ban does not solve the data problem
- [42:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2560s) The death of the link and interest-based internet
- [44:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2680s) Miettinen's optimistic case for a conversational AI
- [46:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2803s) A cultural interpreter, and what an assistant could be
- [48:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis&t=2925s) Phones out of the school day

## Summary

Recorded in Futucast's studio as one half of a twin episode, this is a working reading of Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation with Futucast host Isak Rautio and algorithmic-influence specialist Mikko Alasaarela. The conversation traces social media's three waves — friend, follower, algorithm — explains why 85 per cent of games are now never-ending free-to-play, works through the American constitutional problem with banning TikTok, and ends on Miettinen's contrarian hope that a conversational AI interface could be addictive enough to rescue us from the short-video feed.

## What is discussed

- **A twin episode.** Recorded in Isak Rautio's Futucast studio, released alongside Futucast #465 on loosely the same subject — Jonathan Haidt's *The Anxious Generation*.
- **Correlation into causation.** Haidt's aim was to move past the standard objection; Miettinen cites Finnish university hospital leaders reporting that demand for adolescent psychiatric services exploded exactly a year after smartphones spread among teenagers.
- **Not self-diagnosis.** Miettinen had previously been sceptical of a culture of self-diagnosis and says the book convinced him the damage is real rather than suggested.
- **Rautio as the cohort.** He finished school in 2012, the year the curves turn, and grew up online — and notes he saw a murder video at eleven because that is what teenage boys did.
- **Which games harm.** Alasaarela's distinction: a game you can finish contributes positively; the 85 per cent that are never-ending free-to-play are built on a gambling-style addiction mechanism whose only aim is ten returns a day. Free-to-play went from 30 to 70 per cent of games inside 2011.
- **Girls and boys differently.** Social pressure, appearance and cosmetic procedures on one side; on the other, internalising disorders rising in boys too, including body dysmorphia expressed as muscle dysmorphia.
- **Algorithmic drift.** Feeding boys boy-content and girls girl-content has produced measurably diverging worldviews, with South Korea as the case where young people no longer expect heterosexual partnership at all.
- **Three waves.** Friend media (Facebook, the like button in 2009), follower media (Instagram, Twitter, the influencer market), and algorithmic media (TikTok's For You feed) — each less social than the last.
- **Why short video won.** Hundreds of very short items teach the model your behaviour in hours rather than weeks; attention adapts down to exactly the level the format requires.
- **The intentionality question.** TikTok's content is curated in China, the domestic Chinese version is demonstrably healthier, and the app is banned there — which makes a claim of pure coincidence hard to sustain.
- **The constitutional problem.** A US court rejected the 2020 ban attempt on the grounds that dangerous challenges are examples of constitutionally protected expression, and disliking speech is not a criterion — national security is the argument that can work.
- **Section 230.** The provision treating platforms as conduits rather than publishers is what shields algorithmic curation from editorial liability; Europe's DSA has begun to move the line.
- **Creators are addicted too.** Stop posting and your ranking falls — millions of producers are in a compulsion loop that gets far less attention than the consumers' one.
- **The algorithm is the company.** Estimated at 80 per cent of TikTok's value, and China legislated against exporting it — so a forced sale may transfer a business whose popularity collapses on separation.
- **Four hours and forty-eight minutes.** Gallup's figure for American teenagers' daily social media use, of which 4.3 hours goes to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
- **A ban does not fix data.** Without federal privacy law, the same data can be bought from third parties — though Miettinen notes the closing of APIs after AI scraping has made open collection much harder.
- **Miettinen's optimistic turn.** Rather than only Haidt's remedies, he argues a multimodal conversational AI could be more compelling than the short-video feed — which would at least restore interaction, and could become a sparring partner for the social skills an unsiedated childhood never taught. Alasaarela's caveat is that the currently best-selling AI companion market is not educational.
- **Phones out of the school day.** Both endorse it: learning results recover and social skills develop during the day, and what happens at home afterwards is a separate question. Elite schools, Alasaarela notes, have already done it because the effect on results is direct.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Puhelinahdistus | Isak Rautio Mikko Alasaarela | Neuvottelija 258](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cy_L1Mis).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/524-puhelinahdistus-rautio-alasaarela-neuvottelija-258).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Phone anxiety | Isak Rautio, Mikko Alasaarela | Negotiator 258, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep258-puhelinahdistus-isak-rautio-mikko-alasaarela/, 2024-07-01. For quotes include episode 258 and timestamp.