Excellent article on methodology. Just speculating, but I wonder if the GBD data might be used as a controlling variable. In other words, it might be used to show expected mental health based on our current theories vs. actual mental health. A deviation between the two that can be explained by mobile device usage would tend to support your theory.
I do not doubt nor question the rigour and probity of the research discussed in this post. But I do wonder whether it entirely manages to avoid being affected by (what I would call) The Mental Health Industry's relentless expansion of the concept in recent times. In pop-psychology, plain old-fashioned human UNHAPPINESS has increasingly been redefined as a mental health problem. Reassure me that mental health research does factor this in.
I share those concerns, but you’ll notice they cited suicide data and self-harm. Even if the self-harm is subject to concept creep, suicides are black and white. An increase in suicides among teen girls indicates that something real is going on - not just concept creep in mental health research.
I’m flummoxed that the scientific research industrial complex refuses to conclude that, perhaps, the internet has had a net negative effect on society and women in particular. I’m a millennial and I suffered from anxiety and depression for my entire youth. At 32, I abandoned social media and changed my relationship with the phone and wouldn’t you know it, my mental health improved and SI ceased.
I suspect the professional managerial class has an interest in trying to obfuscate the role of the internet because 1) they simply don’t want to believe it because it would make them feel like bad parents and 2) there is a clear class interest in this denial that Haidt and co. keep debunking from various angles. This topic is like whack a mole. Each time they show they’re right, another study casts doubt with bad methods. I’m curious if anyone else has been thinking about the reasons behind this denial among the mainstream.
Hi Anuradha - Can you say more about the class interest in a potential denial? (Social worker here steeped in systemic class awareness/social justice but don't see the class angle.) Thank you.
Hi Mike, my thought here is that the college educated have a great interest in keeping the techopoly going because we benefit from it financially, even if we don’t directly work for these companies. E.g. I work in IT consulting for marketing teams. If these platforms went away tomorrow, marketing channels that the professional class depends on in their own work contexts would be gone. The social media ecosystem along with the news not only feeds us information we claim makes us informed but really is the bedrock of all marketing activity.
If Instagram’s negative effects on teen girls and women led it to being severely restricted, an income stream for another group of women would disappear. I’m not sure this is a correct hypothesis of course, but it does seem like every time Haidt shows the internet is the reason, another potential explanation is always brought up. I’m curious if you have any speculations on this.
That makes sense Anuradha - I too have worked in IT and know how quickly we can rationalize almost any activity that directly benefits us. I think what you describe is mostly subliminal and related to cognitive dissonance where we will do whatever we can to reduce psychological discomfort. I do suspect that powerful corporate lobbying and shareholder pressure (not subliminal) have a larger effect on keeping the technopoly going (also made up of the same classes you mention). I read these Substacks a few time a week and what most strikes me is the gulf between what we know and what we do. I wish great studies led to great policy but so often they lead to more studies. I don't think we need a double blind trial to prove that teen girls and women are suffering - I just read that the average 16-25 year old woman spends almost 5 hours a week taking selfies. BIPOC girls lead the pack in social media usage. It's as if our house was on fire and we argued about which room was hottest.
Also related to this, you may enjoy Liam Kofi Bright's paper, White Psychodrama which addresses the cognitive dissonance: https://philarchive.org/archive/BRIWP
You're absolutely right, and I'm honestly surprised basically no one is commenting on the psychological effects of women spending so much time self-objectifying and imagining how others might desire them through a photo. I've seen my peers spend much of their leisure time on content creation and everyone thinks this is perfectly normal. While feminism decries women's objectification, it's become a feminist point of pride that women can create content and express themselves through advertising platforms, as though it's a source of empowerment. I suspect if women were not on social media, straight men also wouldn't be. And, social media has become tied up in dating, whereby if you don't have one, you're seen as somehow not worthy of further interaction. This has been reported to me by both straight and gay men.
Ugh. Is that really a feminist point of pride now? (I'm a Gen X feminist who also recalls debating pro-pornography feminism in college.) I'm so interested in where feminism is evolving (as well as what men need). I see this every day where men have agency and voice and so many women I know have been socialized to be passive, submissive and looked at (yes there are powerful women exceptions). This has such a negative effect on their happiness and confidence.
From my own experience, fourth wave feminism is about choice. The girlboss era gave way to the "do whatever makes you happy" era. I also observed that women of my generation hardly have issues using their voices, but they're being used loudly on the internet to spread what I think is a shallow understanding of women's liberation. It has become closely tied to consumption, creating a desirable self, and living as one wants. The feminist position is that any choice is a feminist one, and you can probably see, as you seem like a thoughtful person, where this could go off the rails and be harmful to the collective.
I also see women of this generation suffering from a lot of mental health issues, but I see those closely tied to the cognitive distortions from the dominant leftist ideology Haidt and Lukianoff have discussed. Those distortions have led to a sort of disempowered feeling inherent in this same feminism that contradicts the agency we are supposed to have. The conflict between the exhortation to exercise agency and a disempowering ideology has, I think, contributed disproportionately to the depression of liberal/leftist women. I have no data to back this up, just three decades of being in this culture.
Zach, you invited readers to suggest an alternative explanation for the link between smartphone adoption and declines in adolescent mental health. What about the possibility that smartphones connected teens with more peers who supported/encouraged/pressed them to share mental health issues? In other words, after the emergence of smartphones, the reporting of mental health issues increased more than their prevalence did. I wouldn't actually propose this, because (a) I don't have evidence, and (b) it's a dangerous idea if it's wrong, but I'm wondering: Is there data that weighs against it?
Are we definitely 100% confident the CDC data is accurate and consistently recorded over time (the non self reported stuff at least)? There's nothing in that data collection that could explain the increase in the 2010s for girls, other than actual increases in suicide and self harm?
I do tend to agree on the type 2 error stuff. Though I do struggle with the tiny numbers we're talking about; a handful in every 100k dying by suicide.
Keep digging on all this stuff guys. If there is definitely a link between social media and increased suicide and self harm, your diligent effort is what is going to prove it. I salute your work.
No system is perfect, but the CDC is the best available tool that I know of to understand what is happening to the mental health of young Americans.
My understanding is that there is no reason to think that the post-2010 data was processed in a way that was systematically different from before then. The International rises in teen girl suicide also points to it not being a result of a reporting change (the vast array of sources showing the same trends—anxiety, depression, self-harm also signals this). But if you find that changes were made that I am unaware of, please let me know.
Hi, following up on this, what data source do you deem sufficiently reliable for analysing international trends on youth suicide? I see the following options: GBD estimates (very problematic due to underestimation); WHO estimates (similarly flawed); each country's specific national database on suicide rates. I have two questions here. Is the WHO Mortality Database any better than the WHO estimates you mention? If not, and if we should look at each country separately, this is quite a challenge for researchers because many countries (even in Europe) do not offer easily publicly available datasets on suicide rates broken down by sex and age. While I am assured the suicide rate has increased in the described countries, I would like to expand this analysis to many other countries but am now doubting the feasibility of this (if both WHO and GBD are seriously flawed).
This hypothesis explains A) how the youth mental health crisis is caused by increasing dopamine levels, B) why the symptoms began appearing in 2010, and C) why the phenomenon is international yet situated mainly outside the tropic: https://jannemiettinen.fi/FourthTurning/#htoc-2-7-2
Therefore, social media is not the cause, but it is a great scapegoat because dopamine increases feelings of loneliness, that increases time spent on social media. While social media may provide a moment of relief from the feeling of loneliness, it is only a temporary "fix", as it often leaves the users feeling even worse.
Increasing dopamine levels also cause these effects that have been increasingly visible since ~2010:
- Increasing feelings of social dominance: societal polarizations, which is especially visibly in social media sites, because people often go online when feeling lonely.
- Increasing prevalence of ADHD symptoms & diagnoses. Symptoms include impulsiveness, outrages, problems with concentrating, etc.
Excellent article on methodology. Just speculating, but I wonder if the GBD data might be used as a controlling variable. In other words, it might be used to show expected mental health based on our current theories vs. actual mental health. A deviation between the two that can be explained by mobile device usage would tend to support your theory.
I do not doubt nor question the rigour and probity of the research discussed in this post. But I do wonder whether it entirely manages to avoid being affected by (what I would call) The Mental Health Industry's relentless expansion of the concept in recent times. In pop-psychology, plain old-fashioned human UNHAPPINESS has increasingly been redefined as a mental health problem. Reassure me that mental health research does factor this in.
I share those concerns, but you’ll notice they cited suicide data and self-harm. Even if the self-harm is subject to concept creep, suicides are black and white. An increase in suicides among teen girls indicates that something real is going on - not just concept creep in mental health research.
Yes I tried to word my comment so as to make clear that I was not arguing with the main thrust of the post.
I’m flummoxed that the scientific research industrial complex refuses to conclude that, perhaps, the internet has had a net negative effect on society and women in particular. I’m a millennial and I suffered from anxiety and depression for my entire youth. At 32, I abandoned social media and changed my relationship with the phone and wouldn’t you know it, my mental health improved and SI ceased.
I suspect the professional managerial class has an interest in trying to obfuscate the role of the internet because 1) they simply don’t want to believe it because it would make them feel like bad parents and 2) there is a clear class interest in this denial that Haidt and co. keep debunking from various angles. This topic is like whack a mole. Each time they show they’re right, another study casts doubt with bad methods. I’m curious if anyone else has been thinking about the reasons behind this denial among the mainstream.
Hi Anuradha - Can you say more about the class interest in a potential denial? (Social worker here steeped in systemic class awareness/social justice but don't see the class angle.) Thank you.
Hi Mike, my thought here is that the college educated have a great interest in keeping the techopoly going because we benefit from it financially, even if we don’t directly work for these companies. E.g. I work in IT consulting for marketing teams. If these platforms went away tomorrow, marketing channels that the professional class depends on in their own work contexts would be gone. The social media ecosystem along with the news not only feeds us information we claim makes us informed but really is the bedrock of all marketing activity.
If Instagram’s negative effects on teen girls and women led it to being severely restricted, an income stream for another group of women would disappear. I’m not sure this is a correct hypothesis of course, but it does seem like every time Haidt shows the internet is the reason, another potential explanation is always brought up. I’m curious if you have any speculations on this.
That makes sense Anuradha - I too have worked in IT and know how quickly we can rationalize almost any activity that directly benefits us. I think what you describe is mostly subliminal and related to cognitive dissonance where we will do whatever we can to reduce psychological discomfort. I do suspect that powerful corporate lobbying and shareholder pressure (not subliminal) have a larger effect on keeping the technopoly going (also made up of the same classes you mention). I read these Substacks a few time a week and what most strikes me is the gulf between what we know and what we do. I wish great studies led to great policy but so often they lead to more studies. I don't think we need a double blind trial to prove that teen girls and women are suffering - I just read that the average 16-25 year old woman spends almost 5 hours a week taking selfies. BIPOC girls lead the pack in social media usage. It's as if our house was on fire and we argued about which room was hottest.
Also related to this, you may enjoy Liam Kofi Bright's paper, White Psychodrama which addresses the cognitive dissonance: https://philarchive.org/archive/BRIWP
You're absolutely right, and I'm honestly surprised basically no one is commenting on the psychological effects of women spending so much time self-objectifying and imagining how others might desire them through a photo. I've seen my peers spend much of their leisure time on content creation and everyone thinks this is perfectly normal. While feminism decries women's objectification, it's become a feminist point of pride that women can create content and express themselves through advertising platforms, as though it's a source of empowerment. I suspect if women were not on social media, straight men also wouldn't be. And, social media has become tied up in dating, whereby if you don't have one, you're seen as somehow not worthy of further interaction. This has been reported to me by both straight and gay men.
Ugh. Is that really a feminist point of pride now? (I'm a Gen X feminist who also recalls debating pro-pornography feminism in college.) I'm so interested in where feminism is evolving (as well as what men need). I see this every day where men have agency and voice and so many women I know have been socialized to be passive, submissive and looked at (yes there are powerful women exceptions). This has such a negative effect on their happiness and confidence.
From my own experience, fourth wave feminism is about choice. The girlboss era gave way to the "do whatever makes you happy" era. I also observed that women of my generation hardly have issues using their voices, but they're being used loudly on the internet to spread what I think is a shallow understanding of women's liberation. It has become closely tied to consumption, creating a desirable self, and living as one wants. The feminist position is that any choice is a feminist one, and you can probably see, as you seem like a thoughtful person, where this could go off the rails and be harmful to the collective.
I also see women of this generation suffering from a lot of mental health issues, but I see those closely tied to the cognitive distortions from the dominant leftist ideology Haidt and Lukianoff have discussed. Those distortions have led to a sort of disempowered feeling inherent in this same feminism that contradicts the agency we are supposed to have. The conflict between the exhortation to exercise agency and a disempowering ideology has, I think, contributed disproportionately to the depression of liberal/leftist women. I have no data to back this up, just three decades of being in this culture.
Zach, you invited readers to suggest an alternative explanation for the link between smartphone adoption and declines in adolescent mental health. What about the possibility that smartphones connected teens with more peers who supported/encouraged/pressed them to share mental health issues? In other words, after the emergence of smartphones, the reporting of mental health issues increased more than their prevalence did. I wouldn't actually propose this, because (a) I don't have evidence, and (b) it's a dangerous idea if it's wrong, but I'm wondering: Is there data that weighs against it?
Are we definitely 100% confident the CDC data is accurate and consistently recorded over time (the non self reported stuff at least)? There's nothing in that data collection that could explain the increase in the 2010s for girls, other than actual increases in suicide and self harm?
I do tend to agree on the type 2 error stuff. Though I do struggle with the tiny numbers we're talking about; a handful in every 100k dying by suicide.
Keep digging on all this stuff guys. If there is definitely a link between social media and increased suicide and self harm, your diligent effort is what is going to prove it. I salute your work.
Hi Ben,
This is a good question. Here is the link to the CDC WISQARS help page, which includes resources to understand their data collection process: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal_help/data_sources.html
No system is perfect, but the CDC is the best available tool that I know of to understand what is happening to the mental health of young Americans.
My understanding is that there is no reason to think that the post-2010 data was processed in a way that was systematically different from before then. The International rises in teen girl suicide also points to it not being a result of a reporting change (the vast array of sources showing the same trends—anxiety, depression, self-harm also signals this). But if you find that changes were made that I am unaware of, please let me know.
Hi, following up on this, what data source do you deem sufficiently reliable for analysing international trends on youth suicide? I see the following options: GBD estimates (very problematic due to underestimation); WHO estimates (similarly flawed); each country's specific national database on suicide rates. I have two questions here. Is the WHO Mortality Database any better than the WHO estimates you mention? If not, and if we should look at each country separately, this is quite a challenge for researchers because many countries (even in Europe) do not offer easily publicly available datasets on suicide rates broken down by sex and age. While I am assured the suicide rate has increased in the described countries, I would like to expand this analysis to many other countries but am now doubting the feasibility of this (if both WHO and GBD are seriously flawed).
Good evidence, and very well-written! Youth mental health is one of today's biggest challenges.
Ian Bogost was right. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/the-cigarette-of-this-century/258092/
Look at the climate and the fact kids know they will not have the life we had, and may not survive it.
Well done
Jonathan,
This hypothesis explains A) how the youth mental health crisis is caused by increasing dopamine levels, B) why the symptoms began appearing in 2010, and C) why the phenomenon is international yet situated mainly outside the tropic: https://jannemiettinen.fi/FourthTurning/#htoc-2-7-2
Therefore, social media is not the cause, but it is a great scapegoat because dopamine increases feelings of loneliness, that increases time spent on social media. While social media may provide a moment of relief from the feeling of loneliness, it is only a temporary "fix", as it often leaves the users feeling even worse.
Increasing dopamine levels also cause these effects that have been increasingly visible since ~2010:
- Increasing feelings of social dominance: societal polarizations, which is especially visibly in social media sites, because people often go online when feeling lonely.
- Increasing prevalence of ADHD symptoms & diagnoses. Symptoms include impulsiveness, outrages, problems with concentrating, etc.
I’d love to use that picture in my upcoming statistics lectures - can I borrow it?
Of course —here's the source Yao (2014): https://twitter.com/flowingdata/status/465800050426511360
Thank you!
good catch!
great point, Chris. thanks
Followup question: do we know if smart phone usage in France and Germany has been starting at as early ages as it does in the US / UK?
I do think it's a bit later, at least for the youngest kids. In Germany, 81% of 12-13 year olds own one, but "only" 9% of children aged 6-7 do, compared to 25% of 3-4 year olds in the UK (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1283678/smartphone-children-owners-age-group-germany/). In France, 99% of 12 to 17 years have one, but not sure about younger kids. I was surprised when I first read this, though: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/children-under-the-age-of-15-in-france-are-now-banned-from-using-their-phones-in-school/