The details on "Project Mercury" are particularly striking when you look at the transcripts from Ottawa. During the House Heritage Committee hearings for the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), tech representatives repeatedly told MPs that the science linking platforms to mental health issues was inconclusive. We now know their internal data confirmed the link years ago. It is frustrating to see the "correlation isn't causation" defense used to stall Canadian legislation when their own researchers had already settled the debate.
Canada will 100% use this to censor dissent instead of protect children. That’s why even when I know all the damage of social media, I’m still against any regulation
We don’t need to wait another ten years of playing it safe while kids pay the price right now. This wasn’t some careful test; it was a huge, uncontrolled experiment on kids, and the signs are clear. Anxiety, depression, bullying, exploitation, and attention issues didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. They’re linked directly to smartphones and social media becoming a normal part of childhood.
Waiting for perfect agreement is a luxury parents and governments can’t afford. When the danger is obvious, responsible leaders step up. Australia raising the minimum age isn’t overreacting; it’s basic risk management.
We already see improvements when phones are taken out of classrooms. Extending that to early teens makes sense. Less social media means fewer predators, less humiliation, and more space for kids to live and learn in the real world.
The experiment failed. It’s time to end it instead of pretending to be neutral while another generation suffers the consequences.
Well said. Even though I was never a parent, it concerns me greatly that children are being exploited this way, and the harm it’s causing them, up to and including self harm and even death. Apart from this, I have even seen older adults become highly addicted to computer games, hours a day, to the point where normal conversation dies out. They don’t realize that this habit places them at higher risk for cognitive decline, IMHO.
You are right. The harm to children is real and immediate, and it is not limited to online interactions. Addiction to games or social media at any age rewires attention, diminishes real-world engagement, and carries long-term risks for mental and cognitive health. Adults and children alike are paying the price for habits that were never meant to be normal. The more we recognize this, the more urgent it becomes to set boundaries and protect the most vulnerable.
Jon and Zach, this is invaluable work. The seven lines of evidence and Meta's internal research form exactly the kind of case that parents and policymakers need.
I'd add a mechanism underneath the findings: the architecture itself. Social media isn't just correlated with anxiety and depression. It's structurally designed to keep the nervous system in open loops. Every notification opens something that doesn't close. The body accumulates this. Not sleep debt. Completion debt. Rest doesn't resolve it because the issue isn't depletion. It's unfinished time.
This helps explain why reduction experiments show benefits. It's not just less exposure to harmful content. It's giving the nervous system permission to close loops, to settle, to get an all-clear that the platform is designed to withhold. Completion ends the session. That's bad for engagement metrics.
Your point about "industrial scale" harm is exactly right. And the mechanism scales too. Keep a generation in open loops and you don't just produce anxiety. You weaken the capacity for sustained attention, for memory, for staying with anything long enough for it to become consequence.
The product safety question and the temporal design question are the same question.
I wrote about this last week in "You Are Not Distracted. You Are Unfinished." Thank you
Attributions of accountability are urgently required. Zuckerberg et al have made literally billions of dollars largely off the back of causing a significant amount of mental health problems, and that cannot be allowed to stand. I have no problem with people making a lot of money from their own efforts, but when that money comes with and/or causes huge societal problems, that is something that society shouldn't and mustn't tolerate. Western governments (because only they can) must investigate these issues immediately and urgently, and mete out appropriate penalties.
Compelling need to protect our children is very clear, but the negative toll it is taking on adults is not to be ignored. As I believe I heard you say that the Nantucket Project a couple of years ago, Meta may be a challenge to our democracy that it will struggle to overcome!
At some point you have to wonder why the studies would have to be conclusive for people to see this. Everyone I know is aware of how smartphones have affected my generation.
I am young. I have seen good, smart teenagers go from being able to sustain long conversations in the woods, to no longer being able to look me in the eye. I have seen people lose weight, develop strange anxieties, and become plagued by the lives and approval of strangers they have never met.
It cannot be healthy. I don’t think it’s ever going to be. There are good ways to use devices, and I have found ways to keep some measure of temperance, on the internet. But 90% of social media is benign. Some of it’s fine. At best, it’s a waste of time. At worst, it’s psychological torment.
If it’s considered, as an example, a torture method to expose people for long periods of time to pornography, (and other violent material,) I don’t see what’s so different about children being able to find it out on the internet, and watching it during their formative years.
I was going to go in the Air Force briefly as an instructor getting people out of enemy territory, and preparing them to go. There are a lot of methods of psychological abuse and manipulation that are frequently used on the internet, most especially by predators. Being exposed to violent or pornographic content overtime will break you. And if it breaks you as a hostage, as an adult, it will break a child. It could potentially ruin them for the rest of their life.
Some might say that’s extreme to point out. But you know what, so is letting children be exposed to violent pornography. That’s pretty damn extreme, too. I generally feel it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Social media can also have a very positive effect. It can be inspirational or informative. It can help people meet or stay in touch on opposite sides of the world. It can offer immense amount of info for people to learn new skills, learn about other cultures, history (which I wish more people knew even redumentary history), etc.
Maybe I'm an outlier but getting access to the internet when I was 13 opened up the world for me. And not having my parents hovering over me was a boon since I was raised in a fairly strict religious holdhold. I would say having the religious discipline background and a strong moral grounding also helped me fend off most of the darker temptations. So i'm not criticizing my parents either.
Yeah, social media has a lot of good things about it. It depends on the demographic and the context. For adults it’s probably fine, depending on the adult. For kids, or teenagers, it’s generally not safe. This is also addressing social media, not necessarily the internet as a whole. It’s sounds like you’ve had a positive experience. That’s awesome. Frankly though, I have met more people with bad experiences than good ones. You might be the first I’ve known.
So, given the leaks and timelines, did Zuk commit perjury before Congress? What about the company reps who testified to Canada? Can anyone be brought up on charges for their lies? I bet not.
If it can be proven that they lied to Congress or to a parliamentary committee, they should be brought up on charges. Proving that they lied knowingly will be the hurdle, as usual.
I'm sure Meta won't let this crisis go to waste, as age verification becomes another method to harvest and monetize our most sensitive data: biometrics.
I don't need or want the gov't to step in and be my parent. I agree the evidence is strong that young teens struggle to manage the temptations offered by social media and social media offers predators easier access to teens. I definitely don't think the evidence shows the need to hit the problem with a sledgehammer by requiring age verification to access social media or the internet. Show the evidence to parents, schools, teachers, and education unions.
1. Help them ban cell phone use in class.
2. Help parents push back on the social pressure to get their kids smart phones instead of a simple flip-phone.
3. Help law enforcement identify and track the predatory use and techniques, then make an example out of them.
Why does every problem have to be solved with poorly written laws and gov't money/regulation/enforcement?
Any research forthcoming on the searchable hardcore pornography database of young men’s primal fears about sex and women that we ran as an experiment on our 12 year olds? Probably not.
ain't that odd, the mainstream media and Meta align to strangle the internet. War on free speech by freaks fisting cameras hardwired to a walls sight and sound. They are doomed -- we are never going back to the parasitical propaganda pimps of the past 3,000 years. What a beautiful time to be alive!
I assume many on this site care about accuracy. The comparison here between the effects of child maltreatment vs social media on teen mental health is completely wrong. The PAF measure of child abuse effects is approximately 5 times more powerful than the very weak d value used to measure the effects of social media. That is, a PAF directly tying child maltreatment to 22% of poor mental health and 41% of suicide attempts is a vastly bigger effect than a d value of 0.22 for social media, which associates social media use with just 1% to 2% of poor mental health (and zero connecting social media use to teen suicide attempt).
The dismissal of child abuse and parents' addiction, violence, depression, and crime as huge factors in teens' poor mental health and safety is a real problem on these blame-social-media sites. It would be highly informative if those on this site would ask for a comparison of "direct harms" involved in (a) teens' being online, vs (b) teens' being in real-world activities such as school, church, families, sports, etc. I realize there are other values involved, but the implication that going online is unacceptably dangerous while being in the real world is completely safe is an obvious falsehood. I think a solid case can be made that online and offline lives are integrated rather than oppositional, but I would at least like to see honest evaluations.
As a former journalist who covered this extensively, the causal evidence now reads less like a moral panic and more like the evidentiary record finally catching up. Long overdue.
I'm wondering why I’m listening to Cal Newport on my tablet talking about overlooked tech dangers and mentioning Haidt several times and suddenly this post appears in my Substack feed, restacked by someone I don't follow. Yet they say our phones aren't listening or watching us.
The details on "Project Mercury" are particularly striking when you look at the transcripts from Ottawa. During the House Heritage Committee hearings for the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), tech representatives repeatedly told MPs that the science linking platforms to mental health issues was inconclusive. We now know their internal data confirmed the link years ago. It is frustrating to see the "correlation isn't causation" defense used to stall Canadian legislation when their own researchers had already settled the debate.
Canada will 100% use this to censor dissent instead of protect children. That’s why even when I know all the damage of social media, I’m still against any regulation
We don’t need to wait another ten years of playing it safe while kids pay the price right now. This wasn’t some careful test; it was a huge, uncontrolled experiment on kids, and the signs are clear. Anxiety, depression, bullying, exploitation, and attention issues didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. They’re linked directly to smartphones and social media becoming a normal part of childhood.
Waiting for perfect agreement is a luxury parents and governments can’t afford. When the danger is obvious, responsible leaders step up. Australia raising the minimum age isn’t overreacting; it’s basic risk management.
We already see improvements when phones are taken out of classrooms. Extending that to early teens makes sense. Less social media means fewer predators, less humiliation, and more space for kids to live and learn in the real world.
The experiment failed. It’s time to end it instead of pretending to be neutral while another generation suffers the consequences.
Well said. Even though I was never a parent, it concerns me greatly that children are being exploited this way, and the harm it’s causing them, up to and including self harm and even death. Apart from this, I have even seen older adults become highly addicted to computer games, hours a day, to the point where normal conversation dies out. They don’t realize that this habit places them at higher risk for cognitive decline, IMHO.
You are right. The harm to children is real and immediate, and it is not limited to online interactions. Addiction to games or social media at any age rewires attention, diminishes real-world engagement, and carries long-term risks for mental and cognitive health. Adults and children alike are paying the price for habits that were never meant to be normal. The more we recognize this, the more urgent it becomes to set boundaries and protect the most vulnerable.
Jon and Zach, this is invaluable work. The seven lines of evidence and Meta's internal research form exactly the kind of case that parents and policymakers need.
I'd add a mechanism underneath the findings: the architecture itself. Social media isn't just correlated with anxiety and depression. It's structurally designed to keep the nervous system in open loops. Every notification opens something that doesn't close. The body accumulates this. Not sleep debt. Completion debt. Rest doesn't resolve it because the issue isn't depletion. It's unfinished time.
This helps explain why reduction experiments show benefits. It's not just less exposure to harmful content. It's giving the nervous system permission to close loops, to settle, to get an all-clear that the platform is designed to withhold. Completion ends the session. That's bad for engagement metrics.
Your point about "industrial scale" harm is exactly right. And the mechanism scales too. Keep a generation in open loops and you don't just produce anxiety. You weaken the capacity for sustained attention, for memory, for staying with anything long enough for it to become consequence.
The product safety question and the temporal design question are the same question.
I wrote about this last week in "You Are Not Distracted. You Are Unfinished." Thank you
https://yauguru.substack.com/p/you-are-not-distracted-you-are-unfinished?r=217mr3
Jean Twenge and you guys should ask the question: has modern internet pornography’s celebration destroyed a generation?
Attributions of accountability are urgently required. Zuckerberg et al have made literally billions of dollars largely off the back of causing a significant amount of mental health problems, and that cannot be allowed to stand. I have no problem with people making a lot of money from their own efforts, but when that money comes with and/or causes huge societal problems, that is something that society shouldn't and mustn't tolerate. Western governments (because only they can) must investigate these issues immediately and urgently, and mete out appropriate penalties.
Compelling need to protect our children is very clear, but the negative toll it is taking on adults is not to be ignored. As I believe I heard you say that the Nantucket Project a couple of years ago, Meta may be a challenge to our democracy that it will struggle to overcome!
At some point you have to wonder why the studies would have to be conclusive for people to see this. Everyone I know is aware of how smartphones have affected my generation.
I am young. I have seen good, smart teenagers go from being able to sustain long conversations in the woods, to no longer being able to look me in the eye. I have seen people lose weight, develop strange anxieties, and become plagued by the lives and approval of strangers they have never met.
It cannot be healthy. I don’t think it’s ever going to be. There are good ways to use devices, and I have found ways to keep some measure of temperance, on the internet. But 90% of social media is benign. Some of it’s fine. At best, it’s a waste of time. At worst, it’s psychological torment.
If it’s considered, as an example, a torture method to expose people for long periods of time to pornography, (and other violent material,) I don’t see what’s so different about children being able to find it out on the internet, and watching it during their formative years.
I was going to go in the Air Force briefly as an instructor getting people out of enemy territory, and preparing them to go. There are a lot of methods of psychological abuse and manipulation that are frequently used on the internet, most especially by predators. Being exposed to violent or pornographic content overtime will break you. And if it breaks you as a hostage, as an adult, it will break a child. It could potentially ruin them for the rest of their life.
Some might say that’s extreme to point out. But you know what, so is letting children be exposed to violent pornography. That’s pretty damn extreme, too. I generally feel it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Social media can also have a very positive effect. It can be inspirational or informative. It can help people meet or stay in touch on opposite sides of the world. It can offer immense amount of info for people to learn new skills, learn about other cultures, history (which I wish more people knew even redumentary history), etc.
Maybe I'm an outlier but getting access to the internet when I was 13 opened up the world for me. And not having my parents hovering over me was a boon since I was raised in a fairly strict religious holdhold. I would say having the religious discipline background and a strong moral grounding also helped me fend off most of the darker temptations. So i'm not criticizing my parents either.
Yeah, social media has a lot of good things about it. It depends on the demographic and the context. For adults it’s probably fine, depending on the adult. For kids, or teenagers, it’s generally not safe. This is also addressing social media, not necessarily the internet as a whole. It’s sounds like you’ve had a positive experience. That’s awesome. Frankly though, I have met more people with bad experiences than good ones. You might be the first I’ve known.
Thank you for your tireless work surfacing this information and presenting it in a way that can make a difference for average parents! So grateful!
So, given the leaks and timelines, did Zuk commit perjury before Congress? What about the company reps who testified to Canada? Can anyone be brought up on charges for their lies? I bet not.
If it can be proven that they lied to Congress or to a parliamentary committee, they should be brought up on charges. Proving that they lied knowingly will be the hurdle, as usual.
Yes. Essentially only if they participated in or signed off on the research prior to testimony.
I'm sure Meta won't let this crisis go to waste, as age verification becomes another method to harvest and monetize our most sensitive data: biometrics.
I don't need or want the gov't to step in and be my parent. I agree the evidence is strong that young teens struggle to manage the temptations offered by social media and social media offers predators easier access to teens. I definitely don't think the evidence shows the need to hit the problem with a sledgehammer by requiring age verification to access social media or the internet. Show the evidence to parents, schools, teachers, and education unions.
1. Help them ban cell phone use in class.
2. Help parents push back on the social pressure to get their kids smart phones instead of a simple flip-phone.
3. Help law enforcement identify and track the predatory use and techniques, then make an example out of them.
Why does every problem have to be solved with poorly written laws and gov't money/regulation/enforcement?
Any research forthcoming on the searchable hardcore pornography database of young men’s primal fears about sex and women that we ran as an experiment on our 12 year olds? Probably not.
Why is that?
ain't that odd, the mainstream media and Meta align to strangle the internet. War on free speech by freaks fisting cameras hardwired to a walls sight and sound. They are doomed -- we are never going back to the parasitical propaganda pimps of the past 3,000 years. What a beautiful time to be alive!
I assume many on this site care about accuracy. The comparison here between the effects of child maltreatment vs social media on teen mental health is completely wrong. The PAF measure of child abuse effects is approximately 5 times more powerful than the very weak d value used to measure the effects of social media. That is, a PAF directly tying child maltreatment to 22% of poor mental health and 41% of suicide attempts is a vastly bigger effect than a d value of 0.22 for social media, which associates social media use with just 1% to 2% of poor mental health (and zero connecting social media use to teen suicide attempt).
The dismissal of child abuse and parents' addiction, violence, depression, and crime as huge factors in teens' poor mental health and safety is a real problem on these blame-social-media sites. It would be highly informative if those on this site would ask for a comparison of "direct harms" involved in (a) teens' being online, vs (b) teens' being in real-world activities such as school, church, families, sports, etc. I realize there are other values involved, but the implication that going online is unacceptably dangerous while being in the real world is completely safe is an obvious falsehood. I think a solid case can be made that online and offline lives are integrated rather than oppositional, but I would at least like to see honest evaluations.
Well said as usual, Mike! Shout it from the rooftops!
As a former journalist who covered this extensively, the causal evidence now reads less like a moral panic and more like the evidentiary record finally catching up. Long overdue.
I'm wondering why I’m listening to Cal Newport on my tablet talking about overlooked tech dangers and mentioning Haidt several times and suddenly this post appears in my Substack feed, restacked by someone I don't follow. Yet they say our phones aren't listening or watching us.