I think there needs to be more analysis of the *content* of what teens are looking at on social media, how content has changed over time since teens have had widespread social media use, and how the ideas of that content has spread beyond social media and into broader culture so that even kids who are not on social media or are light users of it are affected by these ideas. I feel like Haidt puts too much weight on Instagram causing girls to be insecure about their looks and waiting for likes and comments from their friends (photoshopped magazines, billboards, and celebrity photos were around and blamed for soaring numbers of eating disorders and insecurities long before 2012). They need to look at the ideas that are being constantly repeated in the memes, reels, and TikToks. For example, that everything they feel is a symptom of anxiety or depression which is a central theme even in what is supposed to be funny or irreverent content. Also that everything they do is somehow political or about their identity, that their words, their opinions, even the content they consume or post can have literally life or death effects. I feel like they discuss these issues (like the idea of reverse CBT in The Coddling), but they aren't making the connections with that this is the content the kids are seeing more and more of on social media. For example, if you take two teen girls who spend four hours a day on instagram, that's too much time that will negatively effect both, but if one is spending that four hours watching funny videos about pandas, recipe videos because she has a baking hobby, softball videos because she plays in a weekend rec league, and other various light non-political videos, I predict she has a lot better mental health than another girl who spends that same amount of time watching videos about politics and identity that keep her constantly on edge, looking for threats and focused on problems combined with videos constantly talking about their anxiety and low-key depression.
Yes. The exclusive focus on a device and the absolute refusal to consider the effects of the content on the device is mystifying. They recognize that photos on Instagram can affect a girl’s self-image in a negative way. But silence about the rest of the hysterical and dark content out there. Then it’s just the device.
Passive consumption of anything, especially on the digital tools we use, is detrimental to children's developing brains. 4 hours?!! That's 1/4 of walking hours. Childhood is a necessary time for multidimensional, multisensory, interactions with live human beings. It is essential for their developement. It is evolutionary and based on very strong neuroscience.
I very much appreciate Jean Twenge taking up this complex topic that we all should have been on top of 20 years ago, when parent-age suicide and overdose rates started rising/skyrocketing, and Gen Z was in diapers. Now we have multiple, full-blown crises.
First, 20-agers are not the most suicidal. The short-lived 2020-21 spike in younger-age suicides accompanying the COVID pandemic has since abated. Both 2022 and 2023 CDC figures, with very few deaths remaining to be added, show middle-agers have returned to being the most likely to commit suicide. Teens’ and age 20-29’s suicide and overdose rates fell sharply in 2022, while middle-aged rates rose. In 2022 and 2023, age 20-24’s suicide rate ranked below every older age group 25-64, and teens' rates were the lowest of all.
Second, Twenge relies heavily on survey self-reports of mental health (depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts) that are amply contradicted by real-world outcomes. Mental health issues such as depression, suicidal thoughts, and addiction are deeply stigmatized in American society as moral weaknesses. That middle-agers SAY they’re always doing fine is not relevant.
Tragic outcomes are. Even selectively picking the post-2010 time period during which teens had their biggest increases in self-destructive deaths (suicides and overdoses), grownups of age to be their parents were and are doing far worse.
I randomize this comparison by using the ages of the Surgeon General and local substackers (I’m the oldest) to contrast with teens and young adults. Using standardized deaths from self-inflicted suicides and overdoses per 100,000 population from 2010 to 2022, the kids aren’t the problem:
Girl, age 14: up 3.0 annual deaths to 4.7 per 100,000 population in 2022.
Girl age 16: up 3.6 annual deaths to 7.5 in 2022
Boy age 18: up 7.7 annual deaths to 32.2 in 2022
Man, age 46: up 66.1 annual deaths to 101.5 in 2022
Woman, age 52: up 16.1 annual deaths to 42.1 in 2022
Man, age 60: up 49.4 annual deaths to 106.2 in 2022
Man, age 73: up 17.8 annual deaths to 43.8 in 2022
Note that father-age men, 46, suffered an increase in self-inflicted deaths 18.3 times faster to a level 13.5 times higher than did 16-year-old girls, and even worse trends and levels compared to middle-school girls. Overall, from 2010 through 2022, a record 798,000 middle-agers died from self-inflicted suicides and overdoses, equivalent to the entire population of San Francisco gone. As Gen Z grew up, middle-aged suicide/overdose deaths soared from 23,228 (2000) to 40,730 (2010) to 98,470 (2022).
Unlike misleading percent changes applied to wildly differing numbers, this standardized comparison reflects what families actually experience. Teens left behind after the death of a parent, relative, teacher, coach, etc., would find that depressing, but we don’t ask teens what’s making them unhappy.
Twenge's points suggest a fascinating question, though. How is it that teens (especially girls) report more depression and suicidal thoughts than middle-agers, yet teens (especially girls) have such strikingly low rates of suicide and self-destruction in real life?
It isn’t meds. Middle-agers are much more likely to take anti-depressants than teens or young adults (yet, middle-agers claim they’re less depressed?). It isn’t economics; midlifers are America’s wealthiest age, able to afford mental health care. Further, aren’t middle-agers “developed brains” supposed to make more reasoned decisions than supposedly impulsive “teenage brains”?
I argue one reason for teens’ (especially girls’) extraordinarily low rates of manifest self-destruction – not likely to sit well here! – may be teens’ greater use of social media. That argument results from yet another paradox no one mentions.
According to the CDC survey, teen girls who use screens 5+ hours/day are more likely to report frequently poor mental health (47%) than teens who use screens <1 hour/day (30%), as well as sadness (50% vs 34%), and considering suicide (31% vs 23%). I see those comparisons cited a lot.
However, no one mentions that those same frequently-onscreen teen girls on the same survey then turn around and report being LESS likely to actually attempt suicide (15% vs 19%) and to self-harm (3% vs 7%), as well to try hard drugs, be violence victims, etc., compared to rarely on-screen girls. How can screen time be both more depressing and less suicide/harm inducing?
Put another way, what intervenes between depression and actual suicide attempt/completed suicide to strongly protect girls from actual harm? One clue is that girls are much more likely to suffer parental abuses than boys (62% vs 48%); frequently on-screen girls are 88% more likely than rarely on-screen girls to be abused by parents/grownups; and parent-abused girls are 8 times more likely to attempt suicide (32% vs 3%) and 27 times more likely to self-harm (10% vs 0.3%) than non-abused girls (again: this is the population we’re worried about). Do we then conclude that girls being online somehow provokes parents to violent and/or emotional abuses?
Or, do we look at these as reverse correlations: that abused/depressed girls are more likely to log more screen time than their non-abused counterparts to connect with others who reduce their suicide, self-harm, and other risks?
Finally, Twenge raises another good issue elsewhere: economically advantaged teens report nearly as high depression levels as disadvantaged teens, yet suicide/overdose “deaths of destruction” rates and increases are much worse among poorer adults. However, teen deaths show a similar pattern. The highest levels and worst trends in teen suicides/overdoses by far are among rural White teens in conservative (Republican) states compared to White or diverse teens in Democratic cities, with other populations in between. That is, teens in liberal areas may report more depression, but they are much less likely to actually kill themselves compared to teens in conservative areas.
This suggests yet another disconnect between teens’ amorphous attitudes like depression or sadness (whose meaning we can’t interpret) versus overt suicide attempts and self-harm, along with real-life suicides and self-harm cases (all actual behaviors). A teen depressed because of global warming, Gaza, her dog dying, or getting beaten by mom’s boyfriend requires very different approaches than one depressed because of social-media snarks, or chemical imbalance.
We can nitpick flaws in each other’s studies and surveys, but what we really need is large, comprehensive surveys that ask teens more detailed questions about how a variety of parental issues – abusive behaviors, drug/alcohol abuse, suicidality, unemployment, arrest (rates are now higher among 40-agers than high-schoolers!), incarceration, etc. – as well as political issues affect teens’ own mental health and behaviors. The 2021 CDC survey showing parents’ abuses and job losses were much more important drivers of teens’ depression and suicidality than screen time (including TV time) hint at a much larger problem.
A very comprehensive response Mike. I'm still digesting the origin article and your response, but wanted to support the self-reporting problem. Seemed like the story might be butting up against lack of self-reporting in older generations that remain uncomfortable with open discussion around mental health.
Thanks for comment. Yes, for many years, there has been a huge disconnect between middle-agers' self-reports on surveys that they're doing fine, versus hard tabulations of skyrocketing overdose and suicide deaths, rapidly rising crime and imprisonment in the early 2000s, family breakup, and other ills. Perceptions of reality are so far out of whack that major authorities, led by the Surgeon General, can say (using 2022 figures) that 239 suicides and overdoses among girls and 351 among boys age 10-14 constitute a horrific crisis (tragedies, certainly, but not a generational crisis), while 4,729 such deaths among women age 40-44 and 12,727 among men 40-44 -- their mothers, fathers, relatives, teachers, etc. -- can be dismissed as irrelevant. I look forward to any further comments you may have after looking over both articles.
Race to Nowhere, a documentary film made in 2009 and shown in school auditoriums all around America and also some abroad, was the account of how the pressures to learn in accelerated classes, being on a sports team, doing social service, tons of homework, and very little sleep, and more, was resulting in teen deaths here, and high school stress and suicides also in other high performance expectation countries.
I agree totally with what is proven here about social media, but school stress has also not declined, this all due to focusing only on left brain functioning: facts and figures, rational thinking, memorization, testing and the infrequent balancing use of the right brain intelligences: curiosity, discovery, connection to others, hands on activities, intuition, insight, ahas, interests, talents and passions, and an inherent desire to help others due to this innate connection to others.
Right brain activities and openness increases serotonin, the wellness hormone, whereas yes blue light and screens create cortisol, the stress hormone.
Thank you for these in-depth studies being done, and it is also time to change public education to be more like the original private Waldorf and Montessori schools. I call it the right to truly learn in public education. Project Based Learning, PBL, is one excellent approach allowing interest and discovery, combined then with natural and connected thinking, taught then as feed-in from teachers as needed, all results in integrated learning, what learned not forgotten, and kids out-testing those without this approach.
Rereading what you wrote, I have to push back a little against your left/right dichotomy, because it's not quite accurate. "Discovery", "hands on activities", "interests", and "talents and passions" definitely do not lateralize to the right hemisphere (most people are right handed, which the left hemisphere controls!). Intuition and connection to others do. I'm not as sure about the others (ahas makes sense as being RH), but I believe your distinction is outdated. The description of the left hemisphere is more accurate. Both hemispheres are in use for everything we do, but they have different ways of processing and interacting with the world and certain functions lateralize more to one hemisphere over the other.
I also saw in your link that your organization assumes autism is related to greater right hemisphere intelligence, when I've seen it argued that it's related to right hemisphere hypo-function or dysfunction and left hemisphere dominance (e.g. autistic people struggle with non-verbal communication, which is RH dominant). However, many "spiky" skills associated with autism are also disproportionately processed in the right hemisphere (e.g. spatial skills, music).
See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009)
Sorry, I gave my last reply above your two comments. In my papers I discussed how those on the spectrum from ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, Asperger’s syndrome, and autism all function from a similar set up, but in different ways. This is because as we move let’s say left to right, ADD to autism, the autism side of the spectrum is much more sensitive, of course, and thereby they need more structure than the others and respond differently. Yes, they are number and letter huge able to pick out codes and patterns, but the right brain also is involved more than most people, it the deep Knowing in Rain Man (Kim Peek), Temple Grandin and Einstein envisioning sitting on a light beam and realizing the interaction of what then was expressed as E= MC2. One of my students who had Asperger‘s, and having trouble with writing the three paragraphs in an expository essay in third grade on the district testing, inserted this into his writing, which definitely came from his heart and his ability to absorb meaning and beauty (Right Brain) using poetic words beyond normal 3rd grade writing: “Annie’s heart blossomed like a lotus flower in the spring.”
Passions come from the heart connected to the right brain, and natural talents, stemming from those, if followed on that path. Someone can be talented intellectually, of course, but talented intellectually could also leave out connection, which, is pretty much the history of tech.
Too short space here to really address the fine points.
Papers linked to through that website? I'll take a look when I have some time! I know how hard it is to summarize this kind of thing in comments. (For the record, I've noticed several flaws in Iain McGilchrist's work re left and right hemispheres too, including that he doesn't acknowledge that autistic gifts are usually located primarily in the right hemisphere). In retrospect, I was quibbling a bit with the definition of "talented", I understand where you're coming from.
Is the right brain involved more than in typical people, or just differently? From my research, it seems to be that in autism some areas of the right hemisphere are more developed, while others are underdeveloped. Atypical. (Obviously there are other brain differences too).
I'm about 2/3rds of the way through The Alphabet versus the Goddess and I have so many thoughts ... but I think Shlain is wrong when he characterizes the left hemisphere as "masculine" and the right as "feminine"; he's right that left hemisphere dominance increases misogyny but misses that it seems to increase misandry as well. It'll take me a while to get everything together but I'm going to do an essay.
It's more like women's brains tend to be more balanced between the two hemispheres on average, while men's brains tend to be more lateralized on average. Thanks 😊
Thank you for sharing this. In addition, social media use and communicating via text message instead of in-person would also shift young people to more left hemisphere functioning (written language lateralizes to the left hemisphere, non-verbal communication such as body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, to the right, the latter is absent when communicating via the written word).
I worked at a daycare briefly in undergrad; there was a four-year-old boy there who could read and do basic math, but was severely anxious and withdrawn and socially stunted. My boss told me his parents were professors who had pushed academics on him early -- she didn't say it, but it was obvious all the staff thought these parents were abusive for doing this and for neglecting the play (etc) part of his childhood. I've spoken to other daycare workers who have observed the same pattern ... "precocious" children who had left brain achievements pushed on them prematurely, who already show significant signs of poor mental health and social connection.
I explored the harms of a left hemisphere focussed early childhood in this essay, which examines the link between childhood "giftedness", autism/ADHD, and gender dysphoria:
Also, the increasingly fast pace of life in general seems to greatly favor the left brain, if only because the left processes and reacts a bit faster than the right. This IMHO is both a cause and a consequence of our inane and insane addiction to (economic) growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host. That is probably why the predicted re-balancing of the brain hemispheres predicted by Leonard Shlain in 1998 never seemed to materialize, and if anything we have gone more and more left-brained since then. Just my $0.02.
(Also note that average internet connection speeds have increased more than 100-fold (!) since 2000, more than tenfold since even 2010. I doubt very much that is a coincidence.)
Thank You, I look forward to reading your essay. I did not go in depth into the how the now almost forced left brain learning by children in kindergarten and even prior some in preschool is harming children, and the world. Montessori, Waldorf and Piaget all knew that the first years up to seven years old are for exploratory learning by the intelligence of the children to explore and discover, building the framework for then thought, based on experience. And yes, if you take a look at the world, the whole world is too left brain focused now, starting in our schools, and outward with tech. When only left brain thinking is used we go in circles, disconnected to our right brain feel for life, with insights, intuition, passions, talents out of the box thinking, hands on experiences, but mainly with connection. Without connection, we cannot solve the real problems for the world which after connection and inspiration can be shaped by left brain thinking, but only after. Must run now, but there’s much to talk about in all of this. Nice to see a discussion.
Well-said. Makoto Shichida would certainly agree, as would Leonard Shlain and Ian McGilchrist. Our brains are becoming increasingly "far-left" in terms of lateralization.
Even without the information provided, my question to the proponents of this theory would be, “why would you think it more likely that parents’ mental health issues are causing kids’ mental health issues instead of the other way around?”
My personal anecdotal experience has been that kids’ struggles are a significant cause of stress, anxiety, and depression among parents.
Everything Jonathan Haidt describes reflects the mental notes I was making during my first child's upbringing (born in 2004). I am an immigrant who came to the US at age 5. My parents came with nothing and saw 4 girls through masters and doctoral programs. We are by no means a model minority but we developed hardiness. My parents and my generation valued independence and critical thinking. We grew up in NYC in working class, brown, black, and immigrant neighborhoods. I saw struggle, failure, and resilience everyday. My now 19 y.o. was raised with more than I had with far more access to opportunity. But we live almost exclusively among white, liberal families. When she was very young, I began to realize that while I fostered independence, creativity, allowed for boredom, simplicity, and tried to keep our lives not centered around children--the qualities of my upbringing that helped me develop resilience-- she saw what her peers were getting and demanded to be deferred to and catered to. I was bemused and annoyed. But I continued to try to strike a balance and not cater. As a tween, I would overhear the things she was learning from kids media (which she got mostly elsewhere) and was concerned--parents are buffoons, kids are the center of the world. As she grew older, she internalized all the messages hyperfueled by social media (even though she had limited access to it) about "listen to the kids", "adults are ruining the world," dismissiveness towards adults (remember "okay boomer"? How many of us GenXers were told that?), "the kids will save us." Try as I might, this self centeredness was overpowering her developing self. Then came the phones and while I started with the flip phone, all her friends had the smartphone and I, foolishly thinking I could set reasonable boundaries, caved. And suddenly she internalized all this distorted language about mental health which instead of empowering her, made her more fragile and demanding. She insisted she must have the phone always "for mental health." She talked us into letting her have instagram for that reason. The therapists/school counselors also fed this narrative, handing over language like harm reduction and moderation to a 14 year old who quickly weaponized it to get to do what she wanted. And she started cutting, claiming all kinds of disorders, and then trans (I am actually a boy)identity (the little girl who lived in princess dresses and loved makeup and fashion, books, horses, and female heroines). Her father and I are both trained in child and human development and I have been a parent educator. We may not have been perfect parents but we were normal and attuned. She got lost as soon as the smart phones came. Things came out of her mouth and went into practice feeding a distorted sense of self. Both of us were baffled (her dad was a incorrigible and traumatized teen but even he was worried). Her younger brother was born bubbly, hyper creative, and resilient. He could just rebound from setback with the wisdom of a 50 year old. But when he got a phone, I watched all those qualities dissipate. Yesterday I removed all non-school related apps on my sophomore son's phone after struggling with screen time limits settings (they suck), monitoring, and encouraging "moderation." He gets two hours of browser use because his teachers have them use their phones in class for various reasons which I am furious about. He is mad about it, I am sure. But I had him read Haidt's article in the Atlantic and we watched the Coddling of the American Mind. Luckily he is a bright kid and knows, at least in theory, why I am doing this. His gaming computer sits on my dining table in the middle of the house. He can use it in my presence on the weekends. He is perfectly fine with that. He wants the guidance. He told me his friends are "hopeless." He told me that all they see are extremes of humanity online--shitty and pathetic people and over the top/wildly "successful" people--and they don't want to be either so they don't know how to fit in.
I watched my older child's mental health erode from age 5 onward. I thought I could prevent it by thoughtful parenting. But I couldn't. I think what is happening to our kids preceded the smartphone but the smartphone amplified the vacuousness, narcissism, and materialism that we were already breeding in America culture in the prior decades.
PS-In 2019 I did a focus group with teens about health and was immediately struck by the specific messages they were getting from social media. It was disconcerting as a health professional. I started mentioning it to colleagues and therapists--"hey, do you know what kids are seeing, hearing, learning on social media? We have no clue about the world they are in." They have literally been stewing in this distorted world with messages created by distorted people. This is not what adults should want for our kids.
What about capitalism itself as a root cause of all the mood disorders increasing (to epidemic levels), and social media as one of its latest manifestations? Data all the way back to Durkheim and before should be included. The rationale (makes it plausible but not necessarily true) is that capitalism makes people not need their face to face neighbors and family (and even coworkers) in direct and satisfying ways, both for production and consumption. Villages and tribes have been declining in number since capitalism started, and now finally families and integrated psychological individuals are breaking apart too. Can you try to falsify this hypothesis?
The last graph (Minutes per day socializing with others in person) begs the question: what happened between 2009 and 2012, when the trend suddenly went back to early 2000s level ?
Why was it decreasing before that ? (here, it can't be because of smartphones or social media, which hardly exists at the time.)
And why did the kids "suddenly" went back to spending time with each other ?
As I read The Anxious Generation, I was hoping to see some discussion on the effects of nutrition or lack thereof on kids and how the Standard American Diet is impacting their mental health. Today, the average US child/teen gets about 67% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. These are ultraprocessed food like substances are then the building blocks from which a child's brain cells, neurotransmitters and hormones are made. Recent books by Georgia Ede, MD (Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind) and Chris Palmer MD (Brain Energy) explain the importnat connection between our food choices and our mental health. This is independent of body weight and obesity.
My belief is that our current highly processed food environment is a major contributing factor to our kid's worsening mental and physical health. To help our kids thrive, we need to change the phones and the food.
I'm a little confused ... can't it be *all* of the above? It's obvious smartphones and social media are huge factors in poorer mental health, but as another commenter noted below, what's *on* the screens matters as much. For example, a young person who falls into any of the disordered / unhealthy eating spaces (including body positivity / "fat activism" as those encourage eating junk food) will eat a poorer diet, the poorer diet will result in nutritional deficiencies and hormone disruption that then worsen her mental health. But someone who starts following activists promoting healthy whole-foods eating (and eating a lot of food! and debunking calories!) might end up with a better diet and better mental health from scrolling Instagram instead of worse.
Given that rates of narcissism have been shown to be rising for decades, in particular among students in elite universities, isn't it reasonable to conclude that many of those more-narcissistic-than-their-forebears young people at elite institutions are now the affluent and upper-middle-class parents with psychologically distressed children? There is a wealth of literature supporting that parental narcissism predicts a wide range of psychological and physical health issues.
I discuss this in a critical review of Abigail Shrier's new book:
What about parents' smartphone use? I'm the mother of a toddler; I've seen a lot of parents (and nannies) completely neglect the babies and toddlers in their care, hide them away in a stroller or ignore them on the playground, while they stare at their phones. Far more parents are distracted by their phones some of the time (myself included). I've noticed people, including members of my family, are more snippy with kids who try to get their attention while they're on their phones. I've also noticed that when I try to take pictures or videos of my toddler with my phone that it throws her off (so I don't do it often). The smartphone came out in 2007, so we should have a lot of teenagers nowadays who were raised by smartphone parents.
I could go on ... it's obvious to me that dietary and environmental factors are huge contributors. Big Pharma factors such as birth control pills. Anything that disrupts the gut microbiome.
Good point about the dietary factor. Here is commentary on that aspect of the anxiety problem: "An elevated body mass index (BMI) is predictive of a chronic course of depressive and anxiety symptoms. The odds of developing major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety increase as a function of the number of coexisting metabolic impairments, such as those characteristic of metabolic syndrome. Obesity is coupled to various structural and functional changes in the brain that are remarkably similar to those observed in depressive disorders, such as region-specific increases in cell density and compromised neural connectivity and excitability. https://www.cell.com/trends/endocrinology-metabolism/fulltext/S1043-2760(21)00241-1
The endocannabinoid system which regulates appetite, pain, and mood, can get dysregulated when arachidonic acid intake is excessive. Excerpt: "Endocannabinoids and their G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) are a current research focus in the area of obesity due to the system's role in food intake and glucose and lipid metabolism. Importantly, overweight and obese individuals often have higher circulating levels of the arachidonic acid-derived endocannabinoids anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) and an altered pattern of receptor expression. Consequently, this leads to an increase in orexigenic stimuli, changes in fatty acid synthesis, insulin sensitivity, and glucose utilisation, with preferential energy storage in adipose tissue. As endocannabinoids are products of dietary fats, modification of dietary intake may modulate their levels, with eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acid based endocannabinoids being able to displace arachidonic acid from cell membranes, reducing AEA and 2-AG production." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23762050/
If the above seems too technical, obtain a copy of 'Omega Balance' by Australian zoologist Anthony Hulbert, PhD and read Chapters 9 and 10. In fact, read the whole book. Hulbert explains a lot about of what's wrong with the food supply.
Ooh, I will! I haven't heard of that one. My oh-my-god-the-food-system-is-messed-up bible is Robert Lustig's Metabolical (though I have some issues with it, e.g. he seems to think honey is as bad as refined sugar and *raw* honey definitely is not).
Fructose can be problematic if one has a problem with insulin resistance. But fructose doesn't cause insulin resistance. Excerpt: "Healthy children present a prepubertal increase of insulin resistance, which is significantly correlated with arachidonic acid content in adipose tissue." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/01.mpg.0000237931.53470.ba
Eating lots of arachidonic acid-rich meat (mainly chicken and pork) causes arachidonic acid to accumulate in fat stores. Excerpt: "Increased BMI induces an LC-PUFAs n-6 accumulation, including arachidonic acid, in adipose tissue. This may participate in the development of low-grade inflammation in obese women and breast tumor progression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9138452/
Wonderful article! And I love Jonathan’s research and conclusions. This is not a well thought out response or comment, nor is it researched, however this article brought to mind wonderings I have had about today’s culture and possible links to early childhood education and here in Quebec Canada.
The wonderings are about the source of the increase in childhood depression especially with girls, and also this whole, what looks to me like gender confusion or gender “trying on” or play, that seems to me is being taken way too seriously and not just seen as a natural phase, rather than as a life choice. (Not sure what I am noticing is being adequately expressed.) I really appreciate Jonathan’s research and it rings very true and I also wonder if there might be even a little more complicated.)
There was a move to Universal Childcare here in Quebec in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
My granddaughters have both experienced quite sever depression when they entered their teens, the eldest is now 18, soon to be 19. (They have both received therapy.)
I wondered if there was a connection both between childcare outside the home, resulting in less time with parents nurturance and the increased use of cell phones and the distraction they cause between children and parents whose attention is often pulled to the screen rather than to their children’s being needs. This lessened connection might also have an effect on a child’s sense of self and wellbeing, no?
Also, I am struck by how young people (20’s to 30’s)now seem to need to “dress up” or “costume” themselves across gender. It reminds me of the play my children so enjoyed when young, of dressing up - and not just at Halloween, but on a regular basis. Just dressing up and “pretending” - to be mommy by putting on mommies shoes and hats - and being daddy by putting on daddy’s shoes and hat and belt, etc. perhaps they did not have enough exposure to those types of activities in daycare?
Just wondering…. Thanks for your wonderful, thoughtful, insightful, research and articles!
I am enclosing two links to Quebec resources for your interest. I am not sure how helpful they might be to highlight some of the governmental initiatives here since the 1990’s.
I will note that the increased interest in cosplay, LARPing, ComicCon, and stuff like that among adults these days does appear to be at least partly a result of having been denied a proper, play-based childhood.
Erica Komisar is also a great resource on this topic. Her books are pretty good and she does a lot of interviews on podcasts.
Just a note though that the author of the above essay relies on correlational data, and the issue is that a heck of a lot more things have changed besides the rise in daycare use since the 1980s ... dietary factors being a big one (more processed food consumption, use of pesticides like glyphosate), rise in use of screens of all kinds, rise in Tylenol use (which depletes glutathione and thus impairs detoxification, which can lead to issues), and, for example, anti-vaccine activists will point to the increased use of vaccines over the same period (etc, this is just a small sample). I know some kids thriving in daycare, but they all started around age 2 so big difference than starting at 6 months or something.
Tylenol + vaccines seems to be a bad combination during infancy and early childhood, at least anecdotally. As for daycare, there most likely is a sensitive period where starting too soon does more harm than good.
Not just anecdotally. There's studies showing that children given Tylenol before and/or after vaccination are more likely to later be diagnosed with autism than children given a different painkiller or no painkiller. The mechanism is also known: Tylenol depletes an important antioxidant called glutathione, which impairs the body's ability to detox. So children given Tylenol with vaccines are more likely to develop inflammation from heavy metal buildup.
There's enormous confounding factors, primarily that parents who don't use Tylenol tend to be more informed about health in general and more likely to avoid other potential causes of autism and related conditions.
Could it be that blue light, which along with radiation, penetrates deeper into a child's retina, also destroying growth hormone, depleting dopamine, which could explain the difference?
My sister is a teacher, first a university professor and now a grade school teacher. Her experience is that the majority of both the university and especially grade school kids have no discipline or critical thinking skills. Few can read, write, or do math and science at grade level, can regulate their behavior, or have respect for authority. This is likely the result of poor parenting and permissive school DEI and proto-DEI policies.
It’s hard to say if GenZ or younger would have been more resilient to the negative effects of social media had they grown up with more self discipline and better critical thinking skills. I’m not sure how you’d account for this in your research.
More relevant is the change in parenting style over a decade. I worked with families and observed significant change in that time where “ lawn mower” parenting, more permissive, letting kids become the power brokers at home, tolerating what was previously unacceptable behavior, and fostering an external locus of control. Lori Gottlieb’s article “How to Land your Child in Therapy” published in 2011 in The Atlantic provides excellent summary and prescience of the resulting mental health issues. Enabling of the ME generation followed by the hard knocks and confrontation of the ills of social media , has created the perfect storm.
An absolute master class in how to look at the available data (and how to ask the right questions) to evaluate an alternate hypothesis.
However, it is disappointing that the skeptics didn’t do this work themselves. If they had, they would not have even offered this “alternate explanation”, since it’s untenable.
Serious question: when did SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and frequent surveys of mental health start to take place in our schools?
The mere exposure to these surveys can normalize and increase ideation…
In our district social emotional health surveys have been done 3 times a year starting in Kindergarten. Kids are being flagged as having issues from normal young child issues (friendship problems). Once a child believes they have mental health problems, it often becomes part of their identity. Parents want to do something to help - enter antidepressants which greatly increase suicidal ideation. Then social media compounds it ten fold!
It would be great to look at data on antidepressant use in children. Did it increase in recent years and did the increase slightly predate increases in suicidal ideation?
Antidepressant medication is actually a major contributor to poor mental health instead of curing it. Especially in children.
I think there needs to be more analysis of the *content* of what teens are looking at on social media, how content has changed over time since teens have had widespread social media use, and how the ideas of that content has spread beyond social media and into broader culture so that even kids who are not on social media or are light users of it are affected by these ideas. I feel like Haidt puts too much weight on Instagram causing girls to be insecure about their looks and waiting for likes and comments from their friends (photoshopped magazines, billboards, and celebrity photos were around and blamed for soaring numbers of eating disorders and insecurities long before 2012). They need to look at the ideas that are being constantly repeated in the memes, reels, and TikToks. For example, that everything they feel is a symptom of anxiety or depression which is a central theme even in what is supposed to be funny or irreverent content. Also that everything they do is somehow political or about their identity, that their words, their opinions, even the content they consume or post can have literally life or death effects. I feel like they discuss these issues (like the idea of reverse CBT in The Coddling), but they aren't making the connections with that this is the content the kids are seeing more and more of on social media. For example, if you take two teen girls who spend four hours a day on instagram, that's too much time that will negatively effect both, but if one is spending that four hours watching funny videos about pandas, recipe videos because she has a baking hobby, softball videos because she plays in a weekend rec league, and other various light non-political videos, I predict she has a lot better mental health than another girl who spends that same amount of time watching videos about politics and identity that keep her constantly on edge, looking for threats and focused on problems combined with videos constantly talking about their anxiety and low-key depression.
Yes. The exclusive focus on a device and the absolute refusal to consider the effects of the content on the device is mystifying. They recognize that photos on Instagram can affect a girl’s self-image in a negative way. But silence about the rest of the hysterical and dark content out there. Then it’s just the device.
Passive consumption of anything, especially on the digital tools we use, is detrimental to children's developing brains. 4 hours?!! That's 1/4 of walking hours. Childhood is a necessary time for multidimensional, multisensory, interactions with live human beings. It is essential for their developement. It is evolutionary and based on very strong neuroscience.
I very much appreciate Jean Twenge taking up this complex topic that we all should have been on top of 20 years ago, when parent-age suicide and overdose rates started rising/skyrocketing, and Gen Z was in diapers. Now we have multiple, full-blown crises.
First, 20-agers are not the most suicidal. The short-lived 2020-21 spike in younger-age suicides accompanying the COVID pandemic has since abated. Both 2022 and 2023 CDC figures, with very few deaths remaining to be added, show middle-agers have returned to being the most likely to commit suicide. Teens’ and age 20-29’s suicide and overdose rates fell sharply in 2022, while middle-aged rates rose. In 2022 and 2023, age 20-24’s suicide rate ranked below every older age group 25-64, and teens' rates were the lowest of all.
Second, Twenge relies heavily on survey self-reports of mental health (depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts) that are amply contradicted by real-world outcomes. Mental health issues such as depression, suicidal thoughts, and addiction are deeply stigmatized in American society as moral weaknesses. That middle-agers SAY they’re always doing fine is not relevant.
Tragic outcomes are. Even selectively picking the post-2010 time period during which teens had their biggest increases in self-destructive deaths (suicides and overdoses), grownups of age to be their parents were and are doing far worse.
I randomize this comparison by using the ages of the Surgeon General and local substackers (I’m the oldest) to contrast with teens and young adults. Using standardized deaths from self-inflicted suicides and overdoses per 100,000 population from 2010 to 2022, the kids aren’t the problem:
Girl, age 14: up 3.0 annual deaths to 4.7 per 100,000 population in 2022.
Girl age 16: up 3.6 annual deaths to 7.5 in 2022
Boy age 18: up 7.7 annual deaths to 32.2 in 2022
Man, age 46: up 66.1 annual deaths to 101.5 in 2022
Woman, age 52: up 16.1 annual deaths to 42.1 in 2022
Man, age 60: up 49.4 annual deaths to 106.2 in 2022
Man, age 73: up 17.8 annual deaths to 43.8 in 2022
Note that father-age men, 46, suffered an increase in self-inflicted deaths 18.3 times faster to a level 13.5 times higher than did 16-year-old girls, and even worse trends and levels compared to middle-school girls. Overall, from 2010 through 2022, a record 798,000 middle-agers died from self-inflicted suicides and overdoses, equivalent to the entire population of San Francisco gone. As Gen Z grew up, middle-aged suicide/overdose deaths soared from 23,228 (2000) to 40,730 (2010) to 98,470 (2022).
Unlike misleading percent changes applied to wildly differing numbers, this standardized comparison reflects what families actually experience. Teens left behind after the death of a parent, relative, teacher, coach, etc., would find that depressing, but we don’t ask teens what’s making them unhappy.
Twenge's points suggest a fascinating question, though. How is it that teens (especially girls) report more depression and suicidal thoughts than middle-agers, yet teens (especially girls) have such strikingly low rates of suicide and self-destruction in real life?
It isn’t meds. Middle-agers are much more likely to take anti-depressants than teens or young adults (yet, middle-agers claim they’re less depressed?). It isn’t economics; midlifers are America’s wealthiest age, able to afford mental health care. Further, aren’t middle-agers “developed brains” supposed to make more reasoned decisions than supposedly impulsive “teenage brains”?
I argue one reason for teens’ (especially girls’) extraordinarily low rates of manifest self-destruction – not likely to sit well here! – may be teens’ greater use of social media. That argument results from yet another paradox no one mentions.
According to the CDC survey, teen girls who use screens 5+ hours/day are more likely to report frequently poor mental health (47%) than teens who use screens <1 hour/day (30%), as well as sadness (50% vs 34%), and considering suicide (31% vs 23%). I see those comparisons cited a lot.
However, no one mentions that those same frequently-onscreen teen girls on the same survey then turn around and report being LESS likely to actually attempt suicide (15% vs 19%) and to self-harm (3% vs 7%), as well to try hard drugs, be violence victims, etc., compared to rarely on-screen girls. How can screen time be both more depressing and less suicide/harm inducing?
Put another way, what intervenes between depression and actual suicide attempt/completed suicide to strongly protect girls from actual harm? One clue is that girls are much more likely to suffer parental abuses than boys (62% vs 48%); frequently on-screen girls are 88% more likely than rarely on-screen girls to be abused by parents/grownups; and parent-abused girls are 8 times more likely to attempt suicide (32% vs 3%) and 27 times more likely to self-harm (10% vs 0.3%) than non-abused girls (again: this is the population we’re worried about). Do we then conclude that girls being online somehow provokes parents to violent and/or emotional abuses?
Or, do we look at these as reverse correlations: that abused/depressed girls are more likely to log more screen time than their non-abused counterparts to connect with others who reduce their suicide, self-harm, and other risks?
Finally, Twenge raises another good issue elsewhere: economically advantaged teens report nearly as high depression levels as disadvantaged teens, yet suicide/overdose “deaths of destruction” rates and increases are much worse among poorer adults. However, teen deaths show a similar pattern. The highest levels and worst trends in teen suicides/overdoses by far are among rural White teens in conservative (Republican) states compared to White or diverse teens in Democratic cities, with other populations in between. That is, teens in liberal areas may report more depression, but they are much less likely to actually kill themselves compared to teens in conservative areas.
This suggests yet another disconnect between teens’ amorphous attitudes like depression or sadness (whose meaning we can’t interpret) versus overt suicide attempts and self-harm, along with real-life suicides and self-harm cases (all actual behaviors). A teen depressed because of global warming, Gaza, her dog dying, or getting beaten by mom’s boyfriend requires very different approaches than one depressed because of social-media snarks, or chemical imbalance.
We can nitpick flaws in each other’s studies and surveys, but what we really need is large, comprehensive surveys that ask teens more detailed questions about how a variety of parental issues – abusive behaviors, drug/alcohol abuse, suicidality, unemployment, arrest (rates are now higher among 40-agers than high-schoolers!), incarceration, etc. – as well as political issues affect teens’ own mental health and behaviors. The 2021 CDC survey showing parents’ abuses and job losses were much more important drivers of teens’ depression and suicidality than screen time (including TV time) hint at a much larger problem.
A very comprehensive response Mike. I'm still digesting the origin article and your response, but wanted to support the self-reporting problem. Seemed like the story might be butting up against lack of self-reporting in older generations that remain uncomfortable with open discussion around mental health.
Thanks for comment. Yes, for many years, there has been a huge disconnect between middle-agers' self-reports on surveys that they're doing fine, versus hard tabulations of skyrocketing overdose and suicide deaths, rapidly rising crime and imprisonment in the early 2000s, family breakup, and other ills. Perceptions of reality are so far out of whack that major authorities, led by the Surgeon General, can say (using 2022 figures) that 239 suicides and overdoses among girls and 351 among boys age 10-14 constitute a horrific crisis (tragedies, certainly, but not a generational crisis), while 4,729 such deaths among women age 40-44 and 12,727 among men 40-44 -- their mothers, fathers, relatives, teachers, etc. -- can be dismissed as irrelevant. I look forward to any further comments you may have after looking over both articles.
Well-said, Mike!
Race to Nowhere, a documentary film made in 2009 and shown in school auditoriums all around America and also some abroad, was the account of how the pressures to learn in accelerated classes, being on a sports team, doing social service, tons of homework, and very little sleep, and more, was resulting in teen deaths here, and high school stress and suicides also in other high performance expectation countries.
I agree totally with what is proven here about social media, but school stress has also not declined, this all due to focusing only on left brain functioning: facts and figures, rational thinking, memorization, testing and the infrequent balancing use of the right brain intelligences: curiosity, discovery, connection to others, hands on activities, intuition, insight, ahas, interests, talents and passions, and an inherent desire to help others due to this innate connection to others.
Right brain activities and openness increases serotonin, the wellness hormone, whereas yes blue light and screens create cortisol, the stress hormone.
Thank you for these in-depth studies being done, and it is also time to change public education to be more like the original private Waldorf and Montessori schools. I call it the right to truly learn in public education. Project Based Learning, PBL, is one excellent approach allowing interest and discovery, combined then with natural and connected thinking, taught then as feed-in from teachers as needed, all results in integrated learning, what learned not forgotten, and kids out-testing those without this approach.
Rereading what you wrote, I have to push back a little against your left/right dichotomy, because it's not quite accurate. "Discovery", "hands on activities", "interests", and "talents and passions" definitely do not lateralize to the right hemisphere (most people are right handed, which the left hemisphere controls!). Intuition and connection to others do. I'm not as sure about the others (ahas makes sense as being RH), but I believe your distinction is outdated. The description of the left hemisphere is more accurate. Both hemispheres are in use for everything we do, but they have different ways of processing and interacting with the world and certain functions lateralize more to one hemisphere over the other.
I also saw in your link that your organization assumes autism is related to greater right hemisphere intelligence, when I've seen it argued that it's related to right hemisphere hypo-function or dysfunction and left hemisphere dominance (e.g. autistic people struggle with non-verbal communication, which is RH dominant). However, many "spiky" skills associated with autism are also disproportionately processed in the right hemisphere (e.g. spatial skills, music).
See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009)
Hi Meghan,
Sorry, I gave my last reply above your two comments. In my papers I discussed how those on the spectrum from ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, Asperger’s syndrome, and autism all function from a similar set up, but in different ways. This is because as we move let’s say left to right, ADD to autism, the autism side of the spectrum is much more sensitive, of course, and thereby they need more structure than the others and respond differently. Yes, they are number and letter huge able to pick out codes and patterns, but the right brain also is involved more than most people, it the deep Knowing in Rain Man (Kim Peek), Temple Grandin and Einstein envisioning sitting on a light beam and realizing the interaction of what then was expressed as E= MC2. One of my students who had Asperger‘s, and having trouble with writing the three paragraphs in an expository essay in third grade on the district testing, inserted this into his writing, which definitely came from his heart and his ability to absorb meaning and beauty (Right Brain) using poetic words beyond normal 3rd grade writing: “Annie’s heart blossomed like a lotus flower in the spring.”
Passions come from the heart connected to the right brain, and natural talents, stemming from those, if followed on that path. Someone can be talented intellectually, of course, but talented intellectually could also leave out connection, which, is pretty much the history of tech.
Too short space here to really address the fine points.
Thanks.
We should have a call. ❤️
Sure! Send a private message :-)
Papers linked to through that website? I'll take a look when I have some time! I know how hard it is to summarize this kind of thing in comments. (For the record, I've noticed several flaws in Iain McGilchrist's work re left and right hemispheres too, including that he doesn't acknowledge that autistic gifts are usually located primarily in the right hemisphere). In retrospect, I was quibbling a bit with the definition of "talented", I understand where you're coming from.
Is the right brain involved more than in typical people, or just differently? From my research, it seems to be that in autism some areas of the right hemisphere are more developed, while others are underdeveloped. Atypical. (Obviously there are other brain differences too).
Well-said. Makoto Shichida would certainly agree, as would Leonard Shlain as well.
I'm about 2/3rds of the way through The Alphabet versus the Goddess and I have so many thoughts ... but I think Shlain is wrong when he characterizes the left hemisphere as "masculine" and the right as "feminine"; he's right that left hemisphere dominance increases misogyny but misses that it seems to increase misandry as well. It'll take me a while to get everything together but I'm going to do an essay.
It's more like women's brains tend to be more balanced between the two hemispheres on average, while men's brains tend to be more lateralized on average. Thanks 😊
Haha, yeah I know, but I think there's more going on. Need to finish the book and organize my thoughts.
Thank you for sharing this. In addition, social media use and communicating via text message instead of in-person would also shift young people to more left hemisphere functioning (written language lateralizes to the left hemisphere, non-verbal communication such as body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, to the right, the latter is absent when communicating via the written word).
I worked at a daycare briefly in undergrad; there was a four-year-old boy there who could read and do basic math, but was severely anxious and withdrawn and socially stunted. My boss told me his parents were professors who had pushed academics on him early -- she didn't say it, but it was obvious all the staff thought these parents were abusive for doing this and for neglecting the play (etc) part of his childhood. I've spoken to other daycare workers who have observed the same pattern ... "precocious" children who had left brain achievements pushed on them prematurely, who already show significant signs of poor mental health and social connection.
I explored the harms of a left hemisphere focussed early childhood in this essay, which examines the link between childhood "giftedness", autism/ADHD, and gender dysphoria:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-drama-of-the-gifted-children
Indeed, the brains of so many people are becoming "far-left" in terms of lateralization.
Also, the increasingly fast pace of life in general seems to greatly favor the left brain, if only because the left processes and reacts a bit faster than the right. This IMHO is both a cause and a consequence of our inane and insane addiction to (economic) growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host. That is probably why the predicted re-balancing of the brain hemispheres predicted by Leonard Shlain in 1998 never seemed to materialize, and if anything we have gone more and more left-brained since then. Just my $0.02.
(Also note that average internet connection speeds have increased more than 100-fold (!) since 2000, more than tenfold since even 2010. I doubt very much that is a coincidence.)
Yes, I think he was very off on that one ...
www.HeartCenteredMinds.com
Thank You, I look forward to reading your essay. I did not go in depth into the how the now almost forced left brain learning by children in kindergarten and even prior some in preschool is harming children, and the world. Montessori, Waldorf and Piaget all knew that the first years up to seven years old are for exploratory learning by the intelligence of the children to explore and discover, building the framework for then thought, based on experience. And yes, if you take a look at the world, the whole world is too left brain focused now, starting in our schools, and outward with tech. When only left brain thinking is used we go in circles, disconnected to our right brain feel for life, with insights, intuition, passions, talents out of the box thinking, hands on experiences, but mainly with connection. Without connection, we cannot solve the real problems for the world which after connection and inspiration can be shaped by left brain thinking, but only after. Must run now, but there’s much to talk about in all of this. Nice to see a discussion.
Well-said. Makoto Shichida would certainly agree, as would Leonard Shlain and Ian McGilchrist. Our brains are becoming increasingly "far-left" in terms of lateralization.
Great people are writing about this. We need to re-balance, and soon. Look at the world our left brain singular focus has created.
Very true indeed.
Well-said. Makoto Shichida would certainly agree, as would Leonard Shlain and Ian McGilchrist.
Even without the information provided, my question to the proponents of this theory would be, “why would you think it more likely that parents’ mental health issues are causing kids’ mental health issues instead of the other way around?”
My personal anecdotal experience has been that kids’ struggles are a significant cause of stress, anxiety, and depression among parents.
Everything Jonathan Haidt describes reflects the mental notes I was making during my first child's upbringing (born in 2004). I am an immigrant who came to the US at age 5. My parents came with nothing and saw 4 girls through masters and doctoral programs. We are by no means a model minority but we developed hardiness. My parents and my generation valued independence and critical thinking. We grew up in NYC in working class, brown, black, and immigrant neighborhoods. I saw struggle, failure, and resilience everyday. My now 19 y.o. was raised with more than I had with far more access to opportunity. But we live almost exclusively among white, liberal families. When she was very young, I began to realize that while I fostered independence, creativity, allowed for boredom, simplicity, and tried to keep our lives not centered around children--the qualities of my upbringing that helped me develop resilience-- she saw what her peers were getting and demanded to be deferred to and catered to. I was bemused and annoyed. But I continued to try to strike a balance and not cater. As a tween, I would overhear the things she was learning from kids media (which she got mostly elsewhere) and was concerned--parents are buffoons, kids are the center of the world. As she grew older, she internalized all the messages hyperfueled by social media (even though she had limited access to it) about "listen to the kids", "adults are ruining the world," dismissiveness towards adults (remember "okay boomer"? How many of us GenXers were told that?), "the kids will save us." Try as I might, this self centeredness was overpowering her developing self. Then came the phones and while I started with the flip phone, all her friends had the smartphone and I, foolishly thinking I could set reasonable boundaries, caved. And suddenly she internalized all this distorted language about mental health which instead of empowering her, made her more fragile and demanding. She insisted she must have the phone always "for mental health." She talked us into letting her have instagram for that reason. The therapists/school counselors also fed this narrative, handing over language like harm reduction and moderation to a 14 year old who quickly weaponized it to get to do what she wanted. And she started cutting, claiming all kinds of disorders, and then trans (I am actually a boy)identity (the little girl who lived in princess dresses and loved makeup and fashion, books, horses, and female heroines). Her father and I are both trained in child and human development and I have been a parent educator. We may not have been perfect parents but we were normal and attuned. She got lost as soon as the smart phones came. Things came out of her mouth and went into practice feeding a distorted sense of self. Both of us were baffled (her dad was a incorrigible and traumatized teen but even he was worried). Her younger brother was born bubbly, hyper creative, and resilient. He could just rebound from setback with the wisdom of a 50 year old. But when he got a phone, I watched all those qualities dissipate. Yesterday I removed all non-school related apps on my sophomore son's phone after struggling with screen time limits settings (they suck), monitoring, and encouraging "moderation." He gets two hours of browser use because his teachers have them use their phones in class for various reasons which I am furious about. He is mad about it, I am sure. But I had him read Haidt's article in the Atlantic and we watched the Coddling of the American Mind. Luckily he is a bright kid and knows, at least in theory, why I am doing this. His gaming computer sits on my dining table in the middle of the house. He can use it in my presence on the weekends. He is perfectly fine with that. He wants the guidance. He told me his friends are "hopeless." He told me that all they see are extremes of humanity online--shitty and pathetic people and over the top/wildly "successful" people--and they don't want to be either so they don't know how to fit in.
I watched my older child's mental health erode from age 5 onward. I thought I could prevent it by thoughtful parenting. But I couldn't. I think what is happening to our kids preceded the smartphone but the smartphone amplified the vacuousness, narcissism, and materialism that we were already breeding in America culture in the prior decades.
PS-In 2019 I did a focus group with teens about health and was immediately struck by the specific messages they were getting from social media. It was disconcerting as a health professional. I started mentioning it to colleagues and therapists--"hey, do you know what kids are seeing, hearing, learning on social media? We have no clue about the world they are in." They have literally been stewing in this distorted world with messages created by distorted people. This is not what adults should want for our kids.
What about capitalism itself as a root cause of all the mood disorders increasing (to epidemic levels), and social media as one of its latest manifestations? Data all the way back to Durkheim and before should be included. The rationale (makes it plausible but not necessarily true) is that capitalism makes people not need their face to face neighbors and family (and even coworkers) in direct and satisfying ways, both for production and consumption. Villages and tribes have been declining in number since capitalism started, and now finally families and integrated psychological individuals are breaking apart too. Can you try to falsify this hypothesis?
Not even a response?
The last graph (Minutes per day socializing with others in person) begs the question: what happened between 2009 and 2012, when the trend suddenly went back to early 2000s level ?
Why was it decreasing before that ? (here, it can't be because of smartphones or social media, which hardly exists at the time.)
And why did the kids "suddenly" went back to spending time with each other ?
As I read The Anxious Generation, I was hoping to see some discussion on the effects of nutrition or lack thereof on kids and how the Standard American Diet is impacting their mental health. Today, the average US child/teen gets about 67% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. These are ultraprocessed food like substances are then the building blocks from which a child's brain cells, neurotransmitters and hormones are made. Recent books by Georgia Ede, MD (Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind) and Chris Palmer MD (Brain Energy) explain the importnat connection between our food choices and our mental health. This is independent of body weight and obesity.
My belief is that our current highly processed food environment is a major contributing factor to our kid's worsening mental and physical health. To help our kids thrive, we need to change the phones and the food.
Do tech, but not adept at it. How send a private message? Or on my website you will see my email. Thanks.
Will look!
Asking on Substack right now how to write a private message.😊
I'm a little confused ... can't it be *all* of the above? It's obvious smartphones and social media are huge factors in poorer mental health, but as another commenter noted below, what's *on* the screens matters as much. For example, a young person who falls into any of the disordered / unhealthy eating spaces (including body positivity / "fat activism" as those encourage eating junk food) will eat a poorer diet, the poorer diet will result in nutritional deficiencies and hormone disruption that then worsen her mental health. But someone who starts following activists promoting healthy whole-foods eating (and eating a lot of food! and debunking calories!) might end up with a better diet and better mental health from scrolling Instagram instead of worse.
Given that rates of narcissism have been shown to be rising for decades, in particular among students in elite universities, isn't it reasonable to conclude that many of those more-narcissistic-than-their-forebears young people at elite institutions are now the affluent and upper-middle-class parents with psychologically distressed children? There is a wealth of literature supporting that parental narcissism predicts a wide range of psychological and physical health issues.
I discuss this in a critical review of Abigail Shrier's new book:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/bad-journalism
What about parents' smartphone use? I'm the mother of a toddler; I've seen a lot of parents (and nannies) completely neglect the babies and toddlers in their care, hide them away in a stroller or ignore them on the playground, while they stare at their phones. Far more parents are distracted by their phones some of the time (myself included). I've noticed people, including members of my family, are more snippy with kids who try to get their attention while they're on their phones. I've also noticed that when I try to take pictures or videos of my toddler with my phone that it throws her off (so I don't do it often). The smartphone came out in 2007, so we should have a lot of teenagers nowadays who were raised by smartphone parents.
I could go on ... it's obvious to me that dietary and environmental factors are huge contributors. Big Pharma factors such as birth control pills. Anything that disrupts the gut microbiome.
Good point about the dietary factor. Here is commentary on that aspect of the anxiety problem: "An elevated body mass index (BMI) is predictive of a chronic course of depressive and anxiety symptoms. The odds of developing major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety increase as a function of the number of coexisting metabolic impairments, such as those characteristic of metabolic syndrome. Obesity is coupled to various structural and functional changes in the brain that are remarkably similar to those observed in depressive disorders, such as region-specific increases in cell density and compromised neural connectivity and excitability. https://www.cell.com/trends/endocrinology-metabolism/fulltext/S1043-2760(21)00241-1
The endocannabinoid system which regulates appetite, pain, and mood, can get dysregulated when arachidonic acid intake is excessive. Excerpt: "Endocannabinoids and their G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) are a current research focus in the area of obesity due to the system's role in food intake and glucose and lipid metabolism. Importantly, overweight and obese individuals often have higher circulating levels of the arachidonic acid-derived endocannabinoids anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) and an altered pattern of receptor expression. Consequently, this leads to an increase in orexigenic stimuli, changes in fatty acid synthesis, insulin sensitivity, and glucose utilisation, with preferential energy storage in adipose tissue. As endocannabinoids are products of dietary fats, modification of dietary intake may modulate their levels, with eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acid based endocannabinoids being able to displace arachidonic acid from cell membranes, reducing AEA and 2-AG production." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23762050/
If the above seems too technical, obtain a copy of 'Omega Balance' by Australian zoologist Anthony Hulbert, PhD and read Chapters 9 and 10. In fact, read the whole book. Hulbert explains a lot about of what's wrong with the food supply.
Ooh, I will! I haven't heard of that one. My oh-my-god-the-food-system-is-messed-up bible is Robert Lustig's Metabolical (though I have some issues with it, e.g. he seems to think honey is as bad as refined sugar and *raw* honey definitely is not).
Fructose can be problematic if one has a problem with insulin resistance. But fructose doesn't cause insulin resistance. Excerpt: "Healthy children present a prepubertal increase of insulin resistance, which is significantly correlated with arachidonic acid content in adipose tissue." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/01.mpg.0000237931.53470.ba
Eating lots of arachidonic acid-rich meat (mainly chicken and pork) causes arachidonic acid to accumulate in fat stores. Excerpt: "Increased BMI induces an LC-PUFAs n-6 accumulation, including arachidonic acid, in adipose tissue. This may participate in the development of low-grade inflammation in obese women and breast tumor progression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9138452/
Wonderful article! And I love Jonathan’s research and conclusions. This is not a well thought out response or comment, nor is it researched, however this article brought to mind wonderings I have had about today’s culture and possible links to early childhood education and here in Quebec Canada.
The wonderings are about the source of the increase in childhood depression especially with girls, and also this whole, what looks to me like gender confusion or gender “trying on” or play, that seems to me is being taken way too seriously and not just seen as a natural phase, rather than as a life choice. (Not sure what I am noticing is being adequately expressed.) I really appreciate Jonathan’s research and it rings very true and I also wonder if there might be even a little more complicated.)
There was a move to Universal Childcare here in Quebec in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
My granddaughters have both experienced quite sever depression when they entered their teens, the eldest is now 18, soon to be 19. (They have both received therapy.)
I wondered if there was a connection both between childcare outside the home, resulting in less time with parents nurturance and the increased use of cell phones and the distraction they cause between children and parents whose attention is often pulled to the screen rather than to their children’s being needs. This lessened connection might also have an effect on a child’s sense of self and wellbeing, no?
Also, I am struck by how young people (20’s to 30’s)now seem to need to “dress up” or “costume” themselves across gender. It reminds me of the play my children so enjoyed when young, of dressing up - and not just at Halloween, but on a regular basis. Just dressing up and “pretending” - to be mommy by putting on mommies shoes and hats - and being daddy by putting on daddy’s shoes and hat and belt, etc. perhaps they did not have enough exposure to those types of activities in daycare?
Just wondering…. Thanks for your wonderful, thoughtful, insightful, research and articles!
I am enclosing two links to Quebec resources for your interest. I am not sure how helpful they might be to highlight some of the governmental initiatives here since the 1990’s.
https://centreconnexions.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/programme_educatif_en-1.pdf and
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2021/what-is-the-quebec-model-of-early-learning-and-child-care/
(CPE) stands for Centre de la petite enfance or in English - Early Childhood Centres
I also like the comment by Spence in Austin below - in response to parent’s mental health.
Virginia
I will note that the increased interest in cosplay, LARPing, ComicCon, and stuff like that among adults these days does appear to be at least partly a result of having been denied a proper, play-based childhood.
This is a pretty good essay about the possible effects of early daycare use ...
https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/universal-early-childhood-daycare
Erica Komisar is also a great resource on this topic. Her books are pretty good and she does a lot of interviews on podcasts.
Just a note though that the author of the above essay relies on correlational data, and the issue is that a heck of a lot more things have changed besides the rise in daycare use since the 1980s ... dietary factors being a big one (more processed food consumption, use of pesticides like glyphosate), rise in use of screens of all kinds, rise in Tylenol use (which depletes glutathione and thus impairs detoxification, which can lead to issues), and, for example, anti-vaccine activists will point to the increased use of vaccines over the same period (etc, this is just a small sample). I know some kids thriving in daycare, but they all started around age 2 so big difference than starting at 6 months or something.
Tylenol + vaccines seems to be a bad combination during infancy and early childhood, at least anecdotally. As for daycare, there most likely is a sensitive period where starting too soon does more harm than good.
Not just anecdotally. There's studies showing that children given Tylenol before and/or after vaccination are more likely to later be diagnosed with autism than children given a different painkiller or no painkiller. The mechanism is also known: Tylenol depletes an important antioxidant called glutathione, which impairs the body's ability to detox. So children given Tylenol with vaccines are more likely to develop inflammation from heavy metal buildup.
There's enormous confounding factors, primarily that parents who don't use Tylenol tend to be more informed about health in general and more likely to avoid other potential causes of autism and related conditions.
Indeed. I recall reading about that on A Midwestern Doctor's Substack, "The Forgotten Side of Medicine".
Could it be that blue light, which along with radiation, penetrates deeper into a child's retina, also destroying growth hormone, depleting dopamine, which could explain the difference?
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/techmyth
Non-scientist here with a complementary idea.
My sister is a teacher, first a university professor and now a grade school teacher. Her experience is that the majority of both the university and especially grade school kids have no discipline or critical thinking skills. Few can read, write, or do math and science at grade level, can regulate their behavior, or have respect for authority. This is likely the result of poor parenting and permissive school DEI and proto-DEI policies.
It’s hard to say if GenZ or younger would have been more resilient to the negative effects of social media had they grown up with more self discipline and better critical thinking skills. I’m not sure how you’d account for this in your research.
Thank you for your important work.
More relevant is the change in parenting style over a decade. I worked with families and observed significant change in that time where “ lawn mower” parenting, more permissive, letting kids become the power brokers at home, tolerating what was previously unacceptable behavior, and fostering an external locus of control. Lori Gottlieb’s article “How to Land your Child in Therapy” published in 2011 in The Atlantic provides excellent summary and prescience of the resulting mental health issues. Enabling of the ME generation followed by the hard knocks and confrontation of the ills of social media , has created the perfect storm.
An absolute master class in how to look at the available data (and how to ask the right questions) to evaluate an alternate hypothesis.
However, it is disappointing that the skeptics didn’t do this work themselves. If they had, they would not have even offered this “alternate explanation”, since it’s untenable.
Serious question: when did SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and frequent surveys of mental health start to take place in our schools?
The mere exposure to these surveys can normalize and increase ideation…
In our district social emotional health surveys have been done 3 times a year starting in Kindergarten. Kids are being flagged as having issues from normal young child issues (friendship problems). Once a child believes they have mental health problems, it often becomes part of their identity. Parents want to do something to help - enter antidepressants which greatly increase suicidal ideation. Then social media compounds it ten fold!
It would be great to look at data on antidepressant use in children. Did it increase in recent years and did the increase slightly predate increases in suicidal ideation?
Antidepressant medication is actually a major contributor to poor mental health instead of curing it. Especially in children.