The largest-ever expert survey finds consensus about rising mental health problems, along with general agreement about some causes and potential policy responses
Imagine that there was a large amount of research suggesting that grape jelly caused mental illness and general unhappiness in adolescence. Would anyone say we must hold out for decades to see if it is true? It is not as if young people need grape jelly. In fact, it is not that healthy anyway. Yes, their friends might have grape jelly. But soon many kids will not have grape jelly just like many do not have peanut butter due to allergies to peanuts. This is how public health thinking works. You must take precautions when there is ample reason to do so and the cost is minimal to none. When the kids grow up they can slather all the grape jelly they like (but hopefully they will have learned that life without it is just fine, even better than with it).
You're welcome, Jon. I neglected to include that what science is trying to do and what public health or other clinical endeavors strive for are different. But maybe just as well keep it simple.
I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m sort of shocked that anyone is still holding out and thinks that phones and social media are not harmful for kids (and adults…).
Thank you for being nuanced in describing the consensus that was found.
I think it should be emphasized that many of the 26 claims include qualifiers (e.g., "can" cause sleep deprivation), which creates a bias toward "true" or "probably true" responses.
For instance, my understanding is that chocolate allergies are very rare but do exist. So, on a survey like this, i would say it's true that chocolate "can" cause allergic reactions, even though my belief is that this rarely happens.
In short, for those of the 26 claims that include qualifiers, the extent of consensus seems to be exaggerated.
In Survey 1, a lot of participants claimed there was much stronger evidence than there actually is. That is, for several claims, many people said there were "replicated causally informative field studies". If you know psychology, you know that's a rare occurrence.
When the authors of the consensus statement tallied the evidence, no such causally informative field studies could be found for many studies. Making claims that studies exist which don't? That's objectively, verifiably false. It makes me question whether they got the right experts. And it definitely means that Haidt & Rausch should not be relying on Survey 1, before the suggested literature was reviewed.
Even if they did, the first author summarises the message quite differently than this blog post:
Valerio Capraro, asked 'Do “all these academics say smartphones harm youth”?': "No, that’s not accurate. The consensus statements are far more nuanced. We conclude there’s causal evidence only that smartphone use -> sleep problems. For all other potential harms, the evidence is correlational, causal evidence is preliminary/debated. More research is needed".
So, most of the strong claims in The Anxious Generation were overconfident. And some are demonstrably erroneous (e.g., citation of Chatard et al. 2017) and still need to be corrected.
The courtroom analogy misses the point. It's not a whodunit. Experts are not a jury and in science we don't vote. We need to quantify harms and benefits. Policies should optimise the tradeoffs. What will not help is to continue kicking up dust to hide the fact that psychology has largely failed to do the studies that would be most informative. All this bluster distracts from investing in the doing the science that would be worth listening to for policymakers and parents, rather than broad-stroke catchphrase-based policies based on an overstated 'consensus'. And if these policies cause more harm? We further erode trust in science.
The problem with these analyses is that they overlook deeper, systemic drivers of the mental health crisis in modern societies. Blaming or banning social media offers a convenient illusion of resolution, while leaving root causes unexamined.
More troublingly, this narrative plays into the hands of those seeking greater control over the internet—a revolutionary digital technology and postmodern force that is changing the world. And change has never been good news for those who benefit from the status quo.
This article is a good example of the highest quality propoganda, that which terminates your thoughts. It puts the maze inside the mouse as it justifies Statism as the only and necessary means for correction.
The article is an argument to expand Statespace further into Psyberspace by only projecting the upside of accepting Statist morality and paternalism. Never a downside such as these laws becoming weapons against platforms such a Truth Social, parents and institutions. Simultaneously it also uses "off the radar" misdirection to obfuscate where kids are being radicalized and harmed which is in Roblox, Discord, message boards, ect.
Don't be fooled by all the experts agreeing that a soft-totalitarian Trojan horse named KOSA is here to do anything more than expand State power and force.
The experts who wanna shut down social media. Who are they? Think about what an expert is in these times. Think about the Covid scam Demic and all the experts there. Think about how many billions if not trillions of dollars the expert get. Shutting down the social media benefits them completely because then they control the narrative and the propaganda.
So many experts long for the days of the 20th century, when mass media was nothing but pure controlled propaganda spanning the globe. God willing that era never returns.
Jonathan, binge usage of social media is harmful only to a certain degree. Sure, it is more harmful than binge wathcing TV, but Neither of these are the primary cause of the youth mental health epidemic.
Instead, you have to look what else has risen concurrently since ~2010.
- Societal polarizations. Cause? High dopamine levels promote individual & group polarization.
- Negative emotions. Cause? High dopamine levels promote negative emotions, e.g. fear, hate, envy.
- Loneliness. Cause? High dopamine levels cause feelings of loneliness (-> promotes social media usage).
The statistics on youth mental health are synchronous across Western countries, but it is not the only statistic that is behaving in that manner. There are others, and they're all connected directly to dopamine: https://jannemiettinen.fi/FourthTurning/#htoc-2-7-2
Sure. Dopamine has peaked every ~80 years in the US history:
~1940 Anti-Semitism, a worsening social mood until WWII united the people
~1860 The US Civil War
~1780 American Revolutionary War
It's an 80~100y long hormone cycle that will peak in 2028/29 in the US. The [previous] nadir was in ~1990, which caused the crime wave peak, since low dopamine levels causes antisociality <- well known strongest indicator for criminal behavior. Back then people were blaming violent movies and games. Wrong conclusions lead to bad decisions.
The real reason is in our biology. We in the Western countries are undergoing a hormone cycle that is the same cycle that generates all other periodic animal population cycles too. For a century, it was believed that they were caused by the environment (e.g. predator-prey models), but during the past few years ecologists have finally admitted that they were wrong. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-020-04810-w)
Interesting, but as you might imagine, I'm a bit skeptical. But for the sake of argument, if we accept that multi-annual hormone cycles occur in humans, and that this explains the variation in dopamine levels, what is the conclusion as to how we manage their effects?
2) Find the correct chemosignal/pheromone-blocker and stop the cycle.
I totally understand the scepticism. But on the other hand, an estimated 70% of mammalian species have these cycles, so the odds are that humans have it too.
Missouri looks set to pass a statewide bell-to-bell cellphone ban. (Also includes other devices like smartwatches). I guess that will be the case study. :)
The under teens aren't interested in what any of us have to say about their mental health. Their interested in their peers mental health for be it, positive, negative and everything inbetween. The question I ask do they have the necessary filters to know lies, deception, truth. Commenter's have aired their own personal opinions and we can ask by what fucking survey did they get that information from..., social media, online algorithms, like minded peers, the guy at the pub... yadda yadda.
One comment calls it propaganda. Do you actually know what it means? If there IS a positive coercion there is also a negative precautions inbeded in the post, that's not propaganda... it's information, freaking out does not help.
"Concerns" are not normally scientific evidence. Most pastors in the US are Christian, no? Is this sound evidence that Judaism, other religions, are false? The American Psychiatric Assn. long classified homosexuality as mental disease. What mighty evidence! Like the scientific dictates I long heard that homosexuality is "unnatural": Animals don't engage in same-sex, sex. Wrong. Along w/ other recreational sex. We also long heard that adult brains generate no new neurons. Also wrong. Here, why not abide, instead, experts in civil liberties? In previous decades, we had much fear, disapproval, of the impact on children, teens, of video games, TVs; co-education of girls and boys, blacks and whites. All underscoring, to me, that what should guide us are sound bases backed by data. Not overreaching when in fact we DON'T know. Linking 2 phenomena is not ample evidence in itself for picking one as the cause of the other. For advancing doctrine the authors favor.
If we consistently followed the strong version of the so-called "precautionary principle" since prehistory, we would all still be living in caves to this day. Just saying.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want teenagers to see the Diddy trial or all the evil running through the highest levels of the government. They’re so tender and innocent they shouldn’t be taught about the evil of the world they soon will be entering into as men and women. we wouldn’t want them to learn that the world is round, that nukes are fake, that no man ever walked on the moon, that Hillary Clinton has killed over 100 people, that Obama is a cocksucking, gay man, that Michelle Obama is a tranny. Let them learn that when they are men and women.
If you don’t want people to be destroyed by social media, stop doing heinous acts against people. It’s not the social media. That’s the problem. It’s all the fucking assholes out there.
Imagine that there was a large amount of research suggesting that grape jelly caused mental illness and general unhappiness in adolescence. Would anyone say we must hold out for decades to see if it is true? It is not as if young people need grape jelly. In fact, it is not that healthy anyway. Yes, their friends might have grape jelly. But soon many kids will not have grape jelly just like many do not have peanut butter due to allergies to peanuts. This is how public health thinking works. You must take precautions when there is ample reason to do so and the cost is minimal to none. When the kids grow up they can slather all the grape jelly they like (but hopefully they will have learned that life without it is just fine, even better than with it).
i love this metaphor, thank you!
You're welcome, Jon. I neglected to include that what science is trying to do and what public health or other clinical endeavors strive for are different. But maybe just as well keep it simple.
What if the "research" found the same thing about dihydrogen monoxide?
Regardless of age, staring at a phone is not a good way to spend your life.
Great point. Live your life.
I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m sort of shocked that anyone is still holding out and thinks that phones and social media are not harmful for kids (and adults…).
Makes me wonder how flat they think the earth is.
Very.
Thank you for being nuanced in describing the consensus that was found.
I think it should be emphasized that many of the 26 claims include qualifiers (e.g., "can" cause sleep deprivation), which creates a bias toward "true" or "probably true" responses.
For instance, my understanding is that chocolate allergies are very rare but do exist. So, on a survey like this, i would say it's true that chocolate "can" cause allergic reactions, even though my belief is that this rarely happens.
In short, for those of the 26 claims that include qualifiers, the extent of consensus seems to be exaggerated.
Here's my attempt to interrogate whether some of the participating researchers were overconfident in their expertise:
https://rubenarslan.github.io/posts/2025-05-20-consensus-how-the-sausage-gets-made/
In Survey 1, a lot of participants claimed there was much stronger evidence than there actually is. That is, for several claims, many people said there were "replicated causally informative field studies". If you know psychology, you know that's a rare occurrence.
When the authors of the consensus statement tallied the evidence, no such causally informative field studies could be found for many studies. Making claims that studies exist which don't? That's objectively, verifiably false. It makes me question whether they got the right experts. And it definitely means that Haidt & Rausch should not be relying on Survey 1, before the suggested literature was reviewed.
Even if they did, the first author summarises the message quite differently than this blog post:
Valerio Capraro, asked 'Do “all these academics say smartphones harm youth”?': "No, that’s not accurate. The consensus statements are far more nuanced. We conclude there’s causal evidence only that smartphone use -> sleep problems. For all other potential harms, the evidence is correlational, causal evidence is preliminary/debated. More research is needed".
So, most of the strong claims in The Anxious Generation were overconfident. And some are demonstrably erroneous (e.g., citation of Chatard et al. 2017) and still need to be corrected.
The courtroom analogy misses the point. It's not a whodunit. Experts are not a jury and in science we don't vote. We need to quantify harms and benefits. Policies should optimise the tradeoffs. What will not help is to continue kicking up dust to hide the fact that psychology has largely failed to do the studies that would be most informative. All this bluster distracts from investing in the doing the science that would be worth listening to for policymakers and parents, rather than broad-stroke catchphrase-based policies based on an overstated 'consensus'. And if these policies cause more harm? We further erode trust in science.
Well said, Ruben
The problem with these analyses is that they overlook deeper, systemic drivers of the mental health crisis in modern societies. Blaming or banning social media offers a convenient illusion of resolution, while leaving root causes unexamined.
More troublingly, this narrative plays into the hands of those seeking greater control over the internet—a revolutionary digital technology and postmodern force that is changing the world. And change has never been good news for those who benefit from the status quo.
Why isn't social media use a root cause? Especially amongst children
Media Type: Bloviated Propoganda
This article is a good example of the highest quality propoganda, that which terminates your thoughts. It puts the maze inside the mouse as it justifies Statism as the only and necessary means for correction.
The article is an argument to expand Statespace further into Psyberspace by only projecting the upside of accepting Statist morality and paternalism. Never a downside such as these laws becoming weapons against platforms such a Truth Social, parents and institutions. Simultaneously it also uses "off the radar" misdirection to obfuscate where kids are being radicalized and harmed which is in Roblox, Discord, message boards, ect.
Don't be fooled by all the experts agreeing that a soft-totalitarian Trojan horse named KOSA is here to do anything more than expand State power and force.
Janne...
Could you fill in the blank with your best guess on what this boils down to?
~ 2020 _____________________________________
~1940 Anti-Semitism, a worsening social mood until WWII united the people
~1860 The US Civil War
~1780 American Revolutionary War
The experts who wanna shut down social media. Who are they? Think about what an expert is in these times. Think about the Covid scam Demic and all the experts there. Think about how many billions if not trillions of dollars the expert get. Shutting down the social media benefits them completely because then they control the narrative and the propaganda.
So many experts long for the days of the 20th century, when mass media was nothing but pure controlled propaganda spanning the globe. God willing that era never returns.
BINGO
Jonathan, binge usage of social media is harmful only to a certain degree. Sure, it is more harmful than binge wathcing TV, but Neither of these are the primary cause of the youth mental health epidemic.
Instead, you have to look what else has risen concurrently since ~2010.
- Societal polarizations. Cause? High dopamine levels promote individual & group polarization.
- Negative emotions. Cause? High dopamine levels promote negative emotions, e.g. fear, hate, envy.
- Loneliness. Cause? High dopamine levels cause feelings of loneliness (-> promotes social media usage).
The statistics on youth mental health are synchronous across Western countries, but it is not the only statistic that is behaving in that manner. There are others, and they're all connected directly to dopamine: https://jannemiettinen.fi/FourthTurning/#htoc-2-7-2
Very interesting. I will read the referenced link, but am curious if you have a short description as to why dopamine levels have risen?
Sure. Dopamine has peaked every ~80 years in the US history:
~1940 Anti-Semitism, a worsening social mood until WWII united the people
~1860 The US Civil War
~1780 American Revolutionary War
It's an 80~100y long hormone cycle that will peak in 2028/29 in the US. The [previous] nadir was in ~1990, which caused the crime wave peak, since low dopamine levels causes antisociality <- well known strongest indicator for criminal behavior. Back then people were blaming violent movies and games. Wrong conclusions lead to bad decisions.
The real reason is in our biology. We in the Western countries are undergoing a hormone cycle that is the same cycle that generates all other periodic animal population cycles too. For a century, it was believed that they were caused by the environment (e.g. predator-prey models), but during the past few years ecologists have finally admitted that they were wrong. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-020-04810-w)
Interesting, but as you might imagine, I'm a bit skeptical. But for the sake of argument, if we accept that multi-annual hormone cycles occur in humans, and that this explains the variation in dopamine levels, what is the conclusion as to how we manage their effects?
1) Aknowledge the situation.
2) Find the correct chemosignal/pheromone-blocker and stop the cycle.
I totally understand the scepticism. But on the other hand, an estimated 70% of mammalian species have these cycles, so the odds are that humans have it too.
It seems like what you're proposing is that we administer medication to the entire population, is that right?
And suppose we go that route. Isn't there also an upside to following Haidt's proposals too?
Missouri looks set to pass a statewide bell-to-bell cellphone ban. (Also includes other devices like smartwatches). I guess that will be the case study. :)
The under teens aren't interested in what any of us have to say about their mental health. Their interested in their peers mental health for be it, positive, negative and everything inbetween. The question I ask do they have the necessary filters to know lies, deception, truth. Commenter's have aired their own personal opinions and we can ask by what fucking survey did they get that information from..., social media, online algorithms, like minded peers, the guy at the pub... yadda yadda.
One comment calls it propaganda. Do you actually know what it means? If there IS a positive coercion there is also a negative precautions inbeded in the post, that's not propaganda... it's information, freaking out does not help.
"Concerns" are not normally scientific evidence. Most pastors in the US are Christian, no? Is this sound evidence that Judaism, other religions, are false? The American Psychiatric Assn. long classified homosexuality as mental disease. What mighty evidence! Like the scientific dictates I long heard that homosexuality is "unnatural": Animals don't engage in same-sex, sex. Wrong. Along w/ other recreational sex. We also long heard that adult brains generate no new neurons. Also wrong. Here, why not abide, instead, experts in civil liberties? In previous decades, we had much fear, disapproval, of the impact on children, teens, of video games, TVs; co-education of girls and boys, blacks and whites. All underscoring, to me, that what should guide us are sound bases backed by data. Not overreaching when in fact we DON'T know. Linking 2 phenomena is not ample evidence in itself for picking one as the cause of the other. For advancing doctrine the authors favor.
If we consistently followed the strong version of the so-called "precautionary principle" since prehistory, we would all still be living in caves to this day. Just saying.
I came across this relevant study showing that AFTER social media use in youth increases, depression increases: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2834349
Yeah, you wouldn’t want teenagers to see the Diddy trial or all the evil running through the highest levels of the government. They’re so tender and innocent they shouldn’t be taught about the evil of the world they soon will be entering into as men and women. we wouldn’t want them to learn that the world is round, that nukes are fake, that no man ever walked on the moon, that Hillary Clinton has killed over 100 people, that Obama is a cocksucking, gay man, that Michelle Obama is a tranny. Let them learn that when they are men and women.
If you don’t want people to be destroyed by social media, stop doing heinous acts against people. It’s not the social media. That’s the problem. It’s all the fucking assholes out there.