Thanks for continuing to patiently respond to the skeptics with data-driven and logic-driven responses. I appreciate people want to hang on to long-held beliefs, but your work is important in helping come to the truth so we can make changes that will actually have positive impacts on our kids (or at least the next generation).
There is not only less stigma surrounding mental health issues, it's acually been glamorized. It's down to the victim mentality phenomenon.
I would argue that these things you blame on the internet and social media are more due to those platforms being captured by woke interests than by kids simply using them.
A major driver of mental health problems is changes in the omega-3/6 balance of the food supply due to increased arachidonic acid intake. But who is paying attention to that? For the latest word on that aspect of the suicide problem, read Omega Balance by Australian zoologist Anthony Hulbert, PhD.
Excerpt from a research paper: "The present findings suggest that, as naturally absorbed nutrients, higher EPA and lithium levels may be associated with less suicide attempt, and that higher arachidonic acid levels may be associated with more deliberate self-harm." (web search - Naturally absorbed polyunsaturated fatty acids, lithium, and suicide-related behaviors)
Art imitating life and life imitating art. For a while now “media” has been producing content that ranges from books to tv to podcasts and YouTube and similar formats. Shows and discussions often present these “hard topics”, for instance in the 90’s I learned about bulemia (eating then induced vomiting to avoid weight gain); in the 00’s I learned about “cutting”; in the current age there seems to be unlimited variations where you hear about various mental health conditions and even the names of the psychiatric medications. It’s probably too much to say that the “art” is pushing some of these disorders as people self diagnose and everyone seems to have a therapist or has considered seeking out help. Adolescent children and those experiencing hormonal fluctuations associated with puberty and monthly cycles could be in a very vulnerable position. Isolation does not help, focusing on negative emotions and worries and ruminating on troubles, both real and perceived just solidifies the state of uncertainty and negative emotions.
Being outdoors, having a supportive peer group, friends, family members can be a positive influence and a good distraction when troubled intrusive thoughts prevail. There are disorders associated with inadequate sunlight exposure. Absence of father in the home, a chaotic and unstable family structure doesn’t help.
Into this situation that is primed for vulnerability we introduce social media and that is a sure recipe for disaster.
What you are doing is very important. Collecting the data, presenting it in a way that is easy to read and comprehend, this can lead to change. In time, hopefully sooner rather than later, your research and writing will lead to healthier outcomes for this population. It’s important to remember that the interests of corporations that are making money from tech, from psychiatric services and medication will all have their own theories based upon their biased perspective. Tech is good for some people, and harmful for others and teasing out the populations most at risk is a difficult task but you are doing an excellent job of it.
Never forget that the populations most at risk may be parented by the individuals least likely to access this material. I hope that your media interviews and lectures continue to grow and be widely available for everyone. Keep up the good work!
I find a lot of this persuasive. I had previously had the stigma objection and appreciate the way you address it.
However, I have a question about this point you make:
"As you saw in Figures 1 and 2 above, the rise in hospitalizations for self-harm began before 2015, around 2010 (long before the ICD change).
In fact, the average estimated yearly increase of adolescent girls (ages 10-19) admitted to hospitals from 2010 to 2015 (2,224 girls per year) was larger than it was from 2016 to 2020 (an additional 614 girls per year)."
My objection is that the rise in 2010 seems too early to say the phones were a driver of hospitalizations. Anecdotally, I got my first smartphone in 2012. At the time, it wasn't unusual to have a flip phone. I graduated from high school in 2009 and I knew one person who had an iPhone. Even for people who got a smartphone in 2009, wouldn't 2010 be too soon to see this sort of impact in the data? It seems unlikely to me that the effect on mental health was this immediate.
Is it because girls are denied basic safety? Any man or teenager who declares herself a trans woman is allowed to freely enter women's locker rooms and women's restrooms. If a girl feels uncomfortable, she is accused of "transphobia," shamed and bullied.
But no one will dare to consider such a hypothesis because left-wing activists have intimidated everyone.
Did the same mental health decline happen in countries which are not trans-friendly?
You have a tendency in this post (although not uniformly throughout) to argue against a strawman: Most of what I've seen is people arguing that differences in stigmatization and diagnosis could be a partial explanation for the trends your focused on. I haven't seen people arguing that those differences mean that cellphone usage couldn't be a factor.
Also, since you argue with such a high level of certainty about causation, you need to explain better why there is some inconsistency across countries with respect to these trends, why you're making such strong claims in the absence of clear data for many, many countries, why there have also been dramatic rises in mental health issues among other groups (like adult men) and how you've eliminated any potential causality in those cases as explanatory for teenage girls as well.
Finally, a problem I mentioned on Jonathan's previous post is that I think there's. big problem that came up in Jonathan's interview with Tyler Cowan, where it seems that Jonathan wasn't even sure that data on kids interacting with each other included time spent in schools. I get that there's a qualitative difference between time spent in unstructured activities and time spent in school, but it seems rather dubious to treat the impact of interaction time as dichotomous across those categories. Surely, time spent interacting in classroom, on school buses, on playgrounds, in lunchrooms, in intramural sports (not to mention in after school gymnastics classes and the like) have some measure of the benefits attributable also to free play time. As such, I don't get how you could conduct a thorough analysis if you don't look at school associated interaction time as a factor to adjust for when you are trying to measure the impact of the diminshment of free time outside of school.
The adults are even less “alright.” If I were dictator, the following disclaimers would head all commentaries (citing ages of regular posters on here as examples) deploring teen mental health, suicide, self-harm, and/or social media:
- This humble respondent, male, age 73, belongs to a demographic Centers for Disease Control figures show is 6.3 times more likely to commit suicide and 4.7 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high school girl (age 17).
- A popular author on here, male, age 60, belongs to a demographic 6.4 times more likely to commit suicide and 12.6 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high-school girl. (Why are middle-aged men, including many fathers, so appallingly self-destructive and getting worse?)
- Another popular author, female, age 52, belongs to a demographic 1.7 times more likely to commit suicide and 5.1 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high-school girl.
- “Not-alright” adults are by far the biggest cause of “not-alright” teens. Parents’ abuse, mental health, and rapidly rising drug/alcohol crises across the Anglo world are by far the leading known cause of teens’ mental health problems. No other factor is even close.
- The Centers for Disease Control’s definitive, multi-factor 2021 survey shows girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents or household grownups are 8 times more likely to attempt suicide and 27 times more likely to self-harm compared to girls who are not abused. Why do none of the popular authors mention this?
- Social media use has mixed, generally protective associations. The CDC finds girls who frequently (5+ hours a day) use screens like TV, cellphones, and social media are 23% LESS likely to attempt suicide, 51% less likely to self-harm, and generally less likely to suffer other serious risks than are girls with little or no screen time (<1 hour a day). Again, why is this not mentioned?
All of the above statements are true and easily verified. Ordinarily, we would expect social scientists, political and health leaders, and media reporters to provide vital, balanced contexts when they discuss important issues like suicide and self-harm. We would also expect humility. Teenage girls are coping with their supposed stresses, including more messed-up adults, far better than are middle-agers, especially men.
One further question is the self-reinforcement of the whole psych industry.
Girls have, eg, been clearly demonstrated to have susceptibility to social fads than have boys - body image in particular (but not exclusively) anorexia/bullemia, the whole transgender child-abuse scam, fashion victimhood…you name it, really (hoola hoops, hair bobbing…). The question is about the influence of “grooming”
Anyone who works with children can valid all of what you are saying. The decline is rapid, visible and unmistakable. And, I don't believe we are at the bottom of the curve, not by a long way.
Playing devil's advocate - on challenge 1 - could social media have caused de-stigmatization, which has then caused more young people (girls especially) presenting with self harm injuries? I get that hospitalization is probably a high bar to clear, but when you look at the definition of self harm at the CDC it could refer to some relatively minor injuries. And if you've got a young woman in your hospital with self harm injuries, even if they're not that major you might still want to keep them in for monitoring (I've never worked in a hospital so no idea how likely that is).
Aside from that I think this is a really excellent dive into the whole 'is it just reporting/everyone being more comfy talking about mental health' part of this debate. The Economist graph did it for me. Because it is deaths by suicide (which is unlikely down to reporting changes and cannot be due to level of comfort talking about mental health) and clearly shows the impact is on young females only. It shows it isn't confined to one country. It hits the nail on the head in terms of setting out the problem, and is hard to refute (assuming the data analysis is good of course!).
One note (and I don't have a solution!) - although these long articles are great for people like me (and the rest of us subscribers) who have at least some attention span, you'd lose most people before you get past the first couple of paragraphs. You guys must be asked onto the TV and podcasts and stuff all the time - do you have simple, effective comms to get all this detail distilled down? A bit like the Economist graph (even that could do with some simplifying to be honest) - getting a tonne of information across in a small bite sized chunk. It feels like it should be kicking up a stink with lawmakers but I just don't see it being addressed hard enough.
"We think it is time to start taking action." I am very sympathetic to your goals and your agenda on After Babel. But when I read exhortations like this by those who want to turn back the tide of Western Liberalism's headlong self-destruct I have to say they make me wince a bit. Why ? Because these exhortations betray a somewhat romantic and naive misunderstanding of where we currently are in 2024. "We" can make noise Yes and that's what you are doing and all power to your elbow. But in our intrinsically out-of-control 21st c. culture "we need to take action" is - sadly - fairly meaningless.
Teenage girls are at risk for suicide. A cause I am all too familiar with: the "Queen Bee" who runs the "popular" crowd that ruthlessly crushes any girl who does not meet their standards of beauty.
Thanks for continuing to patiently respond to the skeptics with data-driven and logic-driven responses. I appreciate people want to hang on to long-held beliefs, but your work is important in helping come to the truth so we can make changes that will actually have positive impacts on our kids (or at least the next generation).
The world is more than just the West. Why isn't this increase in teen mental illness also found in the rest of the world?
There is not only less stigma surrounding mental health issues, it's acually been glamorized. It's down to the victim mentality phenomenon.
I would argue that these things you blame on the internet and social media are more due to those platforms being captured by woke interests than by kids simply using them.
A major driver of mental health problems is changes in the omega-3/6 balance of the food supply due to increased arachidonic acid intake. But who is paying attention to that? For the latest word on that aspect of the suicide problem, read Omega Balance by Australian zoologist Anthony Hulbert, PhD.
Excerpt from a research paper: "The present findings suggest that, as naturally absorbed nutrients, higher EPA and lithium levels may be associated with less suicide attempt, and that higher arachidonic acid levels may be associated with more deliberate self-harm." (web search - Naturally absorbed polyunsaturated fatty acids, lithium, and suicide-related behaviors)
Art imitating life and life imitating art. For a while now “media” has been producing content that ranges from books to tv to podcasts and YouTube and similar formats. Shows and discussions often present these “hard topics”, for instance in the 90’s I learned about bulemia (eating then induced vomiting to avoid weight gain); in the 00’s I learned about “cutting”; in the current age there seems to be unlimited variations where you hear about various mental health conditions and even the names of the psychiatric medications. It’s probably too much to say that the “art” is pushing some of these disorders as people self diagnose and everyone seems to have a therapist or has considered seeking out help. Adolescent children and those experiencing hormonal fluctuations associated with puberty and monthly cycles could be in a very vulnerable position. Isolation does not help, focusing on negative emotions and worries and ruminating on troubles, both real and perceived just solidifies the state of uncertainty and negative emotions.
Being outdoors, having a supportive peer group, friends, family members can be a positive influence and a good distraction when troubled intrusive thoughts prevail. There are disorders associated with inadequate sunlight exposure. Absence of father in the home, a chaotic and unstable family structure doesn’t help.
Into this situation that is primed for vulnerability we introduce social media and that is a sure recipe for disaster.
What you are doing is very important. Collecting the data, presenting it in a way that is easy to read and comprehend, this can lead to change. In time, hopefully sooner rather than later, your research and writing will lead to healthier outcomes for this population. It’s important to remember that the interests of corporations that are making money from tech, from psychiatric services and medication will all have their own theories based upon their biased perspective. Tech is good for some people, and harmful for others and teasing out the populations most at risk is a difficult task but you are doing an excellent job of it.
Never forget that the populations most at risk may be parented by the individuals least likely to access this material. I hope that your media interviews and lectures continue to grow and be widely available for everyone. Keep up the good work!
I find a lot of this persuasive. I had previously had the stigma objection and appreciate the way you address it.
However, I have a question about this point you make:
"As you saw in Figures 1 and 2 above, the rise in hospitalizations for self-harm began before 2015, around 2010 (long before the ICD change).
In fact, the average estimated yearly increase of adolescent girls (ages 10-19) admitted to hospitals from 2010 to 2015 (2,224 girls per year) was larger than it was from 2016 to 2020 (an additional 614 girls per year)."
My objection is that the rise in 2010 seems too early to say the phones were a driver of hospitalizations. Anecdotally, I got my first smartphone in 2012. At the time, it wasn't unusual to have a flip phone. I graduated from high school in 2009 and I knew one person who had an iPhone. Even for people who got a smartphone in 2009, wouldn't 2010 be too soon to see this sort of impact in the data? It seems unlikely to me that the effect on mental health was this immediate.
Am I misreading the chart? It seems like teen girls are by far the least likely demographic to commit suicide.
Is it because girls are denied basic safety? Any man or teenager who declares herself a trans woman is allowed to freely enter women's locker rooms and women's restrooms. If a girl feels uncomfortable, she is accused of "transphobia," shamed and bullied.
But no one will dare to consider such a hypothesis because left-wing activists have intimidated everyone.
Did the same mental health decline happen in countries which are not trans-friendly?
You have a tendency in this post (although not uniformly throughout) to argue against a strawman: Most of what I've seen is people arguing that differences in stigmatization and diagnosis could be a partial explanation for the trends your focused on. I haven't seen people arguing that those differences mean that cellphone usage couldn't be a factor.
Also, since you argue with such a high level of certainty about causation, you need to explain better why there is some inconsistency across countries with respect to these trends, why you're making such strong claims in the absence of clear data for many, many countries, why there have also been dramatic rises in mental health issues among other groups (like adult men) and how you've eliminated any potential causality in those cases as explanatory for teenage girls as well.
Finally, a problem I mentioned on Jonathan's previous post is that I think there's. big problem that came up in Jonathan's interview with Tyler Cowan, where it seems that Jonathan wasn't even sure that data on kids interacting with each other included time spent in schools. I get that there's a qualitative difference between time spent in unstructured activities and time spent in school, but it seems rather dubious to treat the impact of interaction time as dichotomous across those categories. Surely, time spent interacting in classroom, on school buses, on playgrounds, in lunchrooms, in intramural sports (not to mention in after school gymnastics classes and the like) have some measure of the benefits attributable also to free play time. As such, I don't get how you could conduct a thorough analysis if you don't look at school associated interaction time as a factor to adjust for when you are trying to measure the impact of the diminshment of free time outside of school.
The adults are even less “alright.” If I were dictator, the following disclaimers would head all commentaries (citing ages of regular posters on here as examples) deploring teen mental health, suicide, self-harm, and/or social media:
- This humble respondent, male, age 73, belongs to a demographic Centers for Disease Control figures show is 6.3 times more likely to commit suicide and 4.7 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high school girl (age 17).
- A popular author on here, male, age 60, belongs to a demographic 6.4 times more likely to commit suicide and 12.6 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high-school girl. (Why are middle-aged men, including many fathers, so appallingly self-destructive and getting worse?)
- Another popular author, female, age 52, belongs to a demographic 1.7 times more likely to commit suicide and 5.1 times more likely to die from self-inflicted suicide or overdose than a high-school girl.
- “Not-alright” adults are by far the biggest cause of “not-alright” teens. Parents’ abuse, mental health, and rapidly rising drug/alcohol crises across the Anglo world are by far the leading known cause of teens’ mental health problems. No other factor is even close.
- The Centers for Disease Control’s definitive, multi-factor 2021 survey shows girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents or household grownups are 8 times more likely to attempt suicide and 27 times more likely to self-harm compared to girls who are not abused. Why do none of the popular authors mention this?
- Social media use has mixed, generally protective associations. The CDC finds girls who frequently (5+ hours a day) use screens like TV, cellphones, and social media are 23% LESS likely to attempt suicide, 51% less likely to self-harm, and generally less likely to suffer other serious risks than are girls with little or no screen time (<1 hour a day). Again, why is this not mentioned?
All of the above statements are true and easily verified. Ordinarily, we would expect social scientists, political and health leaders, and media reporters to provide vital, balanced contexts when they discuss important issues like suicide and self-harm. We would also expect humility. Teenage girls are coping with their supposed stresses, including more messed-up adults, far better than are middle-agers, especially men.
One further question is the self-reinforcement of the whole psych industry.
Girls have, eg, been clearly demonstrated to have susceptibility to social fads than have boys - body image in particular (but not exclusively) anorexia/bullemia, the whole transgender child-abuse scam, fashion victimhood…you name it, really (hoola hoops, hair bobbing…). The question is about the influence of “grooming”
Anyone who works with children can valid all of what you are saying. The decline is rapid, visible and unmistakable. And, I don't believe we are at the bottom of the curve, not by a long way.
Playing devil's advocate - on challenge 1 - could social media have caused de-stigmatization, which has then caused more young people (girls especially) presenting with self harm injuries? I get that hospitalization is probably a high bar to clear, but when you look at the definition of self harm at the CDC it could refer to some relatively minor injuries. And if you've got a young woman in your hospital with self harm injuries, even if they're not that major you might still want to keep them in for monitoring (I've never worked in a hospital so no idea how likely that is).
Aside from that I think this is a really excellent dive into the whole 'is it just reporting/everyone being more comfy talking about mental health' part of this debate. The Economist graph did it for me. Because it is deaths by suicide (which is unlikely down to reporting changes and cannot be due to level of comfort talking about mental health) and clearly shows the impact is on young females only. It shows it isn't confined to one country. It hits the nail on the head in terms of setting out the problem, and is hard to refute (assuming the data analysis is good of course!).
One note (and I don't have a solution!) - although these long articles are great for people like me (and the rest of us subscribers) who have at least some attention span, you'd lose most people before you get past the first couple of paragraphs. You guys must be asked onto the TV and podcasts and stuff all the time - do you have simple, effective comms to get all this detail distilled down? A bit like the Economist graph (even that could do with some simplifying to be honest) - getting a tonne of information across in a small bite sized chunk. It feels like it should be kicking up a stink with lawmakers but I just don't see it being addressed hard enough.
"We think it is time to start taking action." I am very sympathetic to your goals and your agenda on After Babel. But when I read exhortations like this by those who want to turn back the tide of Western Liberalism's headlong self-destruct I have to say they make me wince a bit. Why ? Because these exhortations betray a somewhat romantic and naive misunderstanding of where we currently are in 2024. "We" can make noise Yes and that's what you are doing and all power to your elbow. But in our intrinsically out-of-control 21st c. culture "we need to take action" is - sadly - fairly meaningless.
Any study of how porn consumption and porn bulling ( and porn misogyny) by boys affects girls? \\
"Exaggerated" is the proper spelling.
However, this is a great article.
Teenage girls are at risk for suicide. A cause I am all too familiar with: the "Queen Bee" who runs the "popular" crowd that ruthlessly crushes any girl who does not meet their standards of beauty.