The more data comes out about this, the more I feel extremely lucky to have finished high school in the mid aughts and to have finished college before Facebook metastasized and Twitter/Instagram/smart phones took off. I very probably had peers who struggled with these feelings, but it was not anything like 42%. I guess we can never know how good we have it until it all goes away.
I do worry about my sibling's young children, but with all we're learning, I'm hopeful that by the time they might be old enough for smart phones and social media we'll have enough sense to severely limit all of it.
I think social media undoubtedly plays a monstrous role in all this. But I wonder whether other elements, such as what could have happened in these kids’ earlier years—perhaps something they were too young to handle (9/11?)—might’ve laid the foundation and made these children more vulnerable.
Maybe I'm way off here.
No matter the foundation, if many adults can't use social media responsibly (a vague term, I know), why allow our children to use it?
Have you read Coddling of the American Mind? Jon and Greg Lukianoff posit some other factors in the book (loss of free play outdoors, safetyism in parenting, etc.).
I doubt 9/11 plays a role. A bunch of these kids weren’t born yet. I’m in the youngest cohort of people who can remember it, and I also tend to think my peers are some of the last relatively normal ones (not many smartphones until college).
You’re thinking about kids who are in their teens now. But what about, for example, the first graders in 2001, who, in 2010, would have been fifteen? And of course, they would remember it—it was talked about in every school and every home. Countless children saw it on television. Even if they don't remember it clearly, it’s in their subconsciouses, where much of the havoc happens without any awareness.
I'm not saying I am right, only saying I don't think it should be dismissed, even if it is farfetched and would only be a small contributor to the issue.
I haven't read that book yet, but I ordered it a few days ago, right after finishing The Righteous Mind.
So, I was in kindergarten when 9/11 happened and it’s my earliest political memory. While I do think there was a difference between the kids 5-10 years older than me and my peers, I noticed the biggest difference about 2-3 years younger than me. It was starkest when I was in college. My first year, the third and fourth year friends I had were a sharp contrast with the younger friends I had 3 years later (ie, the first and second years when I was a fourth year) - way more attached to their phones and social media, way more likely to have anxiety and depression, less mature, etc.
I’m sure that like a fish in water, I probably don’t have the best insight on this subject - but anecdotally, professors and other adults I knew confirmed this suspicion of mine that there had been some kind of weird shift over the four years I was in college.
May have been discussed but, they were NOT specifically and personally affected by being in the midst of it . To them that was a history lesson that went in one ear and although being aware. They were not personally in the midst as we were as parents. To grasp the concept at that specific time , is my thought.
Absolutely agree. We are disciplined and strict in the use of cell phones and Internet. Holding them accounttable . Our checking the phones holds us accountable.amd keeps them safe as well as limiting time on them. That's a BIG BIG issue now.
Kids see tragedies on tv alot and can put them out of there mind really easily. like I saw 9/11 live (on Tv) when I was 9 and my parents where more scared than we where. I rember being a little nervous in the weeks after but was pretty easy to be reassured by adults
All of mine were too young to know anything aboit 9/11 until later and that was not as consequential as all the crazy train mess from the past couple of years because, THEN, it directly affected their lives from shut downs and all the crazy mess. So their affecivity comes from the past 3 years.
Absolutely correct. Children..being open to Absolutely ANYTHING on the web is a major issue for me. As well as sick&twisted individuals as well having open access to mess with kids.. just NO. It just opens up so much.
It would be interesting to see if the trend is also reflected in homeschoolers. This might be one sub-group of the population that is less likely to use social media/ or use it to a lower extent. There is less peer pressure, closer ties to family, and a smaller group of closely connected friends. I coordinate co-ops for homeschooled high school students and have observed that phones rarely play any role in their interactions. A group of them actually decided to delete all their social media apps on their phones; they have kept it up and encourage each other. They have decided to use their phones only for making arrangements or taking photos. Many of them have clearly decided that they prefer to be grounded in reality rather than lost in space.
Such a great aspect to consider. I , however, wanted our children to have the full social enviroment and learning aspect not only of of public school but also the social specifics that it shows and brings for life learning if only visual . I do fully
understand the desires and positives from home school. I simply feel that children will be better rounded for 'life' it's self from public school. Life can be tough and they have to be ready or the world will eat them up and their insecurities will not alow them.to prosper from not being well socialized or having the occassional disagreement and standing up for themselves against other kids. Sports, competitiveness, desire to win and struggle to do so. Family is NOT the same , in facing adversaries or obstacles, in my opinion. Kids must learn to absorb all of this and deal.with it as part of life or it will hamper their ability to climb, struggle and win in today's aspects. Survival of the fittest? Some life lessons , if not only seen and made aware of In Schools, are necessary for their lives ahead. There are basically many things being at home consistently cannot teach you.
Life will not coddle children . You either sink or swim.
Homeschool does not mean staying at home. Homeschooled students receive ample socialization through weekly co-ops, sports, volunteerism, study groups, interactions with neighbours etc. There is ample research that demonstrates that homeschooled children receive better socialization as they are able to interact with a wide variety of ages and people, in contrast to public school kids who are trained to interact in age cohorts (which does not happen anywhere in real life except school). Homeschooling is actually the opposite of 'bubble-wrapping' children, as they tend to have more opportunities for risky free play which develops the self-governance that Haidt states is needed for our young to develop properly.
I agree, somewhat . However, not from a "risky free play aspect". There is still a smaller limited circle. We as grandparents raising and adopted 3 grandchildren , have 3 businesses aside from my husband being a very Successful Electrical Professional of Masters in 23 different States as well as Mechanical License, Business & Law to go with all in addition to Overseas License working for a Eurepean Company, which gives these children a wide array of socialization. They are all in school clubs, sports, travel tournament teams as well as helping us , learnign specifics from hands on being around and taking part in the businesses . They receive allowance for helping when they do. We do have the opportunity to open our children to a much wider spectrum than most but still yet, the complex aspects of socialization still need to be learned, seen and sometimes felt in order to learn early on, persevere and overcome. In my opinion, since I was raised in my fathers business after school every day, all my life. The EARLIER children are able to be confronted , learn coping specifics and get a handle on such specifics , it gives them such an advanced aspect of being ahead of those who have a limited circles of varied
situational specifics and be able to grasp. To do it in adult life and learn to grasp and cope then? In my opinion is harder. It is Easier for a child because they are resilient. Dont rationalize the same way as adults will if cofronted with
a negative situation for the 1st time as an adult ? I think these are all parts of growing and learning to absorb differentials
in life , learning how to move forward at early ages. People Can be cruel ! If someone sees a weakness in many aspects they will steam roll right past them thinking they are not ready or cannot handle other similar situations. These have been my personal observances as a woman in Industrial, mechanical Plant and Mill fields as well as In my Supervisory positions. There IS a major difference in a personal ability to succeed.
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023Liked by Jon Haidt
Thank you for all your work, professor! I’ve been going around preaching your and twenge’s books to my community for years (proof here, my very long talk I used to give pre-Covid: , https://gaty.substack.com/p/unplugging-your-kids ), absolutely invaluable insights.
Anyway, I’ll write about this in more detail later, but did you know that even with the end of lockdown, kids are still doing virtual school, just in person? That is, they go to school, but spend all their classes on tablets watching videos iand virtual slide decks. One of my patients told me this a couple months ago and I thought he was exaggerating but since then I’ve encountered the same story without prompting several other times! And at least one kid could easily still access YouTube during class so was fooling around instead of following along. And then the teacher gets mad and sends them to me for “adhd” - and I’m like, y’all are the ones giving them screens all day!! I don’t think this will end well…
For anyone interested in a non-screen cause of teen anxiety, as demonstrated by a recent survey on parent priorities, please see here:
Thanks for this, and especially the timely response to critiques. The timeline before 2000 was one of my own curiosities. Glad someone else in the class was willing to raise their hand and ask the question. The Looping Effect is one of the things I seem to be observing and attempting to counteract within our teen case study of 2.
There are 3 major achievements to be made during adolescence and early adulthood. One is forming a sense of identity, separate from one's family, often beginning with group membership. A second is the capacity for emotional intimacy with peers. But a third, often overlooked, is learning to manage affective information.
I distinguish this from managing affect itself. One of the challenges young people face is being able to set aside how something makes them *feel*, whether positive or negative, and not treat it as pivotal or deciding information when reasoning through decisions. For me, this difficulty/challenge is fundamental to why teens and young adults are not only more prone to *take* risks, but also more prone to be *risk-averse* in many situations: they are convinced by their feelings. So, they might avoid some action, out of great fear of the imagined consequences, and adopt a different riskier course of action, because it creates the impression of greater safety.
Flipping this around, face with an adolescent who could say "You know, I really don't like the guy, BUT he makes a good point", or "It sounds like it would be a lot of fun, but I have an important exam tomorrow, so I'll have to bail out", we would perceive them as "mature", BECAUSE they show evidence of being able to separate feelings from decision-making. I would contend that where you can talk a 40 year-old down off a ledge, it is substantially more difficult to persuade a 16 year-old that their perception of things being hopeless is wrong. For those who have not yet learned to manage how they incorporate affective information, what they feel in their gut makes for an open and shut case, impervious to other information.
I mention this because one of the hallmarks of what I refer to as "the adolocentric society" is the increasing emphasis on affective information as important and even crucial. Heck, we even see it in the field of management where people are encouraged to "go with their gut". But, as Daniel Kahneman has amply illustrated, decisions made on the basis of those first 300msec of "feelings" are generally not the best decisions.
The emergence of mobile devices that permit us to respond immediately and impulsively, without reflection (I submit sampling Youtube comments as evidence!), and be impacted on by an onslaught of messages and images explicitly intended to drive our affect, is not solely responsible for the declines in indices of mental health noted in the CDC report, and generally discussed here. But it sure as shooting hasn't helped, and substituting actual social interaction with curated indirect contact, via smartphones, during the pandemic, has only amplified this trend further. I think, however, the roots of this go back to the early '80s.
One of the more thought-provoking papers I read in grad school concerned depression in the elderly. Typically, the risk of depression increases with the more loss events one experiences. This strikes us as only natural. The author's contention was that, with loss events becoming more numerous with advanced age, even though seniors are not immune to depression, the incidence of depression in the elderly was actually LESS than one might predict, based on the sheer number of major loss events experienced. Other lines of research have observed a salutogenic effect of reminiscence in older adults. To oversimplify it: "If I got through THAT, and things worked out fine, I can get through THIS". Reflecting on the past and lived experience can "immunize" one against the potential impact of loss in the present.
One of the traits of adolescence is that there isn't much history to reminisce about. And one of the characteristics of the "adolocentric society" is that we - broadly speaking - are encouraged in so many ways to ignore or devalue that which is not current or very recent. Who and what are the social referents to whom all these disturbed young people compare themselves to? Do they have any based in "real life", or only what they see on Instagram and Tik-Tok?
Another thread concerns theories of life satisfaction. I'm fond of Alex Michalos' "multiple discrepancies theory", which posits that life satisfaction is derived by comparisons against not only social referents, but also personal trajectory - what things were like 5 years ago, and what one expects them to be 5 years from now. If one expects life to turn around, then one views the present in a less unfavourable light. If one thinks it will remain as it is, or even worsen, then "life" is viewed very UNfavourably.
So if the social referents you have are wholly unrealistic, your experience is very limited, and you're easily persuaded to view the future through the emotional lens of the present, AND encouraged by the society in general to do so, exactly what are your prospects for a sunny and hopeful disposition?
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023Liked by Jon Haidt, Zach Rausch
Great post. Since lead is posited as a cause of the peak in boys suicidality in the 90s, any plausible similar explanation for the recent peak that has not yet been ruled out? I was a bit surprised when you suggested that girls fared worse during the pandemic because they dove into social media. To me the more plausible explanation is that girls are more social and experienced more sadness at not being as connected to their friends in real life. I know extroverted adults who experienced the same (as an introvert, I suffered very little ;)). Also, I keep wondering about to what extent these patterns are specific to specific groups/demographics. Maybe you have covered that somewhere already, but I think generalizing to boys and girls broadly makes it seem more plausible that it's a mass phenomenon (social media) vs. something else affecting only a subset of boys/girls but nevertheless increasing the rates. Finally, I suspect that at least for some of this it is a measurement artifact. Best to calibrate evaluations by the quality of the evidence (objective indicators of poor mental health > subjective).
Thanks for pointing me to your appendices. I admire your efforts! The LGBTQ patterns are interesting, with the rise in identification as a sexual minority coinciding with the rise of social media. I will need to read through more carefully but wondering if there are any studies that look at important factors together in one model (social media use, sexual minority identity, gender, etc. and their interaction as predictors of various objective mental health indices). Maybe for some vulnerable groups (within the vulnerable age bracket), social media use is especially harmful...(or, reflects mental health struggles, to point the causal arrow in a different direction). To be clear, I'm not especially skeptical of your claims. I admire and am grateful that you and Jon are doing this work (I have a child who has to grow up in this crazy world!) I am just curious about how best to test them in a world where clear causal evidence will be hard to come by. I'd find it most satisfying to see alternative hypotheses pursued in tandem with the same gusto and see what the evidence best supports. Looking forward to future posts!
My general sense right now is that there are a few factors that lead to especially problematic social media use (and related to mental health concerns). And I agree I think the causal arrow often goes in both directions (amplifying pre-existing mental health problems, and causing some new ones as well).
Some areas of particular interest to me are about slightly different sub-groups:
In particular,
1) Children on who struggle with social connection (high social anxiety, shyness, or are on the spectrum)
2) Children with very low parental supervision and high access to screens (and low support networks)
3) Children with particularly low impulse control.
I think social class, race, and sexuality are important factors to consider as well. A couple of studies that may be of interest:
1) A number of social media and mental health studies *control* for these factors to show the effects beyond those variables. Here's are two examples:
Thanks so much for this thoughtful reply and for these references. I study executive function so I know there are (neg) associations with media use, but so far a lack of good experimental studies to test causal hypotheses. Looking forward to your upcoming posts!
A partial critique of the answer to question one: Even if teens' time spent hanging out with friends in the strictest sense (outside of school settings) had already been decimated over the pre-Covid decade, wouldn't the transition to virtual learning, including the falling time spent in-person with clubs and sports, have still reduced the amount of face-to-face time with peers even further? That was my experience being in high school during the pandemic: even though I hadn't previously spent loads of time just "hanging out" at friends' houses, the year+ on virtual learning cut out that time I had eating lunch with friends, bantering in the hallway or on the bus, meeting people at after-school clubs, telling funny stories while working on a Photoshop etc. etc. and that was just awful for me. Indeed, the authors of that study note that "social baseline theory suggests, at a minimum, being in relatively close proximity to others imparts physiological benefits." Seems important to note that, even though friend time fits into the pre-Covid trend, if you look at the 15-24 line on the "social isolation" graph, it had previously been going up especially in the preceding few years, but went up from 2019 to 2020 by more than it had in the total 2012 to 2019 span.
I'll admit that the sample of Gen-Zers who read stuff like this probably enjoyed school much more than the average member of our generation, though, and there is evidence that youth suicides go up during the school year and on school days. There was a lot less work when school was online, so maybe the reduction of schoolwork time had a (short-term) positive effect that partially masked the pernicious effect of reduced face-to-face time at school, extracurriculars and sports. But it all depends on what it got replaced with—is schoolwork time worse for the average high schooler (in the short-run) than YouTube time? Instagram/TikTok time? I don't know.
This is fascinating. So much was made of covid's impact, and I think the context of the broader downward spiral of mental health prior to covid has always been left out. Thank you for bringing clarity. It's important for two reasons: 1) If teen mental health decline was related to covid, it can be easily dismissed as something that was extremely unlikely to happen and will likely not happen again. 2) Because of #1, no one would do anything about it. But if it's viewed as being a continuation of a downward trend with no end in sight, then maybe the issue will get some attention. Maybe.
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023Liked by Jon Haidt
I really appreciate you sharing the passage in Haidt's book about The Looping Effect. It's something I got caught in myself when I was diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, and Asperger's in middle school (I'm 31 now).
While the answers to my troubles could now be explained under these new labels, at the same time it pigeonholed me into an identity I had little desire to change. Every mental problem in my life could now be easily explained away by the "chemicals in my brain". My concern is while diagnoses can give answers to a person's suffering, I see less effort being placed toward inspiring people to move past their diagnoses to become stronger and wiser. While the stigma of mental illness is decreasing, it also seems to be having a paradoxical effect in some circles where it's more popular now to have some diagnosis than none at all, which in turn further entrenches people in mental illness identities.
These days I barely mention my diagnoses, but when I do I like to say: Labels are an Explanation, not the Destination. I Accept the Diagnosis, but I Refuse the Verdict. For anyone reading this who can relate: please don't let your psychiatric diagnoses define you as an individual!
If I connect your very pertinent observation to the Italian situation it makes sense this side of the Ocean because there is a DELAY IN ADOPTION so unlike their American peers Italian teenagers still spent time with friends face to face and many millions of them either had restriction in the use of phone or no smartphone before COVID19. I interviewed many mothers across Italy this summer and it is clear that COVID19 not only increased exponentially the distribution of smartphone to teens but it also lead giving smartphone to younger children (7-10) with awful consequences.
In an effort to contribute to your "crosscultural study" I take this opportunity to share the first study that establish a causal link (an Italian Professor from Bocconi is co-author) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3919760
I strongly support your exploration of the 27 different European Countries (because Europeans only exists in the mind of Americans -sorry but reality matters) It will be easier to prove the relation between screen introduction in teens life and mental health deterioration because if it happens simultaneously in 27 different cultures that have different 27 ways of life some of them highly centred on relationships and some less, some with more family participation some less... well there is no other way to explain the phenomenon but with smartphones.
Again thank you for your inspiring intellectual courage.
Honest question about that chart on "Time Spent with Friends": so, since it's tracking cohorts based on *current* age (which is why Gen Z had tons of time with friends a decade ago -- they were children), how do we know that sharp decline isn't just a fairly normal transition for mid-teens -> early thirties?
Edit: in other words, is there a way to see that chart while stabilizing the ages? like, "here's how much time 15-year-olds in '22 spent with friends, vs. how much time 15-year-olds in '12 spent with friends" (rather than vs. the same cohort as 5-year-olds in '12).
This is an important point. Specifically because we see that millenials (approximately 10 years older than Gen Z) were already at this lower "time with friends" amount by 2003, which is when they would have been starting to graduate high school. So the drop from 2012-2019 was likely just normal decline as they get older.
In fact, if anything it shows that Gen Z was spending much more time with friends compared to millenials would have been at the same age (comparing gen z in 2013 to millenials in 2003).
This *is* unfortunate, because it does look like the 15-24 graph is *already* going downward, roughly linearly, in 2003.
A (non-US) anecdote : what did I do upon learning of the 2001 first tower strike on my way from high school ? Immediately hop on to the PC and the then super-popular ICQ instant messaging "platform" (through 56k dial-up), with an eye on the TV, chatting about the ongoing developments with high school friend(s)...
So glad that you guys got around to answering some of the questions raised! Another issue I saw come up in a few questions that wasn't addressed is what if any correlation there is with all the gender identity and trans issues that have been increasingly raised in recent years. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but a cursory search brings up links to stories about pronouns and bathrooms from 2016. I notice in the graphs shown that the uptick in boy suicides is particularly notable from 2016.
I realize this is a huge can of worms and people here will likely fall on both sides of the actual issue itself, but it seems to me pretty uncontroversial to say that teens identifying as LGBTQ+ are at higher risk of suicide, so more young people identifying as such would logically mean more suicides.
One source puts the LGBTQ+ suicide rates at 4 times that of the general population.
It's really interesting that the big drop-off in time spent with friends happens at the same time as the rise of smartphones and social media, because I assumed teens adopted these technologies because of in-person time they were already missing, rather than the reverse where adoption displaced in-person time. Even before smartphones, it seemed to me that in-person friend time had declined hugely since my childhood for a variety of reasons.
Hey David, great question. Check out our appendices in the mental health review doc where we are looking at variation by these factors.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6WbDdgnzFHDHPx9HXzR5o/edit
Please add comments!
42% of high schoolers experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness is so unbelievably striking and bleak.
Right, they should be the ones with too much hope, not too little!
The more data comes out about this, the more I feel extremely lucky to have finished high school in the mid aughts and to have finished college before Facebook metastasized and Twitter/Instagram/smart phones took off. I very probably had peers who struggled with these feelings, but it was not anything like 42%. I guess we can never know how good we have it until it all goes away.
I do worry about my sibling's young children, but with all we're learning, I'm hopeful that by the time they might be old enough for smart phones and social media we'll have enough sense to severely limit all of it.
I think social media undoubtedly plays a monstrous role in all this. But I wonder whether other elements, such as what could have happened in these kids’ earlier years—perhaps something they were too young to handle (9/11?)—might’ve laid the foundation and made these children more vulnerable.
Maybe I'm way off here.
No matter the foundation, if many adults can't use social media responsibly (a vague term, I know), why allow our children to use it?
Have you read Coddling of the American Mind? Jon and Greg Lukianoff posit some other factors in the book (loss of free play outdoors, safetyism in parenting, etc.).
I doubt 9/11 plays a role. A bunch of these kids weren’t born yet. I’m in the youngest cohort of people who can remember it, and I also tend to think my peers are some of the last relatively normal ones (not many smartphones until college).
You’re thinking about kids who are in their teens now. But what about, for example, the first graders in 2001, who, in 2010, would have been fifteen? And of course, they would remember it—it was talked about in every school and every home. Countless children saw it on television. Even if they don't remember it clearly, it’s in their subconsciouses, where much of the havoc happens without any awareness.
I'm not saying I am right, only saying I don't think it should be dismissed, even if it is farfetched and would only be a small contributor to the issue.
I haven't read that book yet, but I ordered it a few days ago, right after finishing The Righteous Mind.
So, I was in kindergarten when 9/11 happened and it’s my earliest political memory. While I do think there was a difference between the kids 5-10 years older than me and my peers, I noticed the biggest difference about 2-3 years younger than me. It was starkest when I was in college. My first year, the third and fourth year friends I had were a sharp contrast with the younger friends I had 3 years later (ie, the first and second years when I was a fourth year) - way more attached to their phones and social media, way more likely to have anxiety and depression, less mature, etc.
I’m sure that like a fish in water, I probably don’t have the best insight on this subject - but anecdotally, professors and other adults I knew confirmed this suspicion of mine that there had been some kind of weird shift over the four years I was in college.
Hey Ben and Corey,
We address your comments in our newest post: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic
Let us know what you think in the comments
Thank you, Zach! Will do.
May have been discussed but, they were NOT specifically and personally affected by being in the midst of it . To them that was a history lesson that went in one ear and although being aware. They were not personally in the midst as we were as parents. To grasp the concept at that specific time , is my thought.
Absolutely agree. We are disciplined and strict in the use of cell phones and Internet. Holding them accounttable . Our checking the phones holds us accountable.amd keeps them safe as well as limiting time on them. That's a BIG BIG issue now.
Kids see tragedies on tv alot and can put them out of there mind really easily. like I saw 9/11 live (on Tv) when I was 9 and my parents where more scared than we where. I rember being a little nervous in the weeks after but was pretty easy to be reassured by adults
Absolutely. Children are enough where they should associate
Incidents like that at young ages.
Adults in the other hand have the maturity to grasp the entire aspect of how bad it was.
All of mine were too young to know anything aboit 9/11 until later and that was not as consequential as all the crazy train mess from the past couple of years because, THEN, it directly affected their lives from shut downs and all the crazy mess. So their affecivity comes from the past 3 years.
Absolutely correct. Children..being open to Absolutely ANYTHING on the web is a major issue for me. As well as sick&twisted individuals as well having open access to mess with kids.. just NO. It just opens up so much.
It would be interesting to see if the trend is also reflected in homeschoolers. This might be one sub-group of the population that is less likely to use social media/ or use it to a lower extent. There is less peer pressure, closer ties to family, and a smaller group of closely connected friends. I coordinate co-ops for homeschooled high school students and have observed that phones rarely play any role in their interactions. A group of them actually decided to delete all their social media apps on their phones; they have kept it up and encourage each other. They have decided to use their phones only for making arrangements or taking photos. Many of them have clearly decided that they prefer to be grounded in reality rather than lost in space.
Such a great aspect to consider. I , however, wanted our children to have the full social enviroment and learning aspect not only of of public school but also the social specifics that it shows and brings for life learning if only visual . I do fully
understand the desires and positives from home school. I simply feel that children will be better rounded for 'life' it's self from public school. Life can be tough and they have to be ready or the world will eat them up and their insecurities will not alow them.to prosper from not being well socialized or having the occassional disagreement and standing up for themselves against other kids. Sports, competitiveness, desire to win and struggle to do so. Family is NOT the same , in facing adversaries or obstacles, in my opinion. Kids must learn to absorb all of this and deal.with it as part of life or it will hamper their ability to climb, struggle and win in today's aspects. Survival of the fittest? Some life lessons , if not only seen and made aware of In Schools, are necessary for their lives ahead. There are basically many things being at home consistently cannot teach you.
Life will not coddle children . You either sink or swim.
Homeschool does not mean staying at home. Homeschooled students receive ample socialization through weekly co-ops, sports, volunteerism, study groups, interactions with neighbours etc. There is ample research that demonstrates that homeschooled children receive better socialization as they are able to interact with a wide variety of ages and people, in contrast to public school kids who are trained to interact in age cohorts (which does not happen anywhere in real life except school). Homeschooling is actually the opposite of 'bubble-wrapping' children, as they tend to have more opportunities for risky free play which develops the self-governance that Haidt states is needed for our young to develop properly.
I agree, somewhat . However, not from a "risky free play aspect". There is still a smaller limited circle. We as grandparents raising and adopted 3 grandchildren , have 3 businesses aside from my husband being a very Successful Electrical Professional of Masters in 23 different States as well as Mechanical License, Business & Law to go with all in addition to Overseas License working for a Eurepean Company, which gives these children a wide array of socialization. They are all in school clubs, sports, travel tournament teams as well as helping us , learnign specifics from hands on being around and taking part in the businesses . They receive allowance for helping when they do. We do have the opportunity to open our children to a much wider spectrum than most but still yet, the complex aspects of socialization still need to be learned, seen and sometimes felt in order to learn early on, persevere and overcome. In my opinion, since I was raised in my fathers business after school every day, all my life. The EARLIER children are able to be confronted , learn coping specifics and get a handle on such specifics , it gives them such an advanced aspect of being ahead of those who have a limited circles of varied
situational specifics and be able to grasp. To do it in adult life and learn to grasp and cope then? In my opinion is harder. It is Easier for a child because they are resilient. Dont rationalize the same way as adults will if cofronted with
a negative situation for the 1st time as an adult ? I think these are all parts of growing and learning to absorb differentials
in life , learning how to move forward at early ages. People Can be cruel ! If someone sees a weakness in many aspects they will steam roll right past them thinking they are not ready or cannot handle other similar situations. These have been my personal observances as a woman in Industrial, mechanical Plant and Mill fields as well as In my Supervisory positions. There IS a major difference in a personal ability to succeed.
Thank you for all your work, professor! I’ve been going around preaching your and twenge’s books to my community for years (proof here, my very long talk I used to give pre-Covid: , https://gaty.substack.com/p/unplugging-your-kids ), absolutely invaluable insights.
Anyway, I’ll write about this in more detail later, but did you know that even with the end of lockdown, kids are still doing virtual school, just in person? That is, they go to school, but spend all their classes on tablets watching videos iand virtual slide decks. One of my patients told me this a couple months ago and I thought he was exaggerating but since then I’ve encountered the same story without prompting several other times! And at least one kid could easily still access YouTube during class so was fooling around instead of following along. And then the teacher gets mad and sends them to me for “adhd” - and I’m like, y’all are the ones giving them screens all day!! I don’t think this will end well…
For anyone interested in a non-screen cause of teen anxiety, as demonstrated by a recent survey on parent priorities, please see here:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-good-portion-a-warning-to-parents
Thanks for this, and especially the timely response to critiques. The timeline before 2000 was one of my own curiosities. Glad someone else in the class was willing to raise their hand and ask the question. The Looping Effect is one of the things I seem to be observing and attempting to counteract within our teen case study of 2.
There are 3 major achievements to be made during adolescence and early adulthood. One is forming a sense of identity, separate from one's family, often beginning with group membership. A second is the capacity for emotional intimacy with peers. But a third, often overlooked, is learning to manage affective information.
I distinguish this from managing affect itself. One of the challenges young people face is being able to set aside how something makes them *feel*, whether positive or negative, and not treat it as pivotal or deciding information when reasoning through decisions. For me, this difficulty/challenge is fundamental to why teens and young adults are not only more prone to *take* risks, but also more prone to be *risk-averse* in many situations: they are convinced by their feelings. So, they might avoid some action, out of great fear of the imagined consequences, and adopt a different riskier course of action, because it creates the impression of greater safety.
Flipping this around, face with an adolescent who could say "You know, I really don't like the guy, BUT he makes a good point", or "It sounds like it would be a lot of fun, but I have an important exam tomorrow, so I'll have to bail out", we would perceive them as "mature", BECAUSE they show evidence of being able to separate feelings from decision-making. I would contend that where you can talk a 40 year-old down off a ledge, it is substantially more difficult to persuade a 16 year-old that their perception of things being hopeless is wrong. For those who have not yet learned to manage how they incorporate affective information, what they feel in their gut makes for an open and shut case, impervious to other information.
I mention this because one of the hallmarks of what I refer to as "the adolocentric society" is the increasing emphasis on affective information as important and even crucial. Heck, we even see it in the field of management where people are encouraged to "go with their gut". But, as Daniel Kahneman has amply illustrated, decisions made on the basis of those first 300msec of "feelings" are generally not the best decisions.
The emergence of mobile devices that permit us to respond immediately and impulsively, without reflection (I submit sampling Youtube comments as evidence!), and be impacted on by an onslaught of messages and images explicitly intended to drive our affect, is not solely responsible for the declines in indices of mental health noted in the CDC report, and generally discussed here. But it sure as shooting hasn't helped, and substituting actual social interaction with curated indirect contact, via smartphones, during the pandemic, has only amplified this trend further. I think, however, the roots of this go back to the early '80s.
One of the more thought-provoking papers I read in grad school concerned depression in the elderly. Typically, the risk of depression increases with the more loss events one experiences. This strikes us as only natural. The author's contention was that, with loss events becoming more numerous with advanced age, even though seniors are not immune to depression, the incidence of depression in the elderly was actually LESS than one might predict, based on the sheer number of major loss events experienced. Other lines of research have observed a salutogenic effect of reminiscence in older adults. To oversimplify it: "If I got through THAT, and things worked out fine, I can get through THIS". Reflecting on the past and lived experience can "immunize" one against the potential impact of loss in the present.
One of the traits of adolescence is that there isn't much history to reminisce about. And one of the characteristics of the "adolocentric society" is that we - broadly speaking - are encouraged in so many ways to ignore or devalue that which is not current or very recent. Who and what are the social referents to whom all these disturbed young people compare themselves to? Do they have any based in "real life", or only what they see on Instagram and Tik-Tok?
Another thread concerns theories of life satisfaction. I'm fond of Alex Michalos' "multiple discrepancies theory", which posits that life satisfaction is derived by comparisons against not only social referents, but also personal trajectory - what things were like 5 years ago, and what one expects them to be 5 years from now. If one expects life to turn around, then one views the present in a less unfavourable light. If one thinks it will remain as it is, or even worsen, then "life" is viewed very UNfavourably.
So if the social referents you have are wholly unrealistic, your experience is very limited, and you're easily persuaded to view the future through the emotional lens of the present, AND encouraged by the society in general to do so, exactly what are your prospects for a sunny and hopeful disposition?
Great post. Since lead is posited as a cause of the peak in boys suicidality in the 90s, any plausible similar explanation for the recent peak that has not yet been ruled out? I was a bit surprised when you suggested that girls fared worse during the pandemic because they dove into social media. To me the more plausible explanation is that girls are more social and experienced more sadness at not being as connected to their friends in real life. I know extroverted adults who experienced the same (as an introvert, I suffered very little ;)). Also, I keep wondering about to what extent these patterns are specific to specific groups/demographics. Maybe you have covered that somewhere already, but I think generalizing to boys and girls broadly makes it seem more plausible that it's a mass phenomenon (social media) vs. something else affecting only a subset of boys/girls but nevertheless increasing the rates. Finally, I suspect that at least for some of this it is a measurement artifact. Best to calibrate evaluations by the quality of the evidence (objective indicators of poor mental health > subjective).
Hi, thanks for your continued comments!
Regarding point #2: We start to address the question of variation by subgroups in our google doc (Appendices A through G). Would love to get your thoughts on these studies and reports. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6WbDdgnzFHDHPx9HXzR5o/edit
We see similar patterns across income, race, and geography - with some important variation (which you can see in the doc).
We'll come back to your first point about differences in sociality - I think it is an important one.
Thanks for pointing me to your appendices. I admire your efforts! The LGBTQ patterns are interesting, with the rise in identification as a sexual minority coinciding with the rise of social media. I will need to read through more carefully but wondering if there are any studies that look at important factors together in one model (social media use, sexual minority identity, gender, etc. and their interaction as predictors of various objective mental health indices). Maybe for some vulnerable groups (within the vulnerable age bracket), social media use is especially harmful...(or, reflects mental health struggles, to point the causal arrow in a different direction). To be clear, I'm not especially skeptical of your claims. I admire and am grateful that you and Jon are doing this work (I have a child who has to grow up in this crazy world!) I am just curious about how best to test them in a world where clear causal evidence will be hard to come by. I'd find it most satisfying to see alternative hypotheses pursued in tandem with the same gusto and see what the evidence best supports. Looking forward to future posts!
Great questions.
My general sense right now is that there are a few factors that lead to especially problematic social media use (and related to mental health concerns). And I agree I think the causal arrow often goes in both directions (amplifying pre-existing mental health problems, and causing some new ones as well).
Some areas of particular interest to me are about slightly different sub-groups:
In particular,
1) Children on who struggle with social connection (high social anxiety, shyness, or are on the spectrum)
2) Children with very low parental supervision and high access to screens (and low support networks)
3) Children with particularly low impulse control.
I think social class, race, and sexuality are important factors to consider as well. A couple of studies that may be of interest:
1) A number of social media and mental health studies *control* for these factors to show the effects beyond those variables. Here's are two examples:
A) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.08.040
B) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256591
2) Here are two studies that explores variation by race, ethnicity, and SES: https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2018.1437733
https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1697734
But more to come in upcoming posts
Thanks so much for this thoughtful reply and for these references. I study executive function so I know there are (neg) associations with media use, but so far a lack of good experimental studies to test causal hypotheses. Looking forward to your upcoming posts!
A partial critique of the answer to question one: Even if teens' time spent hanging out with friends in the strictest sense (outside of school settings) had already been decimated over the pre-Covid decade, wouldn't the transition to virtual learning, including the falling time spent in-person with clubs and sports, have still reduced the amount of face-to-face time with peers even further? That was my experience being in high school during the pandemic: even though I hadn't previously spent loads of time just "hanging out" at friends' houses, the year+ on virtual learning cut out that time I had eating lunch with friends, bantering in the hallway or on the bus, meeting people at after-school clubs, telling funny stories while working on a Photoshop etc. etc. and that was just awful for me. Indeed, the authors of that study note that "social baseline theory suggests, at a minimum, being in relatively close proximity to others imparts physiological benefits." Seems important to note that, even though friend time fits into the pre-Covid trend, if you look at the 15-24 line on the "social isolation" graph, it had previously been going up especially in the preceding few years, but went up from 2019 to 2020 by more than it had in the total 2012 to 2019 span.
I'll admit that the sample of Gen-Zers who read stuff like this probably enjoyed school much more than the average member of our generation, though, and there is evidence that youth suicides go up during the school year and on school days. There was a lot less work when school was online, so maybe the reduction of schoolwork time had a (short-term) positive effect that partially masked the pernicious effect of reduced face-to-face time at school, extracurriculars and sports. But it all depends on what it got replaced with—is schoolwork time worse for the average high schooler (in the short-run) than YouTube time? Instagram/TikTok time? I don't know.
This is fascinating. So much was made of covid's impact, and I think the context of the broader downward spiral of mental health prior to covid has always been left out. Thank you for bringing clarity. It's important for two reasons: 1) If teen mental health decline was related to covid, it can be easily dismissed as something that was extremely unlikely to happen and will likely not happen again. 2) Because of #1, no one would do anything about it. But if it's viewed as being a continuation of a downward trend with no end in sight, then maybe the issue will get some attention. Maybe.
I really appreciate you sharing the passage in Haidt's book about The Looping Effect. It's something I got caught in myself when I was diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, and Asperger's in middle school (I'm 31 now).
While the answers to my troubles could now be explained under these new labels, at the same time it pigeonholed me into an identity I had little desire to change. Every mental problem in my life could now be easily explained away by the "chemicals in my brain". My concern is while diagnoses can give answers to a person's suffering, I see less effort being placed toward inspiring people to move past their diagnoses to become stronger and wiser. While the stigma of mental illness is decreasing, it also seems to be having a paradoxical effect in some circles where it's more popular now to have some diagnosis than none at all, which in turn further entrenches people in mental illness identities.
These days I barely mention my diagnoses, but when I do I like to say: Labels are an Explanation, not the Destination. I Accept the Diagnosis, but I Refuse the Verdict. For anyone reading this who can relate: please don't let your psychiatric diagnoses define you as an individual!
Grazie mille Professore! Thank you so much.
If I connect your very pertinent observation to the Italian situation it makes sense this side of the Ocean because there is a DELAY IN ADOPTION so unlike their American peers Italian teenagers still spent time with friends face to face and many millions of them either had restriction in the use of phone or no smartphone before COVID19. I interviewed many mothers across Italy this summer and it is clear that COVID19 not only increased exponentially the distribution of smartphone to teens but it also lead giving smartphone to younger children (7-10) with awful consequences.
In an effort to contribute to your "crosscultural study" I take this opportunity to share the first study that establish a causal link (an Italian Professor from Bocconi is co-author) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3919760
And the data from a study on Italian children during Covid https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3919760 -
This study from JAMA https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31305878/ (you probably have it already) but just in case.
I strongly support your exploration of the 27 different European Countries (because Europeans only exists in the mind of Americans -sorry but reality matters) It will be easier to prove the relation between screen introduction in teens life and mental health deterioration because if it happens simultaneously in 27 different cultures that have different 27 ways of life some of them highly centred on relationships and some less, some with more family participation some less... well there is no other way to explain the phenomenon but with smartphones.
Again thank you for your inspiring intellectual courage.
Honest question about that chart on "Time Spent with Friends": so, since it's tracking cohorts based on *current* age (which is why Gen Z had tons of time with friends a decade ago -- they were children), how do we know that sharp decline isn't just a fairly normal transition for mid-teens -> early thirties?
Edit: in other words, is there a way to see that chart while stabilizing the ages? like, "here's how much time 15-year-olds in '22 spent with friends, vs. how much time 15-year-olds in '12 spent with friends" (rather than vs. the same cohort as 5-year-olds in '12).
This is an important point. Specifically because we see that millenials (approximately 10 years older than Gen Z) were already at this lower "time with friends" amount by 2003, which is when they would have been starting to graduate high school. So the drop from 2012-2019 was likely just normal decline as they get older.
In fact, if anything it shows that Gen Z was spending much more time with friends compared to millenials would have been at the same age (comparing gen z in 2013 to millenials in 2003).
It is NOT current age.
I would love to see further back in time for figure 4, is that data available?
Hey Tony,
Unfortunately the American Time Use Study began gathering data in 2003 (see https://www.bls.gov/tus/data.htm).
If I am able to find older data on this question, I'll be sure to let you know
This *is* unfortunate, because it does look like the 15-24 graph is *already* going downward, roughly linearly, in 2003.
A (non-US) anecdote : what did I do upon learning of the 2001 first tower strike on my way from high school ? Immediately hop on to the PC and the then super-popular ICQ instant messaging "platform" (through 56k dial-up), with an eye on the TV, chatting about the ongoing developments with high school friend(s)...
So glad that you guys got around to answering some of the questions raised! Another issue I saw come up in a few questions that wasn't addressed is what if any correlation there is with all the gender identity and trans issues that have been increasingly raised in recent years. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but a cursory search brings up links to stories about pronouns and bathrooms from 2016. I notice in the graphs shown that the uptick in boy suicides is particularly notable from 2016.
I realize this is a huge can of worms and people here will likely fall on both sides of the actual issue itself, but it seems to me pretty uncontroversial to say that teens identifying as LGBTQ+ are at higher risk of suicide, so more young people identifying as such would logically mean more suicides.
One source puts the LGBTQ+ suicide rates at 4 times that of the general population.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/facts-about-lgbtq-youth-suicide/
I've also found data showing that the LGBTQ+ community is growing, and that nearly 1 in 5 identifying as transgender are aged 13-17.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/585711-us-lgbtq-population-hits-20-million/
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/
It's really interesting that the big drop-off in time spent with friends happens at the same time as the rise of smartphones and social media, because I assumed teens adopted these technologies because of in-person time they were already missing, rather than the reverse where adoption displaced in-person time. Even before smartphones, it seemed to me that in-person friend time had declined hugely since my childhood for a variety of reasons.