I thought White Hatter's preferred explanation was unlikely. "There's been a rise in misogyny, racism, and homophobia". I came of age in the 80s and all I can say in response is: "huh?" All that stuff was way worse back then.
This seems like "every bad thing is caused by this thing that I don't like" reasoning.
"There's been a rise in misogyny, racism, and homophobia" !!
for anyone over age 12 to claim this with a straight face can only mean they're either bone stupid or a dishonest propagandist.
as someone raised in 1970s NYC, I can assure you that not only is this wrong but as wrong as can be. (and you just have to ask any adult gay person or black person who was alive back then to confirm.)
the smartphone age may or may not be guilty of a million various stupidites, but it has undoubtedly increased the amount of brazen lies we have to sift through every day.
I do love these explanations. In environmental sciences, they used to have to measure air quality in parts per thousands, then parts per million, and now parts per billion. People today will say, "look at all of these pollutants in the air!", forgetting that 40 years ago you couldn't measure many pollutant levels with any degree of accuracy (by today's standards). Likewise, we have defined our levels of bigotry tolerance down (correctly) so that we no longer tolerate levels that were normal in the 1980s.
yeah, I get that they are chasing down the contrarian point of view, but in offering a competing hypothesis they just read out a laundry list of “possible” explanations that kids have been dealing with for decades.
fear of Climate Change, food insecurity, abusive households, political polarization etc, etc.
I also noticed language like “luddites” or “the anti-technology crowd”. as if pointing out the dangers of technology is just being old-fashioned or telling someone that drinking to excess is bad.
sometimes the reaction of the other side is as telling as the research.
"if pointing out the dangers of technology is just being old-fashioned"... .this is the manipulative narrative fueled by "Big tech Media". They are malign geniuses experts in our vulnerabilities... and the "trained" us to consider everything in terms of "it has positive and negative". I was troubled while exchanging with CHATGPT how it was impossible to bring it to reason in terms of nuances and hierarchies of values.
It is so clear (and frightening) that these machines aim at installing in humans the "software" to reason black and white while disregarding the hierarchy of values, fundamental rights, the value of intuition ....which the movie with Will Smith "I-robot" points at so prophetically. These machines have turned us into diminished humans so we work perfectly for their products, and then they recruite humans to make "normal functioning" humans feel like they are not ok. Crazy and more pervert than any dystopic novel has pictured!
Also, unless all these kids are directly experiencing constant misogyny, racism and homophobia they're exposed to it via social media. So White Hatter isn't thinking straight
Yes!! I read an article suggesting that kids in the early aughts were actually unusually well, rather than kids today being unusually unwell, and it came with a graph showing teenage suicide peaked while I was a teen, in the 80s and 90s: I propose an alternate theory based on that here: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/teenage-suicide-dont-do-it-heathers
There's been a huge increase in what is now defined as "misogyny, racism, and homophobia", that's for sure. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are racist!
And sure, if you decide that "individual incidents that are recorded, somehow" are the measure of how much of a type of commentary exists, then the social media era features explosive growth of literally every kind of activity.
Yeah, that was a real WTF moment for me too. Maybe he meant some kind of growing cultural awareness of it, but even in that context it seems like a stretch.
Note: I am a technologist, so my work supports the possibility of social media through creating the basis for the hardware it runs on.
After raising 5 children, and how helping with 6 grandchildren, having grown up in a age with lots of freedom and access to nature, I take a principled view that is not based on data, just simple observation. Humans evolved in nature. Culture formed in nature. Now, culture has grown so large it has flipped, and nature is in culture.
This causes many problems, and the antidote is almost always to reverse the relationship on a regular basis. Humans need to be in nature. Humans need to interact face to face. Humans need to play with each other. When this need is satisfied, all the cultural overlays are checked, and there is little harm. But, cut all this out, isolate and live in totally in culture, especially a virtual one, and shit is gonna happen.
This implies to me, withholding social media from youth does not solve the basic problem. The problem manifests in other ways, such as no more recess, no more sports, no more outdoor play, and so forth. You must address the bigger problem of our relationship to nature and each other.
Mike writes: "Humans need to be in nature. Humans need to interact face to face. Humans need to play with each other. When this need is satisfied, all the cultural overlays are checked, and there is little harm. But, cut all this out, isolate and live in totally in culture, especially a virtual one, and shit is gonna happen."
Yes.
Jonathan is a moral psychologist, and he knows his Aristotle. Young people are unhappy. What is the remedy? Aristotle, the great moral psychologist, says: Happiness is an activity of "soul" along the lines of excellence. (Soul is mind/body).
Excellence in any sport or activity or profession takes place in time and place. Are people spending less time on activities, in and out of nature? Are they devoting less time to developing skills? Inquiring minds especially want to know what is the correlation between declining time spent on hobbies/activities (say, especially among young women) and rise of unhappiness/neurosis?
The happiest men, young and old, I know are golfers, tennis players, etc. They are happy out on the course or court (and of course in agony over their bad outings) and eager to improve. Followed by social time. One of my sons says the reason he never joined in with the druggies is due to golf and soccer.
But there is another "nature" also, which is spiritual nature. Another great moral psychologist is Kierkegaard. He explains in "The Sickness Unto Death" that the default of individual human psychology is despair. Only a triangulation of the self with the divine can provide a balance within the human spirit, i.e., the self.
Inquiring minds also want to know: What is the correlation between declining attendance at church services and rise of unhappiness/neurosis?
Thank you Mike. This makes a lot of sense and is so true. It is also a great strategy to exit the sterile non-debate of "there are positive and negative, and it's only a matter of responsible use" - But this would work if anyone is truly interested in what is important for children and our wellbeing and is determined to find solutions. This doesn't seem to be the case until now. To put it in Upton Sinclair words “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
"People are scary!" a 12 year old girl explained with a shudder last week when asked why she didn't want to participate in a pen pal activity with another class. I've seen her go from a happy, carefree, bubbly little girl to a withdrawn, depressed shadow hiding under a black hoodie. Phones and social media may be the unhealthy medium, but the *message* about what it means to become a young woman in our world is what's terrifying our girls.
If there is any flaw in this excellent research it is underestimating the effect of ubiquitous violent porn and horror genres on girls coming of age. Nobody has really paid much attention to girls coming of age stories, we read about boys much more, but most women can tell you what those preteen summers are like when you suddenly have creepy attention coming from seemingly everywhere. Now girls see horrific images and videos online of what those creeps want to do to them, and it's more than they can handle emotionally. People are scary, but children need to feel safe. We are failing them.
I think this is a relevant point. It reminded me that when I read, in the article above, that watching Netflix is not that harmful I shuddered a bit. Switching from posting on social media to watching harmful stuff won’t help. And some of the anxiety certainly comes from expectations about the world that are established by those who profit from scaring girls.
Good lord! I feel sometimes like academics are too smart for their own good. The fact that we have to show unequivocal evidence for something we know to be true is frustrating. We know how addicted adults are to the smart phone medium and we are watching our children not learning social skills. STOP waiting around for the government, the MSM and anyone else to keep your kids off their phones. PARENTS LIMIT IT. It is hard, yes. I have 3 young adults and we battled it all through high school and College. But don’t throw in the towel- get them on hikes, make them play sports and games (not video) and to have social outings and take the time to have friends and neighbors over.
> The fact that we have to show unequivocal evidence for something we know to be true is frustrating.
This seems to be a fundamental law of human behavior: people who demand proof are never willing to accept it. (Corollary: they will *never* provide a hard standard of proof that's actually possible to meet. cf. the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of the "skeptical" scholars Jonathan mentions here.)
This has been understood for thousands of years; it's the same principle in the Bible, when Jesus said that "a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." People demand proof of that which is obvious, not to get proof, but to give themselves an excuse to not believe.
"People demand proof of that which is obvious, not to get proof, but to give themselves an excuse to not believe." This is a great way of describing this situation.
Beyond all the compelling data, there's the plain reality we can all check -- which is that we know social media makes us feel bad because that's how we feel after becoming intensely engaged in it. Anybody who has spent time around adolescents knows it's a problem for them, because they will frequently tell you so. As a society, our reaction to this has so far been a collective shrug, as if we are powerless to shape a medium we invented, that has been around for relative heartbeat. Our passivity when it comes for forces shaping the way we live and engage in the real world is most depressing of all.
So true. I have noticed that myself and I adjust the sites I visit to avoid sites to avoid feeling powerless and depressed. It is easier to forget your own agency when you spend too much time online and not enough doing real things in the real world.
As a counselor I have come to the surprising realization that a major part of this problem, at least on America, is the complete lack of assertiveness skills being passed down. I was shocked at the response from clients when doing assertiveness training. First off, when presented with all the possible treatments, they always choose AT first, and when I talk about it they respond unlike the way they respond to anything else.
Once we start working on it, there is a switch in their heads that flips very early on, and it is astonishing. It's like the "adult" switch never got flipped during adolescence and they've been stuck. In the 70s, the book "your perfect right" (now in its 10th ed) came out and was huge. Assertiveness training became popular. But (according to their leadership guide, now out of print) it split into two paths. Corporations began using it to train employees, and it is still used that way today. Outside of Corporations, the assertiveness craze expanded to all sorts of other social skills training and it morphed into something more generic used for people who lack basic social skills, like people with intellectual disabilities. The original assertiveness training for normal adults who just need to become better at expressing themselves in a way that doesn't harm relationships kind of disappeared.
But it is much worse today. Assertiveness skills have to be learned and passed down. And for some reason, in the 90s or so, they just started not being passed down, and the vast majority of people born in the 2000s never learned them. I even have to go further than the book goes to give more specific advice on how to approach assertiveness.
Without these skills, people have to either lose relationships by being aggressive, or be passive and get taken advantage of (until it builds to the point they blow up and then damage the relationship). Thus, they feel powerless. They either avoid confrontation at all costs, or attack the person and add them to their long list of enemies.
You've talked a lot about people not being able to disagree and still be friends, and this is a big part of it. They honestly don't know how. The only way to have relationships is to be passive and never stand up to anyone in their group about anything.
I promise you, there is something here! I strongly suggest looking into it!
I theorize there must be a "switch" in our brains that flips from child to adult, and I imagine the "adulthood" rites/rituals most cultures have for children becoming adults around age 13 helped flip the switch. Teenagers in these cultures allegedly did not act like teens, they acted like adults (for the most part).
The way our culture has become (possibly the helicopter parenting, lack of independence) may have prevented this switch from being flipped. Perhaps this is why these skills were not learned during adolescence or young adulthood.
I remember from an early age how my father talked about the importance of asserting oneself. It was never about being cruel or a bully, but simply not being afraid to stand up. As a middle school teacher, I see many students who have no concept of being assertive.
I would add that it is specifically boys who are no longer taught to be assertive, and thus default to being either passive, aggressive, or (worst of all) passive-aggressive. Girls are probably more assertive than ever before, in a sort of reversal of roles compared to previous generations.
This has not at all been my experience. Assertiveness just looks different when women vs men do it. Now, there are certain areas in which more women are standing up for themselves, but that's different.
You don't think girls (at least in the Anglosphere) are now more or less raised to be leaders, and boys are raised to be followers, in a gazillion subtle and not so subtle ways?
Of course, in some circles the reverse pattern remains true, which is the historical pattern. That will dilute any aggregate data. But one would have to be blind not to see we are in the midst of a gender role reversal transition, particularly since 2012. Not that that's a bad thing IMHO, but the transition doesn't seem to be a particularly smooth one.
I have a few questions. For context I was born in 1977--I consider myself a young Gen Xer. I had my kids in 2006 and 2009. My childhood was very much a leave the house and come back when it gets dark kind of childhood. My parents both worked from the time I was 4th grade on (latch key kid). So there was a lot of unsupervised time with my siblings and neighbors. I would say that while we did prioritize play and outdoor play specifically with our children--there was not a lot of unsupervised, independent play. They were not left to their own devices very often at all. I think these are the issues that Mr. Haidt brings up in the Coddling book (although I haven't read it). And while I agree with the premise around it (that children are less resilient) my question is--what made my generation treat our children differently than what we were treated? This is not so much related to social media (my kids do not have it) but how my kids were parented differently. I was trying to question myself as to what made me do things differently than my parents. I do think some of it was social pressure to conform to what other parents were doing (constant supervision, organized playdates, scheduled activities). But I also think that it was a response to my feelings surrounding my "freedom" as a child. There were many times were I felt scared, confused and uncertain or like certain situation were out of control and would have appreciate a little more parental involvement. I'm sure it was those exact situations that helped me develop resilience but my memories of them I think impacted the way that I parent. So I was just curious as to whether or not you have ideas for the reasons behind why Gen Xers parented differently than they were parented.
I think this is a good point -- many of us don’t have great memories of being left to our own devices in childhood, and that impacts the way we choose to raise our own children. And to piggyback off what you’re saying here, in many cases even if we want to give our kids a lot more unstructured freedom (as opposed to organized play dates, etc), first that option is not really available to us anymore, and second even if it were, what that would mean functionally is that my kids wind up being more influenced by their peers / the broader culture than by their family. I spend so much of my time swimming upstream trying to fight against the dysfunction endemic to our culture; can you blame me for wanting to protect my kids from it?
Choose just one possible source of anxiety and depression -- like climate change, for example -- and the smart phone effect magnifies its power over a young mind. A 16 year-old with a climate doomscrolling device will probably experience anxiety about climate. If they argue about climate change with strangers on their phones, ruminate about climate change on their phones, post videos about climate change all the time, they will live inside of their anxiety through the device. But now multiply that times the power of body image, war, covid, and everything else. It's not just any one source of anxiety streaming out of the small screen in their hands, it's all of them, all the time, forever, that is changing the climate inside their brains.
Very nicely summarized. It's so evident that the algorithm's happiness ($$$ at all costs) is anti-human and anti-democratic. Can't believe so much research has to be carried out to prove the obvious. Maybe this is an indicator of how these Tech Illusionists cooked our brains.
Your coverage of this epidemic is very important and the news needs to spread. I am slightly worried about the message.
The main message is that almost 60% of US girls are seriously anxious and depressed. There is a major epidemic underway.
Government agencies and media pundits should be deeply ashamed that they are ignoring this disaster. That almost 60% of US girls are so desperately unhappy is utterly unacceptable.
The secondary messages are about what might be causing the problem. My guess is it is a mixture of causes but social media is magnifying the other causes. The sex differences suggest endocrine disruptors may be playing a role.
If social media is a magnifying agent, multiplying the effect of an underlying cause, then it cannot escape liability. If I smoke I am 25 times more likely to get lung cancer from asbestos exposure than a non-smoker but no epidemiologist would say it is fine to smoke because the real cause of my cancer was asbestos.
This is a very reasonable perspective, but I'd like to add a couple of other cautions.
1. The high plausibility of reverse causation. Let's accept the estimate that the correlation between social media use and mental health problems is around r=.20 I think it's probably lower once other confounders are taken into account, but never mind that for now. Surely one must admit that it is more than plausible that teenagers who are depressed or anxious may turn to social media as a response to their psychological distress, in which case the observed correlation is due to the impact of psychological distress on social media use, rather than the reverse. We don't know what proportion of association is due to this, but it's got to be something, and my guess is that it isn't miniscule. Girls, we know, are twice as likely as boys to suffer from internalizing problems, so the fact that the correlation between distress and social media is higher among girls is consistent with the reverse causation possibility.
2. Part of the correlation may be spurious, attributable to unmeasured third variables. As I suggested in an op-ed I published in the Times a couple of years ago, on Instagram, there are many plausible unmeasured variables that fall into this bucket. One that strikes me as highly likely is family dysfunction, which is a well-established risk factor for adolescent depression. It's likely that kids living in a home with high levels of family conflict turn to social media as a means of escape. Thus, the correlation between social media use and distress could be driven in part by the correlation of each of these variables with family dysfunction (not to mention the dozens of others that are plausible explanatory variables).
3. Even if there is a causal relationship between social media use and adolescent psychological problems, without understanding the underlying mechanism, it isn't clear what the policy response should be. Derek Thompson, who has written about this for the Atlantic, and I have discussed this extensively. Jon's post refers to this, but let me reiterate Derek's point: social media use may have a harmful effect on kids' mental health because of WHAT IT DISPLACES not because of what it is. If it leads to sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle, diminished IRL interactions, and so forth, it may contribute to depression, but not for the reasons we usually think of (e.g., social comparison, FOMO, etc.).
4. Heterogeneity in response. Three times as many kids say that using social media makes them feel better about themselves as say it makes them feel worse, according to well-done Pew surveys. If this is the case, what are the implications of implementing age-gating policies, or telling parents that they shouldn't allow their kids to have smartphones before the age of 16. Wouldn't it make more sense to try to figure out which kids are vulnerable to the harmful effects and helping parents determine whether their child is one of them?
5. How large of a correlation warrants a broad-scale policy response? I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the connections between the science of adolescent development and social policy. If, as I believe is the case, that a large part (perhaps half) of the .20 correlation is due to reverse causality or unmeasured third variables, then the true amount of variance in kids' well being accounted for by social media use is very small -- maybe on the order of 1 percent. Is this worth all the fuss? I'm not sure.
So, following your logical reasoning that reverse causation could explain the correlation, do you have a theory of what is causing the increase in depression, anxiety, or third variables such as family dysfunction that is manifesting as increased use of social media among the psychologically distressed?
I should add that even with deterministic linear effect assumptions, the impact on clinical depression can be huge when r = 0.15 or so -- this is because 'small' effects at the middle of a normal curve can mean large effects at the tails.
showing how r=0.16 can increase depression prevalence from 13% to 20%.
Making this model more realistic -- e.g. stochastic effects and rightward skew distribution of depression symptoms -- would likely make the impact on clinical depression even stronger.
One could attempt impact estimation using logistic regression models similar to those in Y. Kelly (Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health: Findings From the UK Millennium Cohort Study).
This response is mostly excellent -- the only problematic part I see is the 'explained variation' comment:
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If, as I believe is the case, that a large part (perhaps half) of the .20 correlation is due to reverse causality or unmeasured third variables, then the true amount of variance in kids' well being accounted for by social media use is very small -- maybe on the order of 1 percent. Is this worth all the fuss? I'm not sure.
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Explained variation is a property of MODELS -- not associations, not data. Furthermore, it has a standard definition only on linear models. It is WITHIN these models that, ASSUMING linearity, normality and homoscedasticity, we can equate population impact with explained variation.
Linear models, however, presume DETERMINISTIC effect of X on Y. I see no reason whatsoever to think that SM use has deterministic effect on mental health. Instead, as with much else in social science and health, the effect is stochastic, and so one should use probabilistic models, especially when the outcome of interest is dichotomous (clinical depression, suicide attempt).
Admittedly it is Haidt who confuses the mater first by appealing to "r=0.20" correlations as if that meant much. It does not -- what matters are risk elevations and fractions of population affected, along with a reasonable model to estimate overall population impact.
Haidt has failed so far to provide any reasonable estimate of population impact, and it is fair to criticize that. It is a mistake, however, to dismiss the potential impact of SM on MH simply because some Pearson correlation (not a bona fide linear regression) is 0.20.
P. S. There's also the issue of inaccurate measurement (without bias it tends to decrease associations), incomplete data (e.g. we need cumulative SM time, not just recent SM time), and environmental impacts.
As to the last one, imagine that bullying affects also those who witness it -- that would increase the impact of bullying on MH and yet *decrease* the association between being bullied and MH.
Ironic that this particular issue has flipped the sides of the "coddler" debate, with Haidt now on the side of protection and those usually among the coddlers claiming he is being alarmist and paranoid. What can explain the sudden reversal?
Of course, some things are truly dangerous and require protection, whether you are worried about overprotection or not, and social media might be one of those things. And yet, Pascal's Wager, cited approvingly above, is essentially the coddler's credo.
On the other hand, you might imagine those inclined to overprotection would accept even the slightest whiff of danger in order to shield their children and raise a moral panic, but the opposite has happened here. Why do they seem not to care at all about so large a (potential) danger? Is there some great value or benefit they perceive in it beyond the harm? Is it too fundamental to their and our lives to consider pathologizing now? Is it mere partisan reaction?
I think this is really interesting too. My working hypothesis has to do with the parents’ own relationship to phone / social media use, as well as their own acceptance for the fact that limiting phone / screen use in kids and teens is a difficult thing to do that causes conflict within families. The parents who most want to coddle their children are the parents who are going to most want to avoid confrontation with them. It’s so much easier to let them do whatever they want on their phones. Maybe it’s something like that?
Actual evidence of harm seems to be driving Haidt's positions here. There is evidence that coddling causes psychological harm, and evidence that social media is also causing psychological harm, therefore Haidt has taken the appropriate position against each harm.
Was helicopter parenting actually evidence-based? Doubtful. The skepticism against social media harms is looking thin now too.
As for Pascal's wager, it seems reasonable to make it when the expectation of harm is reasonably significant. I don't think it can be justified for helicopter parenting, but arguably is justified for social media. What are the harms in not helicopter parenting or not giving your kids social media, they grow up like kids in the 80s and 90s? Perish the thought.
It reminds me of how political polarities (left vs right) essentially reversed abruptly in March 2020 when the lockdowns began. And in nearly every country except a handful.
Even as an adult who spent 28 years without social media, I am 100% sure that it has caused me to have depression and anxiety, to prefer isolation, and to feel cut off from any real world truth and companionship outside of my family. I have to take long breaks (a year) about every 2 years. If my adult brain responds this way and I can tell a marked difference when I am on break, I can't imagine a rapidly adjusting teen girls brain. In my opinion, your premise and conclusions are indisputable.
This is very insightful Brandy. In fact, the perverse part of social media is that it got so entangled with every aspect of life that rejecting it (to preserve sanity and human skills and capabilities) tend to generate isolation, depression and anxiety. It is like not taking cocaine but having to live in a community of cocaine addicts who can't interact with you normally and in a humanly rewarding and nourishing way.
Social media have destroyed the diverse layers of protection that societies offer, as it is a virtual space without a history or roots (or healthy values) JUST A giant market place, it zeroed geographic boundaries it also zeroed the benefits that those geographic boundaries had in terms of protection, it zeroed families protection layers, it zeroed school protection layers, it zeroed history protection layers, it zeroed the Rule of Law, it zeroed democratic institutions protection layers... so it's a highly toxic virtual space that served as an equalizer downward of standards of protection. Hence the very sick (dumb) world we have become. Couldn't we just launch an large scale experiment of entire villages living a "de-digitalized" year? What's the worse thing that can happen after we got locked home for a year in favor of Big Tech gains? Maybe just like it happened with the research on resilience, to study the healthy children in non-smartphonized societies (remote African villages?) could help Prof Haidt efforts.
I'm completely in on that community. I remember (mostly) how to operate without it. And, you are absolutely correct about being left out and completely cut off if you don't use it. I missed many things, like pictures of my family during that time, but it was worth it because we actually had something to talk about at get togethers. I don't necessarily believe there's nothing good about being online, but social media in particular is toxic. If someone offers that community as a testing space, I'll be there with bells on. 🔔
Girls are bombarded with negative language and images about what it means to be female on a daily basis from the minute they're born, in a way that boys do not experience. Hardly a surprise that the language and semiotics of social media are especially detrimental for many girls, and for some adult women, it's the perfect concentration of toxic or unattainable messaging in a hand held device.
Of course, social media also affords the possibility of girls finding healthier messaging and role models.
Nonsense, males are constantly "bombarded" with negative messages about being male. This kind of politicizing is what keeps the problem from being solved.
True, but girls are hit the worse according to statistics. They are also the ones who can be the worse torturers. Dr. Jordan Peterson provides quite some food for thought in this session which is long but worth listening to understand how the virtualization of lives has exponentialized pathological behaviors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2og1DJvQ94 Women, Pornography, and Sadism
I'm wondering if you think online porn, more ubiquitous and more violent than previous generations' porn, is a factor. Kids are no doubt passing it around at earlier ages, too. The violence in porn is directed against women. What does it do to girls' psyches to see this casual erotization of their abuse?
I'm sure girls are seeing it at 9 to 12, if not earlier. I'd put serious money on it.
Many of us saw it that young before the world wide web. Kids, especially boys, love to shock. There's no way they aren't passing that around. And it only takes a few willing to do so for almost everyone to end up seeing it.
In France, a new bill is being discussed and was recently approved by the Assemblee National, to create a Porn Passport. The Government will run the APP. Honestly, it should be good news the protection of children from "modern" horrifying porn but it looks more like "digital solutionism" that helps Big Tech profit/power and Government surveillance of citizens. Governments can keep trying to fix every single problem of the thousands that an unregulated Big Tech is capable of generating or just be brave and put an end to their power and let us rebuild digital world from scratch.
I agree. Young people are exposed to porn and child porn at earlier and earlier ages. It is not your standard playboy magazine anymore. It is graphic and cruel.
I look forward to reading your portion on the shift away from free play and the role that has had. I feel there is a lack of perspective taking being fueled by more people interacting through screens rather than in person. Without the ability to take perspective we lose empathy. Add to the equation a teenage brain that is still developing and there will be negative consequences. Check out this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6621612/#
It discusses the need for face to face interactions. About 10 years ago, schools began transitioning to 1:1, meaning every student grade 6 and higher were given devices and using computers much more in school. Maybe part of the problem as well?
Keep up the good work, looking forward to your next piece!
I thought White Hatter's preferred explanation was unlikely. "There's been a rise in misogyny, racism, and homophobia". I came of age in the 80s and all I can say in response is: "huh?" All that stuff was way worse back then.
This seems like "every bad thing is caused by this thing that I don't like" reasoning.
"There's been a rise in misogyny, racism, and homophobia" !!
for anyone over age 12 to claim this with a straight face can only mean they're either bone stupid or a dishonest propagandist.
as someone raised in 1970s NYC, I can assure you that not only is this wrong but as wrong as can be. (and you just have to ask any adult gay person or black person who was alive back then to confirm.)
the smartphone age may or may not be guilty of a million various stupidites, but it has undoubtedly increased the amount of brazen lies we have to sift through every day.
I do love these explanations. In environmental sciences, they used to have to measure air quality in parts per thousands, then parts per million, and now parts per billion. People today will say, "look at all of these pollutants in the air!", forgetting that 40 years ago you couldn't measure many pollutant levels with any degree of accuracy (by today's standards). Likewise, we have defined our levels of bigotry tolerance down (correctly) so that we no longer tolerate levels that were normal in the 1980s.
yeah, I get that they are chasing down the contrarian point of view, but in offering a competing hypothesis they just read out a laundry list of “possible” explanations that kids have been dealing with for decades.
fear of Climate Change, food insecurity, abusive households, political polarization etc, etc.
I also noticed language like “luddites” or “the anti-technology crowd”. as if pointing out the dangers of technology is just being old-fashioned or telling someone that drinking to excess is bad.
sometimes the reaction of the other side is as telling as the research.
Jonathan is on to something for sure...
"if pointing out the dangers of technology is just being old-fashioned"... .this is the manipulative narrative fueled by "Big tech Media". They are malign geniuses experts in our vulnerabilities... and the "trained" us to consider everything in terms of "it has positive and negative". I was troubled while exchanging with CHATGPT how it was impossible to bring it to reason in terms of nuances and hierarchies of values.
It is so clear (and frightening) that these machines aim at installing in humans the "software" to reason black and white while disregarding the hierarchy of values, fundamental rights, the value of intuition ....which the movie with Will Smith "I-robot" points at so prophetically. These machines have turned us into diminished humans so we work perfectly for their products, and then they recruite humans to make "normal functioning" humans feel like they are not ok. Crazy and more pervert than any dystopic novel has pictured!
Also, unless all these kids are directly experiencing constant misogyny, racism and homophobia they're exposed to it via social media. So White Hatter isn't thinking straight
Yes!! I read an article suggesting that kids in the early aughts were actually unusually well, rather than kids today being unusually unwell, and it came with a graph showing teenage suicide peaked while I was a teen, in the 80s and 90s: I propose an alternate theory based on that here: https://amyletter.substack.com/p/teenage-suicide-dont-do-it-heathers
There's been a huge increase in what is now defined as "misogyny, racism, and homophobia", that's for sure. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are racist!
And sure, if you decide that "individual incidents that are recorded, somehow" are the measure of how much of a type of commentary exists, then the social media era features explosive growth of literally every kind of activity.
Yeah, that was a real WTF moment for me too. Maybe he meant some kind of growing cultural awareness of it, but even in that context it seems like a stretch.
I thought the same.
Note: I am a technologist, so my work supports the possibility of social media through creating the basis for the hardware it runs on.
After raising 5 children, and how helping with 6 grandchildren, having grown up in a age with lots of freedom and access to nature, I take a principled view that is not based on data, just simple observation. Humans evolved in nature. Culture formed in nature. Now, culture has grown so large it has flipped, and nature is in culture.
This causes many problems, and the antidote is almost always to reverse the relationship on a regular basis. Humans need to be in nature. Humans need to interact face to face. Humans need to play with each other. When this need is satisfied, all the cultural overlays are checked, and there is little harm. But, cut all this out, isolate and live in totally in culture, especially a virtual one, and shit is gonna happen.
This implies to me, withholding social media from youth does not solve the basic problem. The problem manifests in other ways, such as no more recess, no more sports, no more outdoor play, and so forth. You must address the bigger problem of our relationship to nature and each other.
Mike writes: "Humans need to be in nature. Humans need to interact face to face. Humans need to play with each other. When this need is satisfied, all the cultural overlays are checked, and there is little harm. But, cut all this out, isolate and live in totally in culture, especially a virtual one, and shit is gonna happen."
Yes.
Jonathan is a moral psychologist, and he knows his Aristotle. Young people are unhappy. What is the remedy? Aristotle, the great moral psychologist, says: Happiness is an activity of "soul" along the lines of excellence. (Soul is mind/body).
Excellence in any sport or activity or profession takes place in time and place. Are people spending less time on activities, in and out of nature? Are they devoting less time to developing skills? Inquiring minds especially want to know what is the correlation between declining time spent on hobbies/activities (say, especially among young women) and rise of unhappiness/neurosis?
The happiest men, young and old, I know are golfers, tennis players, etc. They are happy out on the course or court (and of course in agony over their bad outings) and eager to improve. Followed by social time. One of my sons says the reason he never joined in with the druggies is due to golf and soccer.
But there is another "nature" also, which is spiritual nature. Another great moral psychologist is Kierkegaard. He explains in "The Sickness Unto Death" that the default of individual human psychology is despair. Only a triangulation of the self with the divine can provide a balance within the human spirit, i.e., the self.
Inquiring minds also want to know: What is the correlation between declining attendance at church services and rise of unhappiness/neurosis?
A question I ask myself is how important the stuff we engage with matters vs the nature of the engagement itself.
Thank you Mike. This makes a lot of sense and is so true. It is also a great strategy to exit the sterile non-debate of "there are positive and negative, and it's only a matter of responsible use" - But this would work if anyone is truly interested in what is important for children and our wellbeing and is determined to find solutions. This doesn't seem to be the case until now. To put it in Upton Sinclair words “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Or, I have to eat today to be alive to eat tomorrow. Path dependencies are tough.
"People are scary!" a 12 year old girl explained with a shudder last week when asked why she didn't want to participate in a pen pal activity with another class. I've seen her go from a happy, carefree, bubbly little girl to a withdrawn, depressed shadow hiding under a black hoodie. Phones and social media may be the unhealthy medium, but the *message* about what it means to become a young woman in our world is what's terrifying our girls.
If there is any flaw in this excellent research it is underestimating the effect of ubiquitous violent porn and horror genres on girls coming of age. Nobody has really paid much attention to girls coming of age stories, we read about boys much more, but most women can tell you what those preteen summers are like when you suddenly have creepy attention coming from seemingly everywhere. Now girls see horrific images and videos online of what those creeps want to do to them, and it's more than they can handle emotionally. People are scary, but children need to feel safe. We are failing them.
I think this is a relevant point. It reminded me that when I read, in the article above, that watching Netflix is not that harmful I shuddered a bit. Switching from posting on social media to watching harmful stuff won’t help. And some of the anxiety certainly comes from expectations about the world that are established by those who profit from scaring girls.
What does "horror genres" mean?
Indeed. Horror films are hardly anything new, for example.
Agree
Good lord! I feel sometimes like academics are too smart for their own good. The fact that we have to show unequivocal evidence for something we know to be true is frustrating. We know how addicted adults are to the smart phone medium and we are watching our children not learning social skills. STOP waiting around for the government, the MSM and anyone else to keep your kids off their phones. PARENTS LIMIT IT. It is hard, yes. I have 3 young adults and we battled it all through high school and College. But don’t throw in the towel- get them on hikes, make them play sports and games (not video) and to have social outings and take the time to have friends and neighbors over.
> The fact that we have to show unequivocal evidence for something we know to be true is frustrating.
This seems to be a fundamental law of human behavior: people who demand proof are never willing to accept it. (Corollary: they will *never* provide a hard standard of proof that's actually possible to meet. cf. the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of the "skeptical" scholars Jonathan mentions here.)
This has been understood for thousands of years; it's the same principle in the Bible, when Jesus said that "a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." People demand proof of that which is obvious, not to get proof, but to give themselves an excuse to not believe.
"People demand proof of that which is obvious, not to get proof, but to give themselves an excuse to not believe." This is a great way of describing this situation.
Maybe the adults demanding beyond a reasonable doubt proof are addicts who can’t admit they are powerless over twitter!
Beyond all the compelling data, there's the plain reality we can all check -- which is that we know social media makes us feel bad because that's how we feel after becoming intensely engaged in it. Anybody who has spent time around adolescents knows it's a problem for them, because they will frequently tell you so. As a society, our reaction to this has so far been a collective shrug, as if we are powerless to shape a medium we invented, that has been around for relative heartbeat. Our passivity when it comes for forces shaping the way we live and engage in the real world is most depressing of all.
So true. I have noticed that myself and I adjust the sites I visit to avoid sites to avoid feeling powerless and depressed. It is easier to forget your own agency when you spend too much time online and not enough doing real things in the real world.
As a counselor I have come to the surprising realization that a major part of this problem, at least on America, is the complete lack of assertiveness skills being passed down. I was shocked at the response from clients when doing assertiveness training. First off, when presented with all the possible treatments, they always choose AT first, and when I talk about it they respond unlike the way they respond to anything else.
Once we start working on it, there is a switch in their heads that flips very early on, and it is astonishing. It's like the "adult" switch never got flipped during adolescence and they've been stuck. In the 70s, the book "your perfect right" (now in its 10th ed) came out and was huge. Assertiveness training became popular. But (according to their leadership guide, now out of print) it split into two paths. Corporations began using it to train employees, and it is still used that way today. Outside of Corporations, the assertiveness craze expanded to all sorts of other social skills training and it morphed into something more generic used for people who lack basic social skills, like people with intellectual disabilities. The original assertiveness training for normal adults who just need to become better at expressing themselves in a way that doesn't harm relationships kind of disappeared.
But it is much worse today. Assertiveness skills have to be learned and passed down. And for some reason, in the 90s or so, they just started not being passed down, and the vast majority of people born in the 2000s never learned them. I even have to go further than the book goes to give more specific advice on how to approach assertiveness.
Without these skills, people have to either lose relationships by being aggressive, or be passive and get taken advantage of (until it builds to the point they blow up and then damage the relationship). Thus, they feel powerless. They either avoid confrontation at all costs, or attack the person and add them to their long list of enemies.
You've talked a lot about people not being able to disagree and still be friends, and this is a big part of it. They honestly don't know how. The only way to have relationships is to be passive and never stand up to anyone in their group about anything.
I promise you, there is something here! I strongly suggest looking into it!
I theorize there must be a "switch" in our brains that flips from child to adult, and I imagine the "adulthood" rites/rituals most cultures have for children becoming adults around age 13 helped flip the switch. Teenagers in these cultures allegedly did not act like teens, they acted like adults (for the most part).
The way our culture has become (possibly the helicopter parenting, lack of independence) may have prevented this switch from being flipped. Perhaps this is why these skills were not learned during adolescence or young adulthood.
The Default Mode Network first becomes very active around 12 and that might be the switch you are proposing.
I remember from an early age how my father talked about the importance of asserting oneself. It was never about being cruel or a bully, but simply not being afraid to stand up. As a middle school teacher, I see many students who have no concept of being assertive.
Yes! Bingo!!! Totally agree here and have witnessed this in many situations with many adolescents!!!!! Spot on!
I would add that it is specifically boys who are no longer taught to be assertive, and thus default to being either passive, aggressive, or (worst of all) passive-aggressive. Girls are probably more assertive than ever before, in a sort of reversal of roles compared to previous generations.
This has not at all been my experience. Assertiveness just looks different when women vs men do it. Now, there are certain areas in which more women are standing up for themselves, but that's different.
You don't think girls (at least in the Anglosphere) are now more or less raised to be leaders, and boys are raised to be followers, in a gazillion subtle and not so subtle ways?
Of course, in some circles the reverse pattern remains true, which is the historical pattern. That will dilute any aggregate data. But one would have to be blind not to see we are in the midst of a gender role reversal transition, particularly since 2012. Not that that's a bad thing IMHO, but the transition doesn't seem to be a particularly smooth one.
There's more empowerment and opportunity for women definitely. I'm just saying that this is separate from assertiveness skills.
I have a few questions. For context I was born in 1977--I consider myself a young Gen Xer. I had my kids in 2006 and 2009. My childhood was very much a leave the house and come back when it gets dark kind of childhood. My parents both worked from the time I was 4th grade on (latch key kid). So there was a lot of unsupervised time with my siblings and neighbors. I would say that while we did prioritize play and outdoor play specifically with our children--there was not a lot of unsupervised, independent play. They were not left to their own devices very often at all. I think these are the issues that Mr. Haidt brings up in the Coddling book (although I haven't read it). And while I agree with the premise around it (that children are less resilient) my question is--what made my generation treat our children differently than what we were treated? This is not so much related to social media (my kids do not have it) but how my kids were parented differently. I was trying to question myself as to what made me do things differently than my parents. I do think some of it was social pressure to conform to what other parents were doing (constant supervision, organized playdates, scheduled activities). But I also think that it was a response to my feelings surrounding my "freedom" as a child. There were many times were I felt scared, confused and uncertain or like certain situation were out of control and would have appreciate a little more parental involvement. I'm sure it was those exact situations that helped me develop resilience but my memories of them I think impacted the way that I parent. So I was just curious as to whether or not you have ideas for the reasons behind why Gen Xers parented differently than they were parented.
I think this is a good point -- many of us don’t have great memories of being left to our own devices in childhood, and that impacts the way we choose to raise our own children. And to piggyback off what you’re saying here, in many cases even if we want to give our kids a lot more unstructured freedom (as opposed to organized play dates, etc), first that option is not really available to us anymore, and second even if it were, what that would mean functionally is that my kids wind up being more influenced by their peers / the broader culture than by their family. I spend so much of my time swimming upstream trying to fight against the dysfunction endemic to our culture; can you blame me for wanting to protect my kids from it?
Completely agree--I feel like my whole parenting story has been trying to swim upstream against the culture!
Choose just one possible source of anxiety and depression -- like climate change, for example -- and the smart phone effect magnifies its power over a young mind. A 16 year-old with a climate doomscrolling device will probably experience anxiety about climate. If they argue about climate change with strangers on their phones, ruminate about climate change on their phones, post videos about climate change all the time, they will live inside of their anxiety through the device. But now multiply that times the power of body image, war, covid, and everything else. It's not just any one source of anxiety streaming out of the small screen in their hands, it's all of them, all the time, forever, that is changing the climate inside their brains.
Very nicely summarized. It's so evident that the algorithm's happiness ($$$ at all costs) is anti-human and anti-democratic. Can't believe so much research has to be carried out to prove the obvious. Maybe this is an indicator of how these Tech Illusionists cooked our brains.
Your coverage of this epidemic is very important and the news needs to spread. I am slightly worried about the message.
The main message is that almost 60% of US girls are seriously anxious and depressed. There is a major epidemic underway.
Government agencies and media pundits should be deeply ashamed that they are ignoring this disaster. That almost 60% of US girls are so desperately unhappy is utterly unacceptable.
The secondary messages are about what might be causing the problem. My guess is it is a mixture of causes but social media is magnifying the other causes. The sex differences suggest endocrine disruptors may be playing a role.
If social media is a magnifying agent, multiplying the effect of an underlying cause, then it cannot escape liability. If I smoke I am 25 times more likely to get lung cancer from asbestos exposure than a non-smoker but no epidemiologist would say it is fine to smoke because the real cause of my cancer was asbestos.
Laurence Steinberg, here.
This is a very reasonable perspective, but I'd like to add a couple of other cautions.
1. The high plausibility of reverse causation. Let's accept the estimate that the correlation between social media use and mental health problems is around r=.20 I think it's probably lower once other confounders are taken into account, but never mind that for now. Surely one must admit that it is more than plausible that teenagers who are depressed or anxious may turn to social media as a response to their psychological distress, in which case the observed correlation is due to the impact of psychological distress on social media use, rather than the reverse. We don't know what proportion of association is due to this, but it's got to be something, and my guess is that it isn't miniscule. Girls, we know, are twice as likely as boys to suffer from internalizing problems, so the fact that the correlation between distress and social media is higher among girls is consistent with the reverse causation possibility.
2. Part of the correlation may be spurious, attributable to unmeasured third variables. As I suggested in an op-ed I published in the Times a couple of years ago, on Instagram, there are many plausible unmeasured variables that fall into this bucket. One that strikes me as highly likely is family dysfunction, which is a well-established risk factor for adolescent depression. It's likely that kids living in a home with high levels of family conflict turn to social media as a means of escape. Thus, the correlation between social media use and distress could be driven in part by the correlation of each of these variables with family dysfunction (not to mention the dozens of others that are plausible explanatory variables).
3. Even if there is a causal relationship between social media use and adolescent psychological problems, without understanding the underlying mechanism, it isn't clear what the policy response should be. Derek Thompson, who has written about this for the Atlantic, and I have discussed this extensively. Jon's post refers to this, but let me reiterate Derek's point: social media use may have a harmful effect on kids' mental health because of WHAT IT DISPLACES not because of what it is. If it leads to sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle, diminished IRL interactions, and so forth, it may contribute to depression, but not for the reasons we usually think of (e.g., social comparison, FOMO, etc.).
4. Heterogeneity in response. Three times as many kids say that using social media makes them feel better about themselves as say it makes them feel worse, according to well-done Pew surveys. If this is the case, what are the implications of implementing age-gating policies, or telling parents that they shouldn't allow their kids to have smartphones before the age of 16. Wouldn't it make more sense to try to figure out which kids are vulnerable to the harmful effects and helping parents determine whether their child is one of them?
5. How large of a correlation warrants a broad-scale policy response? I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the connections between the science of adolescent development and social policy. If, as I believe is the case, that a large part (perhaps half) of the .20 correlation is due to reverse causality or unmeasured third variables, then the true amount of variance in kids' well being accounted for by social media use is very small -- maybe on the order of 1 percent. Is this worth all the fuss? I'm not sure.
So, following your logical reasoning that reverse causation could explain the correlation, do you have a theory of what is causing the increase in depression, anxiety, or third variables such as family dysfunction that is manifesting as increased use of social media among the psychologically distressed?
I don't get it. How do the longitudinal
studies and natural experiments support the possibility of reverse causation? Any explanation would seem quite contrived.
Most of these points were addressed in an earlier post
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I should add that even with deterministic linear effect assumptions, the impact on clinical depression can be huge when r = 0.15 or so -- this is because 'small' effects at the middle of a normal curve can mean large effects at the tails.
Chris Said has a very good demonstration at
https://chris-said.io/2022/05/10/social-media-and-teen-depression/
showing how r=0.16 can increase depression prevalence from 13% to 20%.
Making this model more realistic -- e.g. stochastic effects and rightward skew distribution of depression symptoms -- would likely make the impact on clinical depression even stronger.
One could attempt impact estimation using logistic regression models similar to those in Y. Kelly (Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health: Findings From the UK Millennium Cohort Study).
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This response is mostly excellent -- the only problematic part I see is the 'explained variation' comment:
---
If, as I believe is the case, that a large part (perhaps half) of the .20 correlation is due to reverse causality or unmeasured third variables, then the true amount of variance in kids' well being accounted for by social media use is very small -- maybe on the order of 1 percent. Is this worth all the fuss? I'm not sure.
---
Explained variation is a property of MODELS -- not associations, not data. Furthermore, it has a standard definition only on linear models. It is WITHIN these models that, ASSUMING linearity, normality and homoscedasticity, we can equate population impact with explained variation.
Linear models, however, presume DETERMINISTIC effect of X on Y. I see no reason whatsoever to think that SM use has deterministic effect on mental health. Instead, as with much else in social science and health, the effect is stochastic, and so one should use probabilistic models, especially when the outcome of interest is dichotomous (clinical depression, suicide attempt).
Admittedly it is Haidt who confuses the mater first by appealing to "r=0.20" correlations as if that meant much. It does not -- what matters are risk elevations and fractions of population affected, along with a reasonable model to estimate overall population impact.
Haidt has failed so far to provide any reasonable estimate of population impact, and it is fair to criticize that. It is a mistake, however, to dismiss the potential impact of SM on MH simply because some Pearson correlation (not a bona fide linear regression) is 0.20.
P. S. There's also the issue of inaccurate measurement (without bias it tends to decrease associations), incomplete data (e.g. we need cumulative SM time, not just recent SM time), and environmental impacts.
As to the last one, imagine that bullying affects also those who witness it -- that would increase the impact of bullying on MH and yet *decrease* the association between being bullied and MH.
Ironic that this particular issue has flipped the sides of the "coddler" debate, with Haidt now on the side of protection and those usually among the coddlers claiming he is being alarmist and paranoid. What can explain the sudden reversal?
Of course, some things are truly dangerous and require protection, whether you are worried about overprotection or not, and social media might be one of those things. And yet, Pascal's Wager, cited approvingly above, is essentially the coddler's credo.
On the other hand, you might imagine those inclined to overprotection would accept even the slightest whiff of danger in order to shield their children and raise a moral panic, but the opposite has happened here. Why do they seem not to care at all about so large a (potential) danger? Is there some great value or benefit they perceive in it beyond the harm? Is it too fundamental to their and our lives to consider pathologizing now? Is it mere partisan reaction?
I can't figure it out. Thoughts?
I think this is really interesting too. My working hypothesis has to do with the parents’ own relationship to phone / social media use, as well as their own acceptance for the fact that limiting phone / screen use in kids and teens is a difficult thing to do that causes conflict within families. The parents who most want to coddle their children are the parents who are going to most want to avoid confrontation with them. It’s so much easier to let them do whatever they want on their phones. Maybe it’s something like that?
Actual evidence of harm seems to be driving Haidt's positions here. There is evidence that coddling causes psychological harm, and evidence that social media is also causing psychological harm, therefore Haidt has taken the appropriate position against each harm.
Was helicopter parenting actually evidence-based? Doubtful. The skepticism against social media harms is looking thin now too.
As for Pascal's wager, it seems reasonable to make it when the expectation of harm is reasonably significant. I don't think it can be justified for helicopter parenting, but arguably is justified for social media. What are the harms in not helicopter parenting or not giving your kids social media, they grow up like kids in the 80s and 90s? Perish the thought.
It reminds me of how political polarities (left vs right) essentially reversed abruptly in March 2020 when the lockdowns began. And in nearly every country except a handful.
Indeed
Well done Haidt and company. These are the kinds of helpful disagreements that drive better research.
Even as an adult who spent 28 years without social media, I am 100% sure that it has caused me to have depression and anxiety, to prefer isolation, and to feel cut off from any real world truth and companionship outside of my family. I have to take long breaks (a year) about every 2 years. If my adult brain responds this way and I can tell a marked difference when I am on break, I can't imagine a rapidly adjusting teen girls brain. In my opinion, your premise and conclusions are indisputable.
This is very insightful Brandy. In fact, the perverse part of social media is that it got so entangled with every aspect of life that rejecting it (to preserve sanity and human skills and capabilities) tend to generate isolation, depression and anxiety. It is like not taking cocaine but having to live in a community of cocaine addicts who can't interact with you normally and in a humanly rewarding and nourishing way.
Social media have destroyed the diverse layers of protection that societies offer, as it is a virtual space without a history or roots (or healthy values) JUST A giant market place, it zeroed geographic boundaries it also zeroed the benefits that those geographic boundaries had in terms of protection, it zeroed families protection layers, it zeroed school protection layers, it zeroed history protection layers, it zeroed the Rule of Law, it zeroed democratic institutions protection layers... so it's a highly toxic virtual space that served as an equalizer downward of standards of protection. Hence the very sick (dumb) world we have become. Couldn't we just launch an large scale experiment of entire villages living a "de-digitalized" year? What's the worse thing that can happen after we got locked home for a year in favor of Big Tech gains? Maybe just like it happened with the research on resilience, to study the healthy children in non-smartphonized societies (remote African villages?) could help Prof Haidt efforts.
I'm completely in on that community. I remember (mostly) how to operate without it. And, you are absolutely correct about being left out and completely cut off if you don't use it. I missed many things, like pictures of my family during that time, but it was worth it because we actually had something to talk about at get togethers. I don't necessarily believe there's nothing good about being online, but social media in particular is toxic. If someone offers that community as a testing space, I'll be there with bells on. 🔔
Girls are bombarded with negative language and images about what it means to be female on a daily basis from the minute they're born, in a way that boys do not experience. Hardly a surprise that the language and semiotics of social media are especially detrimental for many girls, and for some adult women, it's the perfect concentration of toxic or unattainable messaging in a hand held device.
Of course, social media also affords the possibility of girls finding healthier messaging and role models.
Nonsense, males are constantly "bombarded" with negative messages about being male. This kind of politicizing is what keeps the problem from being solved.
It's not political, it's conditioning.
True, but girls are hit the worse according to statistics. They are also the ones who can be the worse torturers. Dr. Jordan Peterson provides quite some food for thought in this session which is long but worth listening to understand how the virtualization of lives has exponentialized pathological behaviors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2og1DJvQ94 Women, Pornography, and Sadism
I'm wondering if you think online porn, more ubiquitous and more violent than previous generations' porn, is a factor. Kids are no doubt passing it around at earlier ages, too. The violence in porn is directed against women. What does it do to girls' psyches to see this casual erotization of their abuse?
Or maybe they're not seeing it but are on the receiving end of it from the boys their age who are watching it.
I'm sure girls are seeing it at 9 to 12, if not earlier. I'd put serious money on it.
Many of us saw it that young before the world wide web. Kids, especially boys, love to shock. There's no way they aren't passing that around. And it only takes a few willing to do so for almost everyone to end up seeing it.
In France, a new bill is being discussed and was recently approved by the Assemblee National, to create a Porn Passport. The Government will run the APP. Honestly, it should be good news the protection of children from "modern" horrifying porn but it looks more like "digital solutionism" that helps Big Tech profit/power and Government surveillance of citizens. Governments can keep trying to fix every single problem of the thousands that an unregulated Big Tech is capable of generating or just be brave and put an end to their power and let us rebuild digital world from scratch.
I agree. Young people are exposed to porn and child porn at earlier and earlier ages. It is not your standard playboy magazine anymore. It is graphic and cruel.
It's crazy that is the case for two decades now and it's crazier that nothing has been done while we travel back and forth to space.
I look forward to reading your portion on the shift away from free play and the role that has had. I feel there is a lack of perspective taking being fueled by more people interacting through screens rather than in person. Without the ability to take perspective we lose empathy. Add to the equation a teenage brain that is still developing and there will be negative consequences. Check out this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6621612/#
It discusses the need for face to face interactions. About 10 years ago, schools began transitioning to 1:1, meaning every student grade 6 and higher were given devices and using computers much more in school. Maybe part of the problem as well?
Keep up the good work, looking forward to your next piece!