A lot of the stuff she’s dismissing (economy, less independence, school shootings) seem like they’d have a lot of issues with autocorrelation and interaction effects with social media use that I...
A lot of the stuff she’s dismissing (economy, less independence, school shootings) seem like they’d have a lot of issues with autocorrelation and interaction effects with social media use that I don’t see how she can dismiss them as confidently as she does. It’s hard to deny that social media use is a factor, but the devil’s in the details. There’s a lot of different kinds of social media and a lot of different usage patterns with how people use each of those kinds. I’d be extremely hesitant to confidently declare which part is caused by the social media use vs. which factors cause the use or to separate out the social media by itself instead of, for example, a complex interaction between a variety of factors like built environment, educational approaches, and social media all together.
In particular, the dismissal of #4 (it's the economy) feels very blasé. It's certainly true that during the 2010s economic indicators were generally recovering. But in many western countries, for...
In particular, the dismissal of #4 (it's the economy) feels very blasé.
It's certainly true that during the 2010s economic indicators were generally recovering. But in many western countries, for pretty much the whole decade, public services were being systematically underfunded, wages were going down in real terms for most junior workers, and house prices were increasing well above inflation: the broader economic picture for young people did not look great (and of course, it still doesn't).
More than the actual indicators, I think there’s a strong sense with young people now that they can sort of see the plan for their lives laid out in front of them from basically the moment they’re...
Exemplary
More than the actual indicators, I think there’s a strong sense with young people now that they can sort of see the plan for their lives laid out in front of them from basically the moment they’re old enough to start thinking about life after high school. And the way we think and talk about it is just sort of bleak. We don’t talk about it as some sort of adventure with all these different possibilities.
We say “learn to code so you can get a well paid job and then pay bills and taxes until you die.” Replace the “learn to code” with “learn a trade” or whatever else and the general gist of it is the same. Everything has such a strong fixation on the negative. It’s not “make money so you can buy fun things” it’s “make money so you can not die of a medical condition or be homeless.” Or with having kids it’s never about enjoying the time with the little humans you’re rearing, it’s always “AHHH It’s so much work. I don’t get any sleep. Yadda yadda.”
I think there’s been a very strong shift in the culture around how we talk about things that’s very cost focused that has a way of leeching the joy out of everything and imbuing every possible future task with anxiety. And the more time people spend engaging with mass media, the more pronounced the negativity bias seems to get. But that’s not just a social media thing. It happens with traditional media too. People who watch too much TV also seem to end up rotting their brains with paranoia and fearmongering.
There are definitely material conditions and factors that contribute to driving these things, but I just don’t think the culprit is as simple as a single thing you can point at. The only part where I think social media does play a big role is in Haidt’s argument about how bullying can really follow kids around everywhere now in a way that it just couldn’t before. Even growing up with the internet, if I wasn’t literally at my computer then people couldn’t talk to me. Nobody emailed, we talked on AIM and AIM was synchronous chat only. If I’m not logged in you can’t message me. Today there’s no logging off. If you do something embarrassing in school there will be a crop of red dots waiting for you for weeks or months after. That part I can definitely see turning stress up to 11 and I sort of see it as a major contributing factor in younger people being sort of hypersensitive to slights or insults.
Great post. To the point about life being laid out for kids, your other comment about social media informs how that plays out. In addition to bullying, social media and today's internet does an...
Great post. To the point about life being laid out for kids, your other comment about social media informs how that plays out. In addition to bullying, social media and today's internet does an excellent job of reminding young people regularly of those things.
They used to call it 'agenda setting' in media - if you keep trumpeting the same message over and over, people integrate it into their worldview. I'd hazard the guess that this is why social movements have ticked up enormously in the last 10 years. For better or for worse, the message is inescapable and becomes part of your identity without you realizing it.
On the subject of youth being sad (and really, this counts for everyone), the relentless messaging from all angles is absolutely to blame for the change.
When I was a kid I saw the adults around me working ordinary jobs and raising families in the same place they grew up. It wasn’t unusual to go to the same public schools that your parents did, or...
When I was a kid I saw the adults around me working ordinary jobs and raising families in the same place they grew up. It wasn’t unusual to go to the same public schools that your parents did, or even end up living in a house on the same road.
I thought that was kind of boring, to see your whole life ahead of you being like that. Is that all there is? So I was happy to go away to college and maybe become a scientist or something. I only had vague notions, but leaving town and going to college was a start. I didn’t want to get stuck in a rut.
I think what I’m saying is that kids have odd notions sometimes and the future may be weirder than you or they expect. The world changes.
I had some idea of what college was like from the movies, but it didn’t really work out that way. I really had no idea what working would be like, particularly since the Internet was barely getting started. Some jobs I ended up doing hadn’t been invented.
The idea that we can see it all coming and it’s either bad or boring is more of a vibe, something that’s in your head and in the culture. But history has a lot of examples of things changing in ways that aren’t entirely good or bad but just different, and that you couldn’t go back if you tried.
I also remember stories about how some kids had parents with rather specific expectations, like that they would become a doctor or inherit the family business, and that it was a bad thing. I don’t remember knowing anyone like that, so it seems like it was a message that the media was sending? Being free to do whatever career you choose seemed expected.
Maybe one thing that’s different is that physically moving doesn’t seem like such a big change anymore? Maybe you expect that things will be much the same wherever you go? I can’t imagine this being true of moving to another country, though.
The idea is actually something I picked up from an old Bollywood movie that made me think really hard about how I talk to my son to try and encourage him. (It took me so much work to find a...
The idea is actually something I picked up from an old Bollywood movie that made me think really hard about how I talk to my son to try and encourage him.
(It took me so much work to find a subtitled clip of that lol).
Excellent quote. Man, it seems so trite to have somebody sum up child rearing with anecdotes like "don't be negative" or "just frame things using a glass half full approach" but it's such...
Excellent quote. Man, it seems so trite to have somebody sum up child rearing with anecdotes like "don't be negative" or "just frame things using a glass half full approach" but it's such important and simple wisdom.
I love that you found the clip in Instagram of all things. How do you even search for clips on that platform?
I remembered that the Instagram clip was shared in a Discord group I’m in months and months ago. I had to dig through my memory for the conversation I was having adjacent to it, search for some...
I remembered that the Instagram clip was shared in a Discord group I’m in months and months ago. I had to dig through my memory for the conversation I was having adjacent to it, search for some keywords that might bring up that conversation, and then scroll around to find it.
So as you suspected, Instagram is useless for finding things. lol
One thing that always sticks out to me about this topic is that before the internet nobody asked. Nobody even thought about how a teenager was feeling/coping unless the problem was really glaring,...
One thing that always sticks out to me about this topic is that before the internet nobody asked. Nobody even thought about how a teenager was feeling/coping unless the problem was really glaring, and no one was getting hospitalized for attempts that weren't almost successful.... Rub some dirt in it, and stop being a pussy.
I just really don't think this is new, I think the fact that we're seeing and hearing about it is what's new, and that's why it looks like social media is to blame.
The article's evidence against this sort of explanation is that more objective metrics of teen mental health (e.g., hospital admissions due to self-harm) have also gone up in the same period,...
The article's evidence against this sort of explanation is that more objective metrics of teen mental health (e.g., hospital admissions due to self-harm) have also gone up in the same period, following basically the same trend.
Well yeah, but that's part of what I'm saying... now they're being admitted for care, whereas back in the day unless they were literally dying that often wasn't the case. Depending on the breadth...
Well yeah, but that's part of what I'm saying... now they're being admitted for care, whereas back in the day unless they were literally dying that often wasn't the case. Depending on the breadth of the definition of "self harm," that still isn't the case. Drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders... Hell, consuming content that one finds distressing are all forms of self harm, are all common in teenagers, and are all largely ignored until it becomes a "real" problem. So, ok, the third one is easier to engage in now, but that doesn't make it new, nor does it place all blame on social media existing.
This is an article from a professor of psychology who wrote a book about smart phones and adolescent mental health. It's not going to settle the question for me because I don't know enough, and I...
This is an article from a professor of psychology who wrote a book about smart phones and adolescent mental health.
It's not going to settle the question for me because I don't know enough, and I haven't investigated. (And I don't plan to research this.) I think it's plausible, though, and I figured I'd share it since it seems pretty thorough.
For more reading, here's a somewhat skeptical and heated interview that Tyler Cowen did with Jonathan Haidt about his new book: Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media ... ...
For more reading, here's a somewhat skeptical and heated interview that Tyler Cowen did with Jonathan Haidt about his new book:
Over and over again, we see these collective action problems. There was recently a paper published by Leonardo Bursztyn. I think it was at the University of Chicago. He and his colleagues took — these were college students, I believe, and they found out how much we would have to pay you to stop using TikTok or Instagram. The answer, $50 or something. It was some number.
You might say, oh, well, clearly this is the value of TikTok and Instagram. Multiply this out by 240 million people. What an amazing contribution to public value these platforms are. But it turns out that the only reason people would pay is because if everyone else is on it, they have to be on it, even though they don’t want to be.
When they changed the questions and they said, “Okay, now, actually, we’re going to try to get everyone at your school to get off. If we can get most of them off, how much would we have to pay you? From ‘you pay us’ to ‘you pay us a lot,’ how much do we have to pay you for that outcome, where everybody’s off?” The answer is, “Oh, I’d pay you for that.” Most of them would pay to be liberated from TikTok or Instagram.
When asked, “Would you prefer that this was never invented?” the majority said yes. Over and over, kids are in a trap, and AI is not going to liberate from the trap. It’s just going to make the trap more enticing.
...
First of all, we have to talk about correlation coefficients here. I’ve been involved in the debate. Jean Twenge [author of the substack post] and I are on one side. There are a few researchers — Andrew Przybylski, Amy Orben, Candice Odgers, there are a few others — on the other side. It’s been a very productive debate. It’s all conducted within bounds. There are three different kinds of studies: the correlational studies, the longitudinal studies, and then there are the true experiments. [...]
...
The skeptics and me and Jean — we’ve all reached the same conclusion about the size of the correlation. They say the size of the correlation is between R is 0.1 and 0.15, which is small, but it’s about the same size as many other public health effects. But that’s always for boys and girls combined. What Jean and I have found is that when you look at the girls, now you’re in the realm of 0.15 to 0.2.
Because girls are more affected by it, we actually all agree the correlation coefficient is around 0.17. That is not trivial. You would never let your kid do something four hours a day that was correlated 0.17 with depression, anxiety, and self-harm. So, the effect is actually much bigger than many people realize in the scientific community because you have to zoom in on girls and social media.
Oof. The fact people have said they'd pay someone to help them quit those social media sites if they didn't "have to be there" is damning. Also, for the 0.17, is that like, a percentage? Like 17%...
Oof. The fact people have said they'd pay someone to help them quit those social media sites if they didn't "have to be there" is damning.
Also, for the 0.17, is that like, a percentage? Like 17% of people who use social media will develop a mental illness? I'm not sure if I completely understand that part.
A LOT of celebrities literally do just pay people to keep up with their socials and summarize the happenings for them. I actually think this is the use case that AI tools will end up doing (on the...
A LOT of celebrities literally do just pay people to keep up with their socials and summarize the happenings for them.
I actually think this is the use case that AI tools will end up doing (on the commercial level). Our “social medias” will just be all of our AI agents talking to each other and then summarizing what all the other AI agents are saying. People will be minimally involved in the content production. I’ll tell my AI “Hey, announce that I’ve gotten engaged and send this picture.” And then everyone else’s AI summary bots will either be like “Naravara got engaged. Would you like to see the picture?” If you want to respond, you will and then my AI will be like “A bunch of people have congratulated you. Would you like to know who didn’t so you can hyperfixate on speculating as to whether they secretly hate you or not?”
I'm in that boat and I'm 40. I'd love to delete my Facebook, but that's where 3/4 of community events are announced. I'm working on a plan to try to get my kid + their friends onboarded into...
I'm in that boat and I'm 40.
I'd love to delete my Facebook, but that's where 3/4 of community events are announced.
I'm working on a plan to try to get my kid + their friends onboarded into self-hosted services as they start aging into the internet. I very much like the idea of an auditable 'people you know only' internet that isn't vying to shove ads in their faces as much as possible.
It's a correlation coefficient. Roughly, it's about if you plot the points on a graph, does the slope go up or down? 1 means perfectly correlated (graph goes up), -1 means perfectly inverted...
It's a correlation coefficient. Roughly, it's about if you plot the points on a graph, does the slope go up or down? 1 means perfectly correlated (graph goes up), -1 means perfectly inverted (graph goes down), and 0 means they're not connected.
I'm a bit wary of summary statistics. I think showing people the graph is better than sharing one number.
But even if you do that, just because the graph goes up or down doesn't mean one causes the other. For example, there are lots of graphs that go up over time, and they will be correlated.
Social media is doubtless problem number one, but I do not see how dismissing all of these other theories helps anyone. Depression is not a simple thing that we completely understand. People are...
Social media is doubtless problem number one, but I do not see how dismissing all of these other theories helps anyone. Depression is not a simple thing that we completely understand. People are complex creatures and to ignore all of these other potential factors is rather foolish. If social media were to be abolished tomorrow I would not expect the rate of depression to suddenly flatline - though to be fair, I would imagine that the rate of
Increase would fall quite sharply after a period of adaptation. I think perhaps the one thing the writer of this article is discounting is that social media is how our young are consuming news media, so in addition to the bullying it’s a medium in which they are told depressing statistics of what their future lives as adults will be like, of to give them high tenets senses of how likely they are to be affected by a catastrophe like a school shooting. To me, reading this article really seems like “correlation is causation”. And by focusing on the is instead of the contains it misses out on a lot of nuance that I think is very important, including less drastic ways we might regulate social media to prevent this from being such a problem.
I think they’re pushing it because they’ve researched it and sincerely believe it’s the most important cause and want to see better regulation of social media use by children. There are other...
I think they’re pushing it because they’ve researched it and sincerely believe it’s the most important cause and want to see better regulation of social media use by children. There are other people who disagree.
I wouldn’t doubt a single one of those things! But to me, what they are saying seems like they are living in a town with a dozen termite colonies and trying to solve the problem by tearing down a...
I wouldn’t doubt a single one of those things!
But to me, what they are saying seems like they are living in a town with a dozen termite colonies and trying to solve the problem by tearing down a community center. The termites are still around, but they have eliminated all possibility of good the community center would have had.
I think the recommendations Haidt makes are pretty reasonable, even if the evidence doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t sound like he’s advocating for anything to be torn down: It’s been a long time since...
I think the recommendations Haidt makes are pretty reasonable, even if the evidence doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t sound like he’s advocating for anything to be torn down:
The four norms are no smartphone before high school. Kids can have flip phones to communicate. Flip phones were not harmful. You can use them to communicate, to say, “I’ll see you at 4:00. Let’s meet at the mall.” But you’re not going to type out long things about what someone said and how you feel. You’re going to wait till you see each other in person. No smartphones before high school, and the kids can still have laptops. They can have other things, but it’s the constant connection in your pocket. That’s what has really done them in. That’s what brought about the phone-based childhood. So that’s number one.
Second norm, no social media till 16. You have most of the rest of the internet. You can connect in all kinds of ways, but to open an account . . . I’m not saying they can’t see a YouTube video, of course, or a TikTok video. I’m saying they cannot sign a contract with a company to give away their data, to be exposed, to have an account, to have a name, to get sucked into the whole performance game. Let’s just delay that till 16.
The evidence shows — and actually, this is from an Orben and Przybylski study a couple of years ago — that the maximum damage is done to girls around 11 to 13 and boys around 14 to 15, so let’s just delay it till 16. That’s the second.
Third is phone-free schools. No one’s ever pointed out a benefit to letting kids have their phones with them during class. Now, in high school, maybe they use them for some lesson plans. I’m not saying there’s zero benefits, but the distraction effect is so gigantic that as long as you can text, you will text. So just put the phone in a phone locker or in a Yondr pouch when you arrive, and you get them when you go home. That’s the third one, phone-free schools. That would give them seven hours a day where they could talk to each other and to their teachers.
Then the fourth one is far more childhood independence and free play. This is all the Lenore Skenazy work, Free-Range Kids. She and I and Peter Gray founded an organization called Let Grow. If there are any parents listening, if you have kids under 12, please go to letgrow.org. We have all kinds of ideas and advice and ways that you can give your kid a healthier, more play-based childhood, which fosters development, happiness, competence.
Those four norms — if we could do it, then I think we would roll back a lot of the mental illness. We’d free kids up for a lot more time to play with each other and hang out together, and then I’d be much less worried.
It’s been a long time since I was in school, but I’m reminded of how kids (stereotypically, girls) would talk on the house phone with their friends for hours and their parents would have to get them to stop so that other people could reach them. Sometimes they would install a second line. Flip phones seem like an improvement.
I don't really object to any of these except the "phone free schools." Parents would riot if there was a lockdown at school and their students couldn't text if they're OK or call 911. (And yeah...
I don't really object to any of these except the "phone free schools." Parents would riot if there was a lockdown at school and their students couldn't text if they're OK or call 911. (And yeah the kids know to silence them, it's terrifying and heartbreaking how prepped they are.)
But more frequently, they're used to let students know about changes in pick-up - ask questions about dinner, etc. And while that used to be done differently, so did a lot of things. If you pivot to flip phones, I don't see a reason not to allow students to have them on their persons to check between classes or in case of an emergency.
Maybe there would be breaks? It seems like there’s a lot of room for variation in how it’s implemented. The Yondr pouch thing seems like it’s a way to keep the phone on you. I don’t know how hard...
Maybe there would be breaks? It seems like there’s a lot of room for variation in how it’s implemented.
The Yondr pouch thing seems like it’s a way to keep the phone on you. I don’t know how hard it would be to bust open in an emergency.
Not being available at all times can take some getting used to, but we did ok before cell phones.
Not if you have to step outside to unlock it. Let's say the kid escapes but can't call their parents? Or their phone is left at school where the shooter is? Even in the worst case that their kid...
Not if you have to step outside to unlock it.
Let's say the kid escapes but can't call their parents? Or their phone is left at school where the shooter is? Even in the worst case that their kid didn't get a chance to send that last "I love you" message?
I don't see it winning. If you get people to solve our school shootings, and make it so kids don't have to train to throw books at shooters, to die a little slower and slow the shooter down so he kills fewer people? Then I can get behind taking phones away entirely.
To me, the text enabled flip phone is a decent compromise here. Text is still distracting, but the notifications are from people directly rather than agenda pushing apps.
To me, the text enabled flip phone is a decent compromise here. Text is still distracting, but the notifications are from people directly rather than agenda pushing apps.
I’ve been to concerts and shows before where the make you “coat check” your phone at the door. If there’s an emergency kids can still go out and get one. Or, as when I was a kid, you just go to...
I don't really object to any of these except the "phone free schools." Parents would riot if there was a lockdown at school and their students couldn't text if they're OK or call 911. (And yeah the kids know to silence them, it's terrifying and heartbreaking how prepped they are.)
I’ve been to concerts and shows before where the make you “coat check” your phone at the door. If there’s an emergency kids can still go out and get one. Or, as when I was a kid, you just go to the school nurse and dial your parents’ work number.
Alternatively, in future world, you give the kids something like those Vocera “smart badges” that some hospital networks have. They have basically a little “walkie talkie” built in and you can talk into them like a “Star Trek” badge. And that way, if the principal needs to call you in, they can just tell you personally instead of announcing it on the intercom and having everyone go “OOOOOH! YOU’RE IN TROUBLE!”
If there's a lockdown, you really don't want kids doing anything but their Run Hide Fight (or equivalent)protocol. It makes more sense for phones to be on them in those cases. And trust me I feel...
If there's a lockdown, you really don't want kids doing anything but their Run Hide Fight (or equivalent)protocol. It makes more sense for phones to be on them in those cases.
And trust me I feel really shitty for having to use this particular situation. It shouldn't be a risk.
Those are such rare occurrences though, and I don’t really see the phone there meaningfully improving the security situation in that case I can see arguments for why it might and also arguments...
Those are such rare occurrences though, and I don’t really see the phone there meaningfully improving the security situation in that case I can see arguments for why it might and also arguments why it will cause more confusion and panic, so I think it ends up kind of a wash.
They are rare, but that is a thing that parents will care about when policies are enacted. They'll also care about being able to text their kid about dinner or that it's ok to go home with their...
They are rare, but that is a thing that parents will care about when policies are enacted. They'll also care about being able to text their kid about dinner or that it's ok to go home with their friend or whatever.
More so though, if a tragedy happens, and kids cannot reach their parents or vice versa because of this policy, heads will roll.
I think the flip phone creates a middle ground of still being reachable - and yeah we may long for the days where that isn't an expectation, but there's a reason I had to wait til I was 18 to get a (Nokia brick) phone but my younger siblings got them younger and younger. Because it was convenient for my parents to be able to reach them.
I also think there is irony in doing essentially nothing about school shootings while fussing over phones in schools. I cannot believe that active shooter drills aren't part of the stress and trauma carried by Gen Alpha and Gen Z. I have seen it when they bring it to college.
We used our sidekicks and enVs to text each other about where we were going to meet up for lunch or in the halls between classes if we had time. Not being able to coordinate that would have meant...
We used our sidekicks and enVs to text each other about where we were going to meet up for lunch or in the halls between classes if we had time. Not being able to coordinate that would have meant less time socializing face to face, not more.
When I haven’t done enough research to have an informed opinion, I leave the question open. It’s better than choosing sides without doing the homework. Sorry to disappoint you! If you know of a...
When I haven’t done enough research to have an informed opinion, I leave the question open. It’s better than choosing sides without doing the homework.
Sorry to disappoint you! If you know of a deep dive on this, I’d be interested in reading it.
I'm still not going to take the time to get to the bottom of this, but thought I'd post an in-depth article that goes into it in some depth: What the evidence really says about social media’s...
I'm still not going to take the time to get to the bottom of this, but thought I'd post an in-depth article that goes into it in some depth:
The author’s argument has resonated with many parents, and The Anxious Generation has topped the New York Times Best Sellers list in nonfiction. But his theory has also attracted no small number of critics.
For years, prominent psychologists have been accusing Haidt of fueling a moral panic. In their view, there is “no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness.” They insist that Haidt’s case against smartphones and social media apps owes less to the available data than to humanity’s perennial anxieties about new technologies and kids these days.
This dispute has generated reams of commentary as the media’s middle-aged social media users argue about whether their favorite apps are poisoning their kids. But few if any of these pieces have closely scrutinized how Haidt’s evidence stacks up against that of his detractors — and when one digs into these competing data points, the fundamental premises of the smartphone debate are thrown into question. In truth, it’s not entirely clear that there even is an international decline in teen mental health that requires explanation.
Ultimately, both Haidt and his critics overstate their evidence. The former’s case isn’t strong enough to prove that iPhones “destroyed” Gen Z, but it also isn’t so weak that it can be dismissed as the mere byproduct of a moral panic.
Economics and social media feel about right. (Edit: is really more time :/ ) Unemployment hides trends in decreasing hours, job quality and increased cost of living. Social media I can easily see...
Economics and social media feel about right.
Parents have less time for their kids as they scramble to pay for the ever increasing number of things we need to pay for and cost of those things. (Edit: is really more time :/ ) Unemployment hides trends in decreasing hours, job quality and increased cost of living.
Social media I can easily see causing depression with the algorithms that trap you in a bubble so you don't understand those trapped in other bubbles, the toxic people in general, bots & ads that are basically automated trolls. Combine that with kids shielded from negativity by their parents so they have no coping mechanisms and it's a recipe for disaster. Hell, I've visited places on the internet that can give people nightmares without issue, but I've still cut off most social media due to being too toxic and bad for my health. I use to say people just need thicker skin to deal with what you find on social media, but nowadays xenomorph blood is less toxic. Just read youtube comments shudders. The biggest problem with social media is it can be subtle, leading you into stress and depression without even realizing it's the cause.
I just wanted to point out that there have been studies that show parents of today (one study I found is from 2016, so a bit dated by now but I think probably still stands) spend more time with...
Parents have less time for their kids as they scramble to pay for the ever increasing number of things we need to pay for and cost of those things.
I just wanted to point out that there have been studies that show parents of today (one study I found is from 2016, so a bit dated by now but I think probably still stands) spend more time with their children than parents in the 1960s.
The study did note that "better off" parents spent more time with their children than those with less, but overall it showed an increase no matter what income and education level the family has.
I don't think your observations are incorrect. Most parents I know (my wife and I included) are busier and seem to have less money than our parents did. But I think that goes back to us actively...
I don't think your observations are incorrect. Most parents I know (my wife and I included) are busier and seem to have less money than our parents did. But I think that goes back to us actively spending more time "parenting" than previous generations as opposed to doing other things.
Many parents sacrifice their entire social lives for their kids, especially once the kids reach middle and high school and sports and other extracurricular activities really start to ramp up. I have friends that have two boys, who both play 2 or 3 sports, so their entire year is filled with traveling for tournaments, practices, and other sports related events like banquets and fundraisers and whatever else. I see them very rarely. I'm sure they see a lot of other parents of kids on their teams, but those are "forced" relationships vs. those that we choose to cultivate for reasons of our own.
I think this is a product of our society and the way we push kids to be active and "do the right things" to get into good colleges, etc.
A lot of the stuff she’s dismissing (economy, less independence, school shootings) seem like they’d have a lot of issues with autocorrelation and interaction effects with social media use that I don’t see how she can dismiss them as confidently as she does. It’s hard to deny that social media use is a factor, but the devil’s in the details. There’s a lot of different kinds of social media and a lot of different usage patterns with how people use each of those kinds. I’d be extremely hesitant to confidently declare which part is caused by the social media use vs. which factors cause the use or to separate out the social media by itself instead of, for example, a complex interaction between a variety of factors like built environment, educational approaches, and social media all together.
In particular, the dismissal of #4 (it's the economy) feels very blasé.
It's certainly true that during the 2010s economic indicators were generally recovering. But in many western countries, for pretty much the whole decade, public services were being systematically underfunded, wages were going down in real terms for most junior workers, and house prices were increasing well above inflation: the broader economic picture for young people did not look great (and of course, it still doesn't).
More than the actual indicators, I think there’s a strong sense with young people now that they can sort of see the plan for their lives laid out in front of them from basically the moment they’re old enough to start thinking about life after high school. And the way we think and talk about it is just sort of bleak. We don’t talk about it as some sort of adventure with all these different possibilities.
We say “learn to code so you can get a well paid job and then pay bills and taxes until you die.” Replace the “learn to code” with “learn a trade” or whatever else and the general gist of it is the same. Everything has such a strong fixation on the negative. It’s not “make money so you can buy fun things” it’s “make money so you can not die of a medical condition or be homeless.” Or with having kids it’s never about enjoying the time with the little humans you’re rearing, it’s always “AHHH It’s so much work. I don’t get any sleep. Yadda yadda.”
I think there’s been a very strong shift in the culture around how we talk about things that’s very cost focused that has a way of leeching the joy out of everything and imbuing every possible future task with anxiety. And the more time people spend engaging with mass media, the more pronounced the negativity bias seems to get. But that’s not just a social media thing. It happens with traditional media too. People who watch too much TV also seem to end up rotting their brains with paranoia and fearmongering.
There are definitely material conditions and factors that contribute to driving these things, but I just don’t think the culprit is as simple as a single thing you can point at. The only part where I think social media does play a big role is in Haidt’s argument about how bullying can really follow kids around everywhere now in a way that it just couldn’t before. Even growing up with the internet, if I wasn’t literally at my computer then people couldn’t talk to me. Nobody emailed, we talked on AIM and AIM was synchronous chat only. If I’m not logged in you can’t message me. Today there’s no logging off. If you do something embarrassing in school there will be a crop of red dots waiting for you for weeks or months after. That part I can definitely see turning stress up to 11 and I sort of see it as a major contributing factor in younger people being sort of hypersensitive to slights or insults.
Great post. To the point about life being laid out for kids, your other comment about social media informs how that plays out. In addition to bullying, social media and today's internet does an excellent job of reminding young people regularly of those things.
They used to call it 'agenda setting' in media - if you keep trumpeting the same message over and over, people integrate it into their worldview. I'd hazard the guess that this is why social movements have ticked up enormously in the last 10 years. For better or for worse, the message is inescapable and becomes part of your identity without you realizing it.
On the subject of youth being sad (and really, this counts for everyone), the relentless messaging from all angles is absolutely to blame for the change.
When I was a kid I saw the adults around me working ordinary jobs and raising families in the same place they grew up. It wasn’t unusual to go to the same public schools that your parents did, or even end up living in a house on the same road.
I thought that was kind of boring, to see your whole life ahead of you being like that. Is that all there is? So I was happy to go away to college and maybe become a scientist or something. I only had vague notions, but leaving town and going to college was a start. I didn’t want to get stuck in a rut.
I think what I’m saying is that kids have odd notions sometimes and the future may be weirder than you or they expect. The world changes.
I had some idea of what college was like from the movies, but it didn’t really work out that way. I really had no idea what working would be like, particularly since the Internet was barely getting started. Some jobs I ended up doing hadn’t been invented.
The idea that we can see it all coming and it’s either bad or boring is more of a vibe, something that’s in your head and in the culture. But history has a lot of examples of things changing in ways that aren’t entirely good or bad but just different, and that you couldn’t go back if you tried.
I also remember stories about how some kids had parents with rather specific expectations, like that they would become a doctor or inherit the family business, and that it was a bad thing. I don’t remember knowing anyone like that, so it seems like it was a message that the media was sending? Being free to do whatever career you choose seemed expected.
Maybe one thing that’s different is that physically moving doesn’t seem like such a big change anymore? Maybe you expect that things will be much the same wherever you go? I can’t imagine this being true of moving to another country, though.
The idea is actually something I picked up from an old Bollywood movie that made me think really hard about how I talk to my son to try and encourage him.
(It took me so much work to find a subtitled clip of that lol).
Excellent quote. Man, it seems so trite to have somebody sum up child rearing with anecdotes like "don't be negative" or "just frame things using a glass half full approach" but it's such important and simple wisdom.
I love that you found the clip in Instagram of all things. How do you even search for clips on that platform?
I remembered that the Instagram clip was shared in a Discord group I’m in months and months ago. I had to dig through my memory for the conversation I was having adjacent to it, search for some keywords that might bring up that conversation, and then scroll around to find it.
So as you suspected, Instagram is useless for finding things. lol
One thing that always sticks out to me about this topic is that before the internet nobody asked. Nobody even thought about how a teenager was feeling/coping unless the problem was really glaring, and no one was getting hospitalized for attempts that weren't almost successful.... Rub some dirt in it, and stop being a pussy.
I just really don't think this is new, I think the fact that we're seeing and hearing about it is what's new, and that's why it looks like social media is to blame.
The article's evidence against this sort of explanation is that more objective metrics of teen mental health (e.g., hospital admissions due to self-harm) have also gone up in the same period, following basically the same trend.
Well yeah, but that's part of what I'm saying... now they're being admitted for care, whereas back in the day unless they were literally dying that often wasn't the case. Depending on the breadth of the definition of "self harm," that still isn't the case. Drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders... Hell, consuming content that one finds distressing are all forms of self harm, are all common in teenagers, and are all largely ignored until it becomes a "real" problem. So, ok, the third one is easier to engage in now, but that doesn't make it new, nor does it place all blame on social media existing.
This is an article from a professor of psychology who wrote a book about smart phones and adolescent mental health.
It's not going to settle the question for me because I don't know enough, and I haven't investigated. (And I don't plan to research this.) I think it's plausible, though, and I figured I'd share it since it seems pretty thorough.
For more reading, here's a somewhat skeptical and heated interview that Tyler Cowen did with Jonathan Haidt about his new book:
Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media
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Oof. The fact people have said they'd pay someone to help them quit those social media sites if they didn't "have to be there" is damning.
Also, for the 0.17, is that like, a percentage? Like 17% of people who use social media will develop a mental illness? I'm not sure if I completely understand that part.
A LOT of celebrities literally do just pay people to keep up with their socials and summarize the happenings for them.
I actually think this is the use case that AI tools will end up doing (on the commercial level). Our “social medias” will just be all of our AI agents talking to each other and then summarizing what all the other AI agents are saying. People will be minimally involved in the content production. I’ll tell my AI “Hey, announce that I’ve gotten engaged and send this picture.” And then everyone else’s AI summary bots will either be like “Naravara got engaged. Would you like to see the picture?” If you want to respond, you will and then my AI will be like “A bunch of people have congratulated you. Would you like to know who didn’t so you can hyperfixate on speculating as to whether they secretly hate you or not?”
I'm in that boat and I'm 40.
I'd love to delete my Facebook, but that's where 3/4 of community events are announced.
I'm working on a plan to try to get my kid + their friends onboarded into self-hosted services as they start aging into the internet. I very much like the idea of an auditable 'people you know only' internet that isn't vying to shove ads in their faces as much as possible.
It's a correlation coefficient. Roughly, it's about if you plot the points on a graph, does the slope go up or down? 1 means perfectly correlated (graph goes up), -1 means perfectly inverted (graph goes down), and 0 means they're not connected.
I'm a bit wary of summary statistics. I think showing people the graph is better than sharing one number.
But even if you do that, just because the graph goes up or down doesn't mean one causes the other. For example, there are lots of graphs that go up over time, and they will be correlated.
Social media is doubtless problem number one, but I do not see how dismissing all of these other theories helps anyone. Depression is not a simple thing that we completely understand. People are complex creatures and to ignore all of these other potential factors is rather foolish. If social media were to be abolished tomorrow I would not expect the rate of depression to suddenly flatline - though to be fair, I would imagine that the rate of
Increase would fall quite sharply after a period of adaptation. I think perhaps the one thing the writer of this article is discounting is that social media is how our young are consuming news media, so in addition to the bullying it’s a medium in which they are told depressing statistics of what their future lives as adults will be like, of to give them high tenets senses of how likely they are to be affected by a catastrophe like a school shooting. To me, reading this article really seems like “correlation is causation”. And by focusing on the is instead of the contains it misses out on a lot of nuance that I think is very important, including less drastic ways we might regulate social media to prevent this from being such a problem.
I think they’re pushing it because they’ve researched it and sincerely believe it’s the most important cause and want to see better regulation of social media use by children. There are other people who disagree.
I wouldn’t doubt a single one of those things!
But to me, what they are saying seems like they are living in a town with a dozen termite colonies and trying to solve the problem by tearing down a community center. The termites are still around, but they have eliminated all possibility of good the community center would have had.
I think the recommendations Haidt makes are pretty reasonable, even if the evidence doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t sound like he’s advocating for anything to be torn down:
It’s been a long time since I was in school, but I’m reminded of how kids (stereotypically, girls) would talk on the house phone with their friends for hours and their parents would have to get them to stop so that other people could reach them. Sometimes they would install a second line. Flip phones seem like an improvement.
I don't really object to any of these except the "phone free schools." Parents would riot if there was a lockdown at school and their students couldn't text if they're OK or call 911. (And yeah the kids know to silence them, it's terrifying and heartbreaking how prepped they are.)
But more frequently, they're used to let students know about changes in pick-up - ask questions about dinner, etc. And while that used to be done differently, so did a lot of things. If you pivot to flip phones, I don't see a reason not to allow students to have them on their persons to check between classes or in case of an emergency.
Maybe there would be breaks? It seems like there’s a lot of room for variation in how it’s implemented.
The Yondr pouch thing seems like it’s a way to keep the phone on you. I don’t know how hard it would be to bust open in an emergency.
Not being available at all times can take some getting used to, but we did ok before cell phones.
Not if you have to step outside to unlock it.
Let's say the kid escapes but can't call their parents? Or their phone is left at school where the shooter is? Even in the worst case that their kid didn't get a chance to send that last "I love you" message?
I don't see it winning. If you get people to solve our school shootings, and make it so kids don't have to train to throw books at shooters, to die a little slower and slow the shooter down so he kills fewer people? Then I can get behind taking phones away entirely.
To me, the text enabled flip phone is a decent compromise here. Text is still distracting, but the notifications are from people directly rather than agenda pushing apps.
Which is why if you switch the flip phone as suggested in that post, I don't see a reason to ban phones in classrooms.
I’ve been to concerts and shows before where the make you “coat check” your phone at the door. If there’s an emergency kids can still go out and get one. Or, as when I was a kid, you just go to the school nurse and dial your parents’ work number.
Alternatively, in future world, you give the kids something like those Vocera “smart badges” that some hospital networks have. They have basically a little “walkie talkie” built in and you can talk into them like a “Star Trek” badge. And that way, if the principal needs to call you in, they can just tell you personally instead of announcing it on the intercom and having everyone go “OOOOOH! YOU’RE IN TROUBLE!”
If there's a lockdown, you really don't want kids doing anything but their Run Hide Fight (or equivalent)protocol. It makes more sense for phones to be on them in those cases.
And trust me I feel really shitty for having to use this particular situation. It shouldn't be a risk.
Those are such rare occurrences though, and I don’t really see the phone there meaningfully improving the security situation in that case I can see arguments for why it might and also arguments why it will cause more confusion and panic, so I think it ends up kind of a wash.
They are rare, but that is a thing that parents will care about when policies are enacted. They'll also care about being able to text their kid about dinner or that it's ok to go home with their friend or whatever.
More so though, if a tragedy happens, and kids cannot reach their parents or vice versa because of this policy, heads will roll.
I think the flip phone creates a middle ground of still being reachable - and yeah we may long for the days where that isn't an expectation, but there's a reason I had to wait til I was 18 to get a (Nokia brick) phone but my younger siblings got them younger and younger. Because it was convenient for my parents to be able to reach them.
I also think there is irony in doing essentially nothing about school shootings while fussing over phones in schools. I cannot believe that active shooter drills aren't part of the stress and trauma carried by Gen Alpha and Gen Z. I have seen it when they bring it to college.
We used our sidekicks and enVs to text each other about where we were going to meet up for lunch or in the halls between classes if we had time. Not being able to coordinate that would have meant less time socializing face to face, not more.
When I haven’t done enough research to have an informed opinion, I leave the question open. It’s better than choosing sides without doing the homework.
Sorry to disappoint you! If you know of a deep dive on this, I’d be interested in reading it.
I'm still not going to take the time to get to the bottom of this, but thought I'd post an in-depth article that goes into it in some depth:
What the evidence really says about social media’s impact on teens’ mental health (Vox)
This was a good read. Thanks for posting it.
Economics and social media feel about right.
Parents have less time for their kids as they scramble to pay for the ever increasing number of things we need to pay for and cost of those things.(Edit: is really more time :/ ) Unemployment hides trends in decreasing hours, job quality and increased cost of living.Social media I can easily see causing depression with the algorithms that trap you in a bubble so you don't understand those trapped in other bubbles, the toxic people in general, bots & ads that are basically automated trolls. Combine that with kids shielded from negativity by their parents so they have no coping mechanisms and it's a recipe for disaster. Hell, I've visited places on the internet that can give people nightmares without issue, but I've still cut off most social media due to being too toxic and bad for my health. I use to say people just need thicker skin to deal with what you find on social media, but nowadays xenomorph blood is less toxic. Just read youtube comments shudders. The biggest problem with social media is it can be subtle, leading you into stress and depression without even realizing it's the cause.
I just wanted to point out that there have been studies that show parents of today (one study I found is from 2016, so a bit dated by now but I think probably still stands) spend more time with their children than parents in the 1960s.
https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/
The study did note that "better off" parents spent more time with their children than those with less, but overall it showed an increase no matter what income and education level the family has.
Huh, well there goes that theory. Thanks for the info. Every parent I know just seems so busy and broke all the time. :/
I don't think your observations are incorrect. Most parents I know (my wife and I included) are busier and seem to have less money than our parents did. But I think that goes back to us actively spending more time "parenting" than previous generations as opposed to doing other things.
Many parents sacrifice their entire social lives for their kids, especially once the kids reach middle and high school and sports and other extracurricular activities really start to ramp up. I have friends that have two boys, who both play 2 or 3 sports, so their entire year is filled with traveling for tournaments, practices, and other sports related events like banquets and fundraisers and whatever else. I see them very rarely. I'm sure they see a lot of other parents of kids on their teams, but those are "forced" relationships vs. those that we choose to cultivate for reasons of our own.
I think this is a product of our society and the way we push kids to be active and "do the right things" to get into good colleges, etc.