by jschveibinz 7 hours ago
I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections.
I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...
>Young people are barely living
Yeah, I wonder what caused that?
The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
Kids need private spaces. If we overprotect them in the real world, and overprotect them in the digital world children will fail to explore all sorts of things.
Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health?
It feels absurd to even ask.
> There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved.
I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well.
Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
The world sucks and the kids have no hope. Social media/ internet is to distract everyone from the real world problems
Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
Yes.
The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media."
This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect.
Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though).
And where you get the most juice is looking at population level introduction of social media studies like those discussed here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...
But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"
No, I don't think it's the same as an unfalsifiable or circular claim.
Network level effects are still falsifiable, it's just often really challenging to falsify them at scale.
but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child"
which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
As is common in social science, it's really challenging to disentangle this kind of thing. But there are ways you can get at it.
One clever example discussed in the blog I linked:
> We also found five studies that used a similar design applied to the rollout of high-speed internet. It’s hard to have a phone-based childhood when data speeds are very low. So what happened in Spain as fiber optic cables were laid and high-speed internet came to different regions at different times?
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epi...
The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content.
The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
This the same NPR that was gutted when the new administration took over and is now spouting propaganda? That NPR?
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Sustained.
You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
lol :) good point