Apr 12, 2024 06:00:00

A social psychologist refutes the criticism that 'SNS is not to blame for the deterioration of young people's mental health'

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, made his previous claim that 'SNS has a negative impact on young people's mental health' in a book published in March 2024. After Candace L. Odgers , a psychologist and information scientist at the University of California, Irvine, criticized Haidt's claim as problematic, Haidt refuted Odgers.

Yes, Social Media Is Really a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic

In March 2024, Haidt published a book called 'The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness .' In it, Haidt points out that social media is having a negative impact on children's mental health and warns about the dangers of social media.

However, Odgers, who reviewed the book in the scientific journal Nature, disagreed with the book's contents, arguing that there is no evidence that social media use affects children's brains or worsens their mental health. Haidt misinterpreted the correlation that 'young people with poor mental health use social media more frequently' as a causal relationship that 'social media use worsens mental health,' and criticized that by singling out social media, attention is diverted from the real causes such as economic difficulties and racism.

It is pointed out that the claim that 'SNS is to blame for the deterioration of young people's mental health' may distract attention from how to deal with the true cause-GIGAZINE

In response to Odgers' rebuttal, Haidt attempted to refute it in an article published on his website After Babel. First, Haidt argued that he and Odgers, who are on the side of those who believe that social media is worsening young people's mental health, have been engaged in productive academic debates for many years, and that even if they cannot convince each other, it is important for the scientific community and policymakers to listen to the argument.

Haidt argues that Odgers' criticism that 'Haidt is confusing correlation with causation' is incorrect and that Odgers's claims are not based on the facts.

◆1: Odgers' claim that 'there is no evidence that social media is worsening young people's mental health' is false
The core of Odgers' argument is that Haidt is mistakenly drawing a causal relationship from the correlation that 'children with poor mental health use social media frequently' to 'mental health is worsening the mental health of young people. 'According to Haidt, when he joined the debate around 2018, the majority of studies on 'digital media' and young people's mental health were looking at correlations.

However, as of 2018, experimental studies on SNS and young people's mental health were still being conducted, and a paper published in December 2018 reported that college students who were asked to reduce their social media use for three weeks had improved mental health compared to the control group. Since then, experiments on SNS and mental health have been conducted, and in a study in which more than 2,700 adults were randomly divided into a group that disabled their Facebook account for one month and a control group, about 80% responded that 'disabling the account benefited me.' In addition, many studies that examined the correlation have shown consistent results that 'SNS use is more strongly associated with worsening mental health in girls than in boys.'

Haidt points out that if we adopt the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between SNS and mental health and all research results are just chance, the results of experiments investigating SNS use should be random, but in reality most studies have shown that increased SNS use has a negative effect on mental health. He also argues that the results of studies examining correlations should also be random, and there should be no consistent results such as 'girls are more susceptible to the negative effects of SNS than boys.'

◆2: Odgers's 'real reasons why young people's mental health is deteriorating' don't match the observed facts
Haidt points out that a major problem with Odgers' critique is that it proposes an 'alternative to Haidt's theory.' Odgers points out that Haidt's book 'may distract from the real causes of poor mental health in young people,' and argues that the real causes of poor mental health are long-standing social issues such as 'structural discrimination, racism, sexism, sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship, and social isolation.'

Haidt acknowledges that these social issues have a negative impact on the development of all young people, but he says the theory doesn't explain why the percentage of young people suffering from anxiety and depression, which had remained stable through the mid-2000s, suddenly rose sharply about four years after

the Lehman Shock .

The graph below shows the percentage of young people who reported self-harming in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ontario, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We can see that self-harm has been increasing among both girls (orange) and boys (blue), with a particularly steep increase in girls since around 2011-2012. Similar trends have been observed among young people in other European countries and Scandinavia.

Haidt points out that if, as Odgers explains, the deterioration of young people's mental health is caused by school shootings, poverty, racism, etc. in the United States, it is unnatural to see similar trends in other countries around the world. Odgers also claims that mental health problems are more prevalent among young people from families with low socioeconomic status, but in response, it has been pointed out that 'since 2011, young people from wealthy families are more likely to suffer from depression than those from families below the poverty line.'

Based on the above discussion, Haidt argues that social media has a negative impact on young people's mental health and calls for the following efforts:

1: Set a social norm that prohibits smartphone use until high school.
2: Prohibit the use of social media by anyone under the age of 16.
3: Either ban bringing smartphones and mobile phones to school, or have the school take them when students arrive.
4: Encourage autonomous, free-form play in the real world.

Haidt points out that if policymakers follow Odgers' theory to solve social problems and it turns out that the theory is wrong decades later, a wide range of generations will suffer from the negative effects of social media on mental health. On the other hand, if they follow Haidt's theory to regulate social media and it turns out that the theory is wrong decades later, 'the experience of not using social media as a child, not using a smartphone during school, and playing outside' is unlikely to have a negative effect.

'We need skeptics to speak out, even if they give us false alarms. God bless them. But at some point we need to take action based on the most plausible theories, even if we can't be 100% sure that they're the right cause. And I think that time is now,' Haidt said, arguing that social media use by young people should be restricted as soon as possible.