248: The Anxious Generation Review (Part 2): Does Social Media Actually Cause Kids’ Depression and Anxiety?

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

In Part 1 of this mini-series looking at Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, we discovered that the teen mental health crisis might not be as dramatic as The Anxious Generation claims - and that changes in diagnosis and coding could be inflating the numbers. But even if we accept that teens' struggles have increased somewhat, the next crucial question is: what's actually causing the change?

Jonathan Haidt is adamant that social media causes depression and anxiety in teenagers. He claims that "dozens of experiments" prove social media use is a CAUSE, not just a correlate, of mental health problems. But when you dig into the studies, as we do in this episode, we'll see that the 'causal' data is nowhere near as strong as Haidt claims.

We'll examine the experimental evidence behind social media and teen mental health claims, reveal why leading researchers compare social media effects on teens to eating potatoes, and uncover what factors actually explain 99% of youth mental health outcomes. Because if we're going to spend time and energy helping our kids, we want to make sure we're spending it doing things that will actually help.

Questions This Episode Will Answer

Does social media really cause teen depression and anxiety? Research shows correlation, not proven causation, with social media effects on teens explaining less than 1% of wellbeing, similar to the effect of eating potatoes. (Some researchers argue that this is still important enough to pay attention to - the episode explores why.)

Why do I keep hearing that social media is harmful if the research is weak? Many (but not all) social media studies find some evidence of harm, but when you look at the methodology this isn't surprising - researchers do things like sending participants daily reminders that "limiting social media is good for you," and then asking them how much social media they've consumed and how they feel. It's hard to draw strong conclusions from this data!

How can different studies on social media show opposite results? Researchers studying teen social media use can get completely different results from the same data depending on how they choose to analyze it. The episode looks at those choices and what they mean for understanding whether social media causes kids' depression and anxiety.

Is limiting my teen's social media use actually going to help them? Current evidence suggests that some kids who use social media a lot are vulnerable to experiencing depression and anxiety, and limiting their use specifically may be protective. There is little evidence to support the idea that blanket bans on kids' social media/smart phone usage will result in dramatic improvements in youth mental health, and focusing on issues that are more clearly connected to mental health would likely have a greater positive impact.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• How most social media research creates results that don't tell us what we want to know (but then reports the results as if they do)
• How the same teen mental health data can be analyzed to support opposite conclusions about social media effects on teens
• What family relationships, academic pressure, and economic stress reveal about the real drivers of youth mental health issues
• How social media and teen mental health correlations explain the same amount of variance as seemingly irrelevant factors like potato consumption
• How researcher bias and study design flaws make social media studies less reliable than parents think
• What happens when kids who benefit from social media lose access to it
• Why the focus on teen social media use might distract from addressing bigger factors affecting your child's wellbeing
• How to evaluate social media research claims critically when making decisions about your family's technology use
• What the ongoing debate between leading researchers reveals about the uncertainty in digital wellness science
• Why blanket solutions like social media bans might miss the complex realities of teen mental health challenges

Dr. Jonathan Haidt's Book

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Affiliate link) Jump to highlights 00:45 Introduction of today’s episode 01:40 Haidt explains that after reviewing many research studies with his colleagues Jean Twenge and Zach Rausch, social media doesn't just happen to show up alongside mental health problems in teens - it's actually creating them. The research shows that social media use leads to increased anxiety and depression, rather than simply being something that anxious and depressed teens tend to use more often 05:28 According to Dr. Gray, despite potential placebo effects boosting results, researchers found mostly no significant improvements in wellbeing from reducing social media use, only small effects on loneliness and depression that could easily be explained by chance 12:20 Dr. Amy Orben's Specification Curve Analysis is a sophisticated attempt to show how research choices affect outcomes 15:12 A study by Schwartz found that both the group that quit Instagram AND the control group that kept using it normally BOTH improved on measures of depression and self-esteem, which the researchers admitted might just be because being in a study about social media usage made people more aware of their usage 26:54 Dr. Twenge's studies of over 100,000 teens found heavy social media users were twice as likely to report depression, low wellbeing, and suicide risk especially girls 31:42 Dr. Orben uses a technique called Specification Curve Analysis, which is a way to evaluate how the choices a researcher makes affect the study outcomes 34:35 Some of the factors that are bigger contributors than screen time usage 42:53 Dr. Orben describes repeating technology panics: radio, comics, TV, video games, now social media. Research lags behind fears, creating cycles where society panics about new tech before understanding previous ones 50:19 People tend to agree with yes/no questions regardless of content, even contradictory statements. Question wording heavily influences responses, inflating correlations due to response style rather than genuine opinions 54:00 Wrapping up References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Epi-Aid 2016-018: Undetermined risk factors for suicide among youth, ages 10–24 — Santa Clara County, CA, 2016. Santa Clara County Public Health Department. https://files.santaclaracounty.gov/migrated/cdc-samhsa-epi-aid-final-report-scc-phd-2016.pdf

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Haidt, J., & Rausch, Z. Better mental health [Ongoing open-source literature review]. The Coddling. https://www.thecoddling.com/better-mental-health

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