I missed this when it first came out, but a few weeks ago David Wallace-Wells wrote a piece in the New York Times taking a look at the evidence that cell phones have been responsible for big increases in teen depression, especially among teen girls. He ends up being skeptical. The whole piece is worth reading, but here are some of the highlights:
- In 2011 HHS issured guidelines recommending that teen girls be screened annually for depression. In 2015 they mandated coding changes that doubled the reported rate of self-harm for teen girls (and everyone else). A study in New Jersey found that these changes explained nearly all of the state’s apparent upward trend in suicide-related hospital visits.
- The overall suicide rate for teens has gone up at the same rate as the suicide rate for adults. (Although the suicide rate for teen girls has gone up more than the rate for adult women.) This suggests a primary cause other than cell phones.
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- Teen depression as measured by the annual SAMHSA survey increased by about 50% between 2005 and 2017. But a similar survey from the CDC pegs the increase at only about 10%.
- Worldwide data varies considerably from country to country, regardless of cell phone usage. In some countries teen mood disorders are up, in others they're down.
- Different surveys produce different results. A PISA survey question suggests increasing loneliness among teens, but other surveys show life satisfaction among teens flat or improving.
- This didn't make it into Wallace-Wells' piece, but I'll add a study I recently wrote about showing that internet access seems to be generally associated with better well-being, not worse.
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As Wallace-Wells notes, Jonathan Haidt is one of the biggest proponents of the theory that cell phones are damaging teens, but even he thinks that cell phones account for only 10-15% of the variability in teen well-being. That's not nothing, but it's also not an epidemic.
The evidence isn't all in on cell phones, but for now I think it points in the direction of cell phones having a negative impact mainly on a small subset of teen girls who are probably already depressed and end up spending hours on social media. That's a problem worth addressing, but not one that needs to be turned into a panic.
In my day, Dungeons and Dragons was the poison to our psyches. Poison and demonic. In fact, I still worship Satan regularly...
That new fad of wearing clothing drove the old people nuts. They had to chew on a stick and think about it, and, you know, I don't even think about it at all anymore.
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Sympathy for the devil is a good thing. How do you otherwise recognize when he's entered your soul?
That "Lucifer" teevie series did a lot to make Old Nick more than appealing. It was broadcast on Fox, natch.
Access to social media can make other problems a lot worse. Some friends of ours had a teenage daughter who managed to screw herself up thanks to a PC she had in her bedroom. She was so consumed by social media that it destroyed her sleep and one thing led to another. No one considered moving her PC out into the living room.
It is possible that she would have found another way to get herself messed up, but social media worked for her.
The internet is terrible for people. Just read the comments here! I don't know why Mr. Drum insists this isn't true on some level about social media and "cell phones". So what if most people get by just fine? Driving cars is safe too. Except when it isn't. Having a gun in your home is safe. Except when it isn't. What is the threshold for something being dangerous? Toys get taken off the market all the time because after only a few incidents.
Then this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/nyregion/social-media-scam-sextortion.html
After a Michigan teenager named Jordan DeMay shot himself following the scam in 2022, two Nigerian brothers, Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and Samson Ogoshi, 20, were arrested in Lagos this past summer following an F.B.I. investigation and extradited to Michigan. In April both pleaded guilty to conspiring to exploit teenage boys — there were hundreds of other victims, according to the F.B.I. — which entails a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Anyway... don't send pics of yourself to anyone online! Fucking Nigerians!
"This suggests a primary cause other than cell phones."
Question: What is the other-than-cell-phone primary cause?
Answer: The idea that life is a zero sum game, aka if somebody else wins, I lose.
Question: What is the other-than-cell-phone primary cure?
Answer: The idea that life is not a zero sum game, aka we all win together or we all lose apart.
As I sometimes say, you won't understand trends in mental health statistics without considering the growth of the professions involved and their increasing influence on overall thinking.
It may well be that improvements in treatment, especially in drugs, have actually reduced the incidence of serious mental illness, while the statistics, if not controlled carefully, may indicate the opposite.
It's a good thing to be skeptical of the statistics. It's a bad thing to ignore the statistics because you don't like what they're saying.
Starting the suicide chart in 2000 seems like a very odd and deliberate choice. Why is this the base year? Reaffirming our priors?
Immigration aside
Are we surprised by this?
The birthrate in the US has reached it's LOWEST point over the last 100 years.
So the percentage of teens with problems is going to be higher because there's fewer teens now then there were 25 years ago
And theres a LOT less of them then there were during early 60s when the early boomers were reaching their teenage years
Any percentages of population has to be "adjusted for inflation" or, in this case deflation.
"So the percentage of teens with problems is going to be higher because there's fewer teens now then there were 25 years ago."
So the percentage of teens with problems was higher because there were fewer teens 100 years ago?
There's correlation, which might or might not be causation, and there's confusion, which might or might not be self-evident.
I just looked at CNN and MSNBC.
I want to say All-Trump All Day does not reflect a serious interest in anything.