Thanks so much for this nuanced write up! I’m much more familiar with the debates around screen time and young children (I’m a children’s librarian), where the nuance also tends to get lost (as you’ve written about so well). This was tremendously helpful for understanding what we do and don’t really know.
Thank you for this write-up! I’m one of those people who think “it’s complicated” is a more satisfying answer than “it’s Thing X”. You’ve properly complicated the debate :)
This article is far better and more balanced than its predecessor where you repeated the "very small" associations nonsense from the radical tech defenders camp.
Also good to see you note the crucial distinction between stress (or minor trauma) indicated by the YRBS sadness and mental health disorders. I wrote about it in detail at
"You know what else started in 2012? You guessed it. Social media became widely available on smartphones, and teens started using it a lot."
Really? From what I've seen the vast majority of U.S. teens was on social media like MySpace already in 2006. Phones may have increased the frequency of social media use, but where's evidence that prevalence of its use started to increase rapidly only in 2012?
I've yet to see any DATA supporting the 2012 hypothesis. If SM use started to increase rapidly around 2012, why have rates of cyberbullying victimization (YRBS and NCVS) stagnated?
Don't accept hand-waving from either side of this debate.
P. S. Smart phones may be culprits for reasons little to do with any intrinsic harmfulness of SM. For example, decreases in healthy sleep may be largely due to smart phones.
Thanks so much for this nuanced write up! I’m much more familiar with the debates around screen time and young children (I’m a children’s librarian), where the nuance also tends to get lost (as you’ve written about so well). This was tremendously helpful for understanding what we do and don’t really know.
Thank you for this write-up! I’m one of those people who think “it’s complicated” is a more satisfying answer than “it’s Thing X”. You’ve properly complicated the debate :)
This article is far better and more balanced than its predecessor where you repeated the "very small" associations nonsense from the radical tech defenders camp.
Also good to see you note the crucial distinction between stress (or minor trauma) indicated by the YRBS sadness and mental health disorders. I wrote about it in detail at
The Fleeting Persistence of Hopelessness
https://theshoresofacademia.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-fleeting-persistence-of-hopelessness.html
Somethink to think about:
"You know what else started in 2012? You guessed it. Social media became widely available on smartphones, and teens started using it a lot."
Really? From what I've seen the vast majority of U.S. teens was on social media like MySpace already in 2006. Phones may have increased the frequency of social media use, but where's evidence that prevalence of its use started to increase rapidly only in 2012?
I've yet to see any DATA supporting the 2012 hypothesis. If SM use started to increase rapidly around 2012, why have rates of cyberbullying victimization (YRBS and NCVS) stagnated?
Don't accept hand-waving from either side of this debate.
P. S. Smart phones may be culprits for reasons little to do with any intrinsic harmfulness of SM. For example, decreases in healthy sleep may be largely due to smart phones.