It's been interesting seeing how the debate on this has evolved. It started out being about screen time, then down to what exactly is happening on those screens, who is using them, what are they doing and now the fight is about what the small correlations actually mean in real life and for interventions/therapy.
In response to the important question, "Hey, will those Vive Organic immunity boost wellness shots from Whole Foods stop me from getting sick?" you write, "No. They are literally just spicy juice." I think this underestimates the power of Goopy placebo.
One approach might be to ask the question of how is time spent on social networking taking the place of other experiences for our teenagers. Ask your parents and even your grandparents how they spent their time as teenagers outside of school. 😉
If there were not well-funded, powerful forces, on a spectrum between self-serving and malignant, my gut take is social media would be neutral to (eventually) positive, if only because humans are trying to get out of pain and into pleasure.
But, since it has been weaponized (China has shown us via TicTok that it can be harnessed for good) against the West, it very clearly exacerbates and encourages mental illness.
I am not singling out China as having weaponized social media against the West, it is only one of several players.
May 18, 2023·edited May 18, 2023Liked by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD
Love the article! One question, if the r value is small, can you say it's a "small correlation", or just that the effect has a high variance (positive for some teens and negative for others)? Maybe if social media has varied effects which are good for some teens but very bad for others (but bad on average), with random error from self report data, the association could show up with a small r value while still having a very negative effect on average in the real world. For example, maybe the effect of a single drunk driving incident on health would have a small r value, since the outcome is random, even if it is still very dangerous.
Good point! I definitely think part of the reason that we see these small r values is the fact that there's so much variability -- some teens might see positive impacts, some might see negative impacts, so when we lump all these teens together and look at the "average," it appears that the correlation is small.
Thank you for this! I so appreciate your clear writing and your thoughtful attention to detail here... and thank you for being open and honest about why this is such a hard question to answer!
This is a very weak analysis. The research to date is generally not great so it should not be relied on with the confidence level you are giving it. I honestly don’t know any teenagers that can use “social media” in a non addictive way. Personally have observed endless issues and i think every parent or observant adult sees these issues if they are at all observant or curious. It is definitely NOT a “small proportion of teens” that have problematic usage. That is def not correct. Also you ignored all the known social contagion issues on social media that have been reported.
honestly I'm curious why you seem to be not examining and evaluating the tons of research that does show relationships between social media usage and easily observed clinical issues, or other objective data sources?
Given the research topic, there are not, nor will there ever be a clear double-blind study. and even prospective studies where teens are tracked before and after getting a cell phone are unlikely to be conducted.
But we have plenty of data that points to issues. A few examples:
Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written and spoken extensively about bullying and self harm in teenage girls that is correlated with social media usage. He believes the evidence is causal and explains why in many articles, books and long podcast interviews.
47.2% of 18-29 year olds indicated they have symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder! (data is from this a few weeks ago - click link above to view full table). Teens tend to have the highest social media usage. There definitely are other factors, but if you look carefully at that data set, they are magnitudes higher than all other age groups.
Also there has been plenty of clinical observations of things of a "social contagion" variety:
Tics...on TikTok.
Teenage girls watching others with TikTok started to have a functional neurological disorder. Multiple medical reports of this, such as these hospital systems:
And as a fellow Clinical Ph.D., I think this would be of great interest to you:
Recently there has been a controversy about how the Wa Univ School of Medicine has treated teens presenting with gender identity issues. https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids. One of the whisteblowers who worked at the clinic for 4 years said in her deposition: "Social media is at least partly responsible for this large increase in children seeking gender transition treatment from the Center. Many children themselves would say that they learned of their gender identities from TikTok. Children would arrive at the Center identifying not only as transgender, but also as having tic disorders (Tourette Syndrome) or multiple personality disorders (dissociative identity disorder). Doctors at the Center would ignore and dismiss as social contagion the claims about the tics and multiple personalities; but then those doctors would uncritically accept the children’s statements about gender identity and place these children on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. In one case, a child came into the Center identifying as “blind,” even though the child could in fact see (after vision tests were performed). The child also identified as transgender. The Center dismissed the child’s assertion about blindness as a somatization disorder but uncritically accepted the child’s statement about gender and prescribed that child with drugs for medical transition without confirming the length or persistence of the condition. No concurrent mental health care was provided."
This is an affidavit from a whistleblower at a Univ medical center discussing how social media is impacting medical issues for teens. Specifically how TikTok is affecting their clinical presentation
It's been interesting seeing how the debate on this has evolved. It started out being about screen time, then down to what exactly is happening on those screens, who is using them, what are they doing and now the fight is about what the small correlations actually mean in real life and for interventions/therapy.
Yes! Really interesting to see how the debate has unfolded -- it seems like this progression is a bit of a pattern in this kind of research...
In response to the important question, "Hey, will those Vive Organic immunity boost wellness shots from Whole Foods stop me from getting sick?" you write, "No. They are literally just spicy juice." I think this underestimates the power of Goopy placebo.
An incredibly important question and yes!! It IS more complicated after all...
One approach might be to ask the question of how is time spent on social networking taking the place of other experiences for our teenagers. Ask your parents and even your grandparents how they spent their time as teenagers outside of school. 😉
Yes - definitely an important piece of the puzzle!
If there were not well-funded, powerful forces, on a spectrum between self-serving and malignant, my gut take is social media would be neutral to (eventually) positive, if only because humans are trying to get out of pain and into pleasure.
But, since it has been weaponized (China has shown us via TicTok that it can be harnessed for good) against the West, it very clearly exacerbates and encourages mental illness.
I am not singling out China as having weaponized social media against the West, it is only one of several players.
Another super thoughtful post! Thank you for your work :)
Thanks so much Devorah!
Love the article! One question, if the r value is small, can you say it's a "small correlation", or just that the effect has a high variance (positive for some teens and negative for others)? Maybe if social media has varied effects which are good for some teens but very bad for others (but bad on average), with random error from self report data, the association could show up with a small r value while still having a very negative effect on average in the real world. For example, maybe the effect of a single drunk driving incident on health would have a small r value, since the outcome is random, even if it is still very dangerous.
Good point! I definitely think part of the reason that we see these small r values is the fact that there's so much variability -- some teens might see positive impacts, some might see negative impacts, so when we lump all these teens together and look at the "average," it appears that the correlation is small.
Thank you for this! I so appreciate your clear writing and your thoughtful attention to detail here... and thank you for being open and honest about why this is such a hard question to answer!
Thanks so much Melinda!
This is a very weak analysis. The research to date is generally not great so it should not be relied on with the confidence level you are giving it. I honestly don’t know any teenagers that can use “social media” in a non addictive way. Personally have observed endless issues and i think every parent or observant adult sees these issues if they are at all observant or curious. It is definitely NOT a “small proportion of teens” that have problematic usage. That is def not correct. Also you ignored all the known social contagion issues on social media that have been reported.
Thanks for the feedback, Jay - sounds like we differ a bit in how we interpret the research, but I appreciate you reading and sharing your thoughts!
honestly I'm curious why you seem to be not examining and evaluating the tons of research that does show relationships between social media usage and easily observed clinical issues, or other objective data sources?
Given the research topic, there are not, nor will there ever be a clear double-blind study. and even prospective studies where teens are tracked before and after getting a cell phone are unlikely to be conducted.
But we have plenty of data that points to issues. A few examples:
Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written and spoken extensively about bullying and self harm in teenage girls that is correlated with social media usage. He believes the evidence is causal and explains why in many articles, books and long podcast interviews.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/facebooks-dangerous-experiment-teen-girls/620767/
Another correlational data point:
Teens have highest Anxiety/Depressive Disorders (self-report) on CDC tracking poll.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/mental-health.htm (There is a drop down at the top to toggle between Anxiety, Depression, or both).
Feb 2023 data:
47.2% of 18-29 year olds indicated they have symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder! (data is from this a few weeks ago - click link above to view full table). Teens tend to have the highest social media usage. There definitely are other factors, but if you look carefully at that data set, they are magnitudes higher than all other age groups.
Also there has been plenty of clinical observations of things of a "social contagion" variety:
Tics...on TikTok.
Teenage girls watching others with TikTok started to have a functional neurological disorder. Multiple medical reports of this, such as these hospital systems:
https://www.henryford.com/blog/2022/03/tiktok-giving-teen-girls-tics
https://scienceblog.cincinnatichildrens.org/a-closer-look-at-the-tiktok-tics-phenomenon/
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/tiktok-causing-tics-in-teen-girls/
And as a fellow Clinical Ph.D., I think this would be of great interest to you:
Recently there has been a controversy about how the Wa Univ School of Medicine has treated teens presenting with gender identity issues. https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids. One of the whisteblowers who worked at the clinic for 4 years said in her deposition: "Social media is at least partly responsible for this large increase in children seeking gender transition treatment from the Center. Many children themselves would say that they learned of their gender identities from TikTok. Children would arrive at the Center identifying not only as transgender, but also as having tic disorders (Tourette Syndrome) or multiple personality disorders (dissociative identity disorder). Doctors at the Center would ignore and dismiss as social contagion the claims about the tics and multiple personalities; but then those doctors would uncritically accept the children’s statements about gender identity and place these children on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. In one case, a child came into the Center identifying as “blind,” even though the child could in fact see (after vision tests were performed). The child also identified as transgender. The Center dismissed the child’s assertion about blindness as a somatization disorder but uncritically accepted the child’s statement about gender and prescribed that child with drugs for medical transition without confirming the length or persistence of the condition. No concurrent mental health care was provided."
source: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/2-07-2023-reed-affidavit---signed.pdf?sfvrsn=6a64d339_2 (pages 6-7).
I love - and totally agree with- your answer to this issue! Thanks for pulling together such succinct and readable research for us.
Also see #21 here https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/2-07-2023-reed-affidavit---signed.pdf?sfvrsn=6a64d339_2&fbclid=IwAR2L1LaBPA1eTneCr8tc6hBdKICpzfK9aOUs-57fVhqrd2U1dbACwZshMFk
This is an affidavit from a whistleblower at a Univ medical center discussing how social media is impacting medical issues for teens. Specifically how TikTok is affecting their clinical presentation