18 Comments
Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

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.

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

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.

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Feb 26, 2023Liked by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

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. 😉

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

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.

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Another super thoughtful post! Thank you for your work :)

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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.

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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!

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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.

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I love - and totally agree with- your answer to this issue! Thanks for pulling together such succinct and readable research for us.

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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

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