I hate that the "social media is bad for teens" myth will not die. In this little rant, I tackle one part of this puzzle: the obsession with "harms" (thanks lawyers) and the implications of not thinking through how to respond coherently to risks.
danah: Have been a fan ever since reading your MySpace vs Facebook work back in 2007. And I think the risk/harm distinction you make in this article is an important one, and I really appreciate the link to the Alice Marwick (and team) "primer." Just spent a half an hour or so reading it quickly and plan to dive deeper into it later and to review some of the research papers it cites as well. And I wish I had discovered your Substack earlier; I live in San Mateo and would love to have attended your talk at the Computer History Museum.
Having said all that, I strongly think this piece (and your earlier pieces on KOSA and moral panics) are wrong in important ways. At root, I think you're arguing with Haidt and Twenge, and I think they clearly have the better of the argument. That's partly based on my experience (as both a parent and someone who has worked on social software for almost 30 years) and partly because I find the arguments you're making when you disagree with them extremely unconvincing. I'll come back later and make a fuller comment as to why when I have more time, but I'll preview three points for now:
- I actually agree with you about past moral panics about TV and video games (largely) proving to be unfounded, so I was initially skeptical about the problems with social media as well (and didn't limit my kids' access). But the combination of the data on teen mental health, seeing my own kids' (ages 17-21) experience, and what I've seen professionally has convinced me that there is something different this time around and that social media has become uniquely pernicious (not only, but especially, for kids).
- I found this paragraph in your KOSA piece shockingly unpersuasive:
"People keep telling me that it’s clearly technology because the rise in depression, anxiety, and suicidality tracks temporally alongside the development of social media and cell phones. It also tracks alongside the rise in awareness about climate change. And the emergence of an opioid epidemic. And the increase in school shootings. And the rising levels of student debt. And so many pressures that young people have increasingly faced for the last 25 years. None of these tell the whole story. All of these play a role in what young people are going through."
To me, the alternative causes you cite here are so obviously wrong that it's clear evidence that you're not even really bothering to grapple with Haidt and Twenge's arguments, but are simply restating beliefs you have always had without thinking critically about them.
- It's certainly true that things are always complicated (and I just ordered your book on the subject) and not mono-causal but that doesn't mean that specific causes aren't important and shouldn't be addressed. And I think you underestimate the way that social media is likely undermining some of the more positive ways that teens could be spending their time that I think you (rightly) see as experiences that would lead to better teen health.
Anyway, I'm bothering to write all this, partly as a way to think through these issues myself, but also because I think you have an important constructive role to play. I'm very normie (and I'm guessing that Haidt and Twenge are as well), which I think informs the way we think about these issues. I think your personal experience and professional interest in alternative culture can help inform the work on improving the impact of social media on teens and society and make it more likely to be successful and less likely to be harmful. But at the moment, my sense is that you're using "it's complicated" as an excuse to simply push back against change.
"To me, the alternative causes you cite here are so obviously wrong that it's clear evidence that you're not even really bothering to grapple with Haidt and Twenge's arguments, but are simply restating beliefs you have always had without thinking critically about them."
I'll speak as a 20-something that has grappled heavily with depression and anxiety over the past 10 years - the things danah lists, the force of the broader political world, are exactly the things that most directly impacted my depression and anxiety. I have lived my entire politically conscious life in a world that feels inherently on the way to collapse. The timing of my spikes and fall offs of anxiety would not be well explained by my social media usage; they line up perfectly with the realization that Trumpism is here, with the George Floyd protests, with news of superstorms and other climate disasters, that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist. I am an anecdote, I am not data, so this is not some conclusive proof one way or the other, but it is enough where calling a consideration of these factors "so obviously wrong" is...well, wrong.
My sense though is that awful as many of these things are, similar awful things have always existed. During the cold war many people were terrified of an imminent nuclear war. In the 70s, deindustrialisation lead to the hollowing of communities and economic models in various places. Awful things are always happening, and it's entirely understandable and believable that for you and many people, they have a causal impact on your experience of depression and anxiety. And yet, that doesn't answer the question as to why there are significantly higher rates of various mental health problems today than in previous decades, why it is that many more people today (esp young people) struggle with various mental health problems in response to various awful social and political trends than in previous decades in response to their awful social and political trends. Now much of this is conceivably a result of greater awareness/diagnosis/changing definitions etc. But it's not inconceivable that to an extent people are genuinely more anxious and depressed than they were in previous decades, and I don't think we can put this down to "the world is awful", because the world has always been awful in various ways (and in many respects, it's better today). It's likely to be multifactorial, a result of social degradation and individualisation, and changing attitudes towards mental health, and changes to parenting, but also, not inconceivably, social media, and it's effects on how we see our relationships, how we experience the social and political world, and how we spend our time and mental energy and attention. I fundamentally don't know which/to what extent these factors have had an impact on changing mental health rates. But I do think it's unlikely to be primarily about the social and political landscape, even if it has a meaningful and significant impact on the individual level.
Mitchell: Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think Matt's response largely speaks for me as well. I don't think the world has gotten worse, in any meaningful sense, for 20 somethings today compared to 20 somethings in previous generations. What does seem to have changed is how 20 somethings today react to the challenges that they face, and my sense is that this has changed for the worse and that social media plays a role.
I think your message is interesting in that regard. You wrote: "The timing of my spikes and fall offs of anxiety would not be well explained by my social media usage; they line up perfectly with the realization that Trumpism is here, with the George Floyd protests, with news of superstorms and other climate disasters, that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist."
I was particularly struck by the line "...that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist." In particular, the "staring at and feeling powerless" makes me think that social media may be playing more of a role in your anxieties than you even realize. You're entirely right that none of the problems you named are dynamics that anyone has the power to address, except in small ways. So I think a healthy response is to decide which (of any) of those problems you want to do your part in constructively addressing and to do those things. And beyond that not to waste any time and energy on them and to live one's life.
The key, I think, is that means spending very little time online. Nothing you can do online will contribute in a positive way to addressing any of these issues, and I'm guessing the more time you spend on social media doom scrolling stories about these problems will simply make it more likely that you will experience the feelings of anxiety and powerlessness that you describe. Now, that's certainly not the whole story. I think other dynamics that Haidt describes in both The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind matter as well. But I definitely think social media plays a role.
Crossing the street and skiing are both risky, but are they addictive in nature, and specifically designed to keep our kids doing them as much as possible? Imagine if your child only wanted to cross the street, for hours at a time. And crossing that street also had potential to increase their anxiety, expose them to content that's inappropriate, or other things their brain isn't yet developed to handle.
Also, I don't think it should be assumed that parents who want to keep their kids off social media longer than the average age, are doing so to propagate hate. It's possible that we are teaching them tolerance and acceptance in real life.
I wonder how much of the analogy holds up if (as I think may be the case) particular systems/structures/cultures/practices online are likely to inculcate bad habits that create risks, rather than just the risks always being their unavoidably (as with all things) in a way we just have to manage. Like I do think it's entirely possible to have a healthy relationship to social media, and ofc social media doesn't exist in a vacuum but is rather embedded within our existing social world and social practices. But I wonder if stuff like algorithmic content curation, the way in which social media draws you back in time and time again with satiating and unfulfilling but easy pleasure hits, the easy accesibility of porn for children etc. has a tendency to create bad habits via the path of least resistance. And if it's the case that many of the harms that may or may not result from the internet are the result of the internet inculcating bad habits, then it is likely that allowing children unlimited access is not, as you argue, just gonna leave them unaware and unprepared to navigate the online world and the harms associated with it, but is rather more likely I feel to inculcate those bad habits deeper than they would for an adult who is more capable of intentionally and thoughtfully resisting habit formation, and whose brain is already less plastic and susceptible to habit formation.
I read "it's complicated" in my late teenage years and I really appreciated the depth and the nuance with which it described teenagers (like myself at the time) and their experiences with the social world and the internet. I found it remarkable how much of it I related to, despite the significant changes to the internet (primarily in platform shift, but also in other ways) that had occured since you'd written it. Ideas like "context collapse" provided me with such helpful ways of understanding my own experiences at the time. I also found it refreshing to hear you tackle alot of the moral panics around "cyber bullying" and "e-safety" etc. that were everywhere around me as a kid, and that I had a sense of even as a kid myself was total bullshit. And yet I can't help but feel that there is something still deeply unhealthy about the habits that social media often inculcates, which I have had to work hard to root out in myself and which I have felt to have had an impact on myself.
I many respects I don't really feel like it's the "social" side of social media that is the primary problem. It's platforms like twitter which I hate the most and I feel impact my mental health the most, it's the news feed on facebook that I hate much more than facebook messenger. I entirely agree with you that most bullying (both in person and online) takes place in already existing social contexts like schools. I always felt that "cyber bullying" was never a genuinely serious problem, at least no more than the irl bullying in which most of it is ultimately rooted. And for me the biggest thing that stops me from deleting stuff like instagram is because I have many friends who I only have contact with through instagram and who's friendships I deeply care about and I would significantly miss if I couldn't keep in contact with them. My sense is that it's the "content", the "media" side of social media that has alot of the problems. The slop, the constant need to be satiated with algorithmically served content, the doomscrolling etc. And alot of this is ultimately technological and structural I feel.
I don't want to say "it's definitely the case that social media is causing all this". Ofc not. There's alot of inherent uncertainty here I feel, these things are likely to be multifactorial, they probs impact different people in different and myriad ways, social media doesn't exist in a vacuum and certainly has it's impacts in part in the interplay with other features of our socio-economic-political landscape. There will always be some level of epistemic uncertaintly around these things aswell, and even if we do discover what the cause(s) of the mental health crises are, that certainly doesn't necessarily provide us with or prove any solutions. And ultimately - what do I know? But I don't want to write off the impact of the internet altogether, as it feels like it unavoidably has had some impact on these things.
This. 🙏 “…many of those who propagate hate are especially interested in blocking children from technology for fear that allowing their children to be exposed to difference might make them more tolerant. (No, gender is not contagious, but developing a recognition that gender is socially and politically constructed — and fighting for a more just world — sure is.)”
I also have to side-eye the adults who want to blame phones and social media but who don’t take any time to get to know their kids, allow them to be seen and heard, and are available for social connection. You can’t take away a form of social connection with no real scaffolding for a replacement.
"It’s not reasonable to presume that you can design a system that allows people to interact in a manner where harms will never happen. As every school principal knows, you can’t solve bullying through the design of the physical building."
There is actually a simple system that can eliminate all harms to children from social media: not giving them access to social media in the first place.
Literally, there is no good reason why kids younger than 16 should be on social media. The way social media affects young brain development + cyberbullying, isolation, grooming, misinformatiin etc. etc. is much more damaging then any potential upside there may be.
Enforcing a ban for kids to use social media would be easy: require all users to upload national ID for verification before they can create an account.
Making young kids independent of social media in their formative years is the only responsible thing to do, in the exact same way as we teach kids not to smoke and do drugs.
Social media is a cesspool of hate, misinformation, and disturbing content, besides it's more addictive to the brain than cigarettes. I don't understand how anyone in could conscience can say that kids should use social media to learn about the world.
Teach kids and young people how to make real life friends and create real communities
Have been a fan since the early 2000s, and really appreciate your work. You're right in that tools are neither inherently good or evil, but I think that advertising has had its clutches so tightly on the internet as a whole that intent has become built into these tools and platforms we are talking about. I also wrote a quick rant here: https://tribolum.com/how-advertising-shapes-social-media-324a34457749
danah: Have been a fan ever since reading your MySpace vs Facebook work back in 2007. And I think the risk/harm distinction you make in this article is an important one, and I really appreciate the link to the Alice Marwick (and team) "primer." Just spent a half an hour or so reading it quickly and plan to dive deeper into it later and to review some of the research papers it cites as well. And I wish I had discovered your Substack earlier; I live in San Mateo and would love to have attended your talk at the Computer History Museum.
Having said all that, I strongly think this piece (and your earlier pieces on KOSA and moral panics) are wrong in important ways. At root, I think you're arguing with Haidt and Twenge, and I think they clearly have the better of the argument. That's partly based on my experience (as both a parent and someone who has worked on social software for almost 30 years) and partly because I find the arguments you're making when you disagree with them extremely unconvincing. I'll come back later and make a fuller comment as to why when I have more time, but I'll preview three points for now:
- I actually agree with you about past moral panics about TV and video games (largely) proving to be unfounded, so I was initially skeptical about the problems with social media as well (and didn't limit my kids' access). But the combination of the data on teen mental health, seeing my own kids' (ages 17-21) experience, and what I've seen professionally has convinced me that there is something different this time around and that social media has become uniquely pernicious (not only, but especially, for kids).
- I found this paragraph in your KOSA piece shockingly unpersuasive:
"People keep telling me that it’s clearly technology because the rise in depression, anxiety, and suicidality tracks temporally alongside the development of social media and cell phones. It also tracks alongside the rise in awareness about climate change. And the emergence of an opioid epidemic. And the increase in school shootings. And the rising levels of student debt. And so many pressures that young people have increasingly faced for the last 25 years. None of these tell the whole story. All of these play a role in what young people are going through."
To me, the alternative causes you cite here are so obviously wrong that it's clear evidence that you're not even really bothering to grapple with Haidt and Twenge's arguments, but are simply restating beliefs you have always had without thinking critically about them.
- It's certainly true that things are always complicated (and I just ordered your book on the subject) and not mono-causal but that doesn't mean that specific causes aren't important and shouldn't be addressed. And I think you underestimate the way that social media is likely undermining some of the more positive ways that teens could be spending their time that I think you (rightly) see as experiences that would lead to better teen health.
Anyway, I'm bothering to write all this, partly as a way to think through these issues myself, but also because I think you have an important constructive role to play. I'm very normie (and I'm guessing that Haidt and Twenge are as well), which I think informs the way we think about these issues. I think your personal experience and professional interest in alternative culture can help inform the work on improving the impact of social media on teens and society and make it more likely to be successful and less likely to be harmful. But at the moment, my sense is that you're using "it's complicated" as an excuse to simply push back against change.
"To me, the alternative causes you cite here are so obviously wrong that it's clear evidence that you're not even really bothering to grapple with Haidt and Twenge's arguments, but are simply restating beliefs you have always had without thinking critically about them."
I'll speak as a 20-something that has grappled heavily with depression and anxiety over the past 10 years - the things danah lists, the force of the broader political world, are exactly the things that most directly impacted my depression and anxiety. I have lived my entire politically conscious life in a world that feels inherently on the way to collapse. The timing of my spikes and fall offs of anxiety would not be well explained by my social media usage; they line up perfectly with the realization that Trumpism is here, with the George Floyd protests, with news of superstorms and other climate disasters, that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist. I am an anecdote, I am not data, so this is not some conclusive proof one way or the other, but it is enough where calling a consideration of these factors "so obviously wrong" is...well, wrong.
My sense though is that awful as many of these things are, similar awful things have always existed. During the cold war many people were terrified of an imminent nuclear war. In the 70s, deindustrialisation lead to the hollowing of communities and economic models in various places. Awful things are always happening, and it's entirely understandable and believable that for you and many people, they have a causal impact on your experience of depression and anxiety. And yet, that doesn't answer the question as to why there are significantly higher rates of various mental health problems today than in previous decades, why it is that many more people today (esp young people) struggle with various mental health problems in response to various awful social and political trends than in previous decades in response to their awful social and political trends. Now much of this is conceivably a result of greater awareness/diagnosis/changing definitions etc. But it's not inconceivable that to an extent people are genuinely more anxious and depressed than they were in previous decades, and I don't think we can put this down to "the world is awful", because the world has always been awful in various ways (and in many respects, it's better today). It's likely to be multifactorial, a result of social degradation and individualisation, and changing attitudes towards mental health, and changes to parenting, but also, not inconceivably, social media, and it's effects on how we see our relationships, how we experience the social and political world, and how we spend our time and mental energy and attention. I fundamentally don't know which/to what extent these factors have had an impact on changing mental health rates. But I do think it's unlikely to be primarily about the social and political landscape, even if it has a meaningful and significant impact on the individual level.
Mitchell: Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think Matt's response largely speaks for me as well. I don't think the world has gotten worse, in any meaningful sense, for 20 somethings today compared to 20 somethings in previous generations. What does seem to have changed is how 20 somethings today react to the challenges that they face, and my sense is that this has changed for the worse and that social media plays a role.
I think your message is interesting in that regard. You wrote: "The timing of my spikes and fall offs of anxiety would not be well explained by my social media usage; they line up perfectly with the realization that Trumpism is here, with the George Floyd protests, with news of superstorms and other climate disasters, that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist."
I was particularly struck by the line "...that I stare at and feel so powerless to affect, that have me doubting whether a future will actually exist." In particular, the "staring at and feeling powerless" makes me think that social media may be playing more of a role in your anxieties than you even realize. You're entirely right that none of the problems you named are dynamics that anyone has the power to address, except in small ways. So I think a healthy response is to decide which (of any) of those problems you want to do your part in constructively addressing and to do those things. And beyond that not to waste any time and energy on them and to live one's life.
The key, I think, is that means spending very little time online. Nothing you can do online will contribute in a positive way to addressing any of these issues, and I'm guessing the more time you spend on social media doom scrolling stories about these problems will simply make it more likely that you will experience the feelings of anxiety and powerlessness that you describe. Now, that's certainly not the whole story. I think other dynamics that Haidt describes in both The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind matter as well. But I definitely think social media plays a role.
Crossing the street and skiing are both risky, but are they addictive in nature, and specifically designed to keep our kids doing them as much as possible? Imagine if your child only wanted to cross the street, for hours at a time. And crossing that street also had potential to increase their anxiety, expose them to content that's inappropriate, or other things their brain isn't yet developed to handle.
Also, I don't think it should be assumed that parents who want to keep their kids off social media longer than the average age, are doing so to propagate hate. It's possible that we are teaching them tolerance and acceptance in real life.
I wonder how much of the analogy holds up if (as I think may be the case) particular systems/structures/cultures/practices online are likely to inculcate bad habits that create risks, rather than just the risks always being their unavoidably (as with all things) in a way we just have to manage. Like I do think it's entirely possible to have a healthy relationship to social media, and ofc social media doesn't exist in a vacuum but is rather embedded within our existing social world and social practices. But I wonder if stuff like algorithmic content curation, the way in which social media draws you back in time and time again with satiating and unfulfilling but easy pleasure hits, the easy accesibility of porn for children etc. has a tendency to create bad habits via the path of least resistance. And if it's the case that many of the harms that may or may not result from the internet are the result of the internet inculcating bad habits, then it is likely that allowing children unlimited access is not, as you argue, just gonna leave them unaware and unprepared to navigate the online world and the harms associated with it, but is rather more likely I feel to inculcate those bad habits deeper than they would for an adult who is more capable of intentionally and thoughtfully resisting habit formation, and whose brain is already less plastic and susceptible to habit formation.
I read "it's complicated" in my late teenage years and I really appreciated the depth and the nuance with which it described teenagers (like myself at the time) and their experiences with the social world and the internet. I found it remarkable how much of it I related to, despite the significant changes to the internet (primarily in platform shift, but also in other ways) that had occured since you'd written it. Ideas like "context collapse" provided me with such helpful ways of understanding my own experiences at the time. I also found it refreshing to hear you tackle alot of the moral panics around "cyber bullying" and "e-safety" etc. that were everywhere around me as a kid, and that I had a sense of even as a kid myself was total bullshit. And yet I can't help but feel that there is something still deeply unhealthy about the habits that social media often inculcates, which I have had to work hard to root out in myself and which I have felt to have had an impact on myself.
I many respects I don't really feel like it's the "social" side of social media that is the primary problem. It's platforms like twitter which I hate the most and I feel impact my mental health the most, it's the news feed on facebook that I hate much more than facebook messenger. I entirely agree with you that most bullying (both in person and online) takes place in already existing social contexts like schools. I always felt that "cyber bullying" was never a genuinely serious problem, at least no more than the irl bullying in which most of it is ultimately rooted. And for me the biggest thing that stops me from deleting stuff like instagram is because I have many friends who I only have contact with through instagram and who's friendships I deeply care about and I would significantly miss if I couldn't keep in contact with them. My sense is that it's the "content", the "media" side of social media that has alot of the problems. The slop, the constant need to be satiated with algorithmically served content, the doomscrolling etc. And alot of this is ultimately technological and structural I feel.
I don't want to say "it's definitely the case that social media is causing all this". Ofc not. There's alot of inherent uncertainty here I feel, these things are likely to be multifactorial, they probs impact different people in different and myriad ways, social media doesn't exist in a vacuum and certainly has it's impacts in part in the interplay with other features of our socio-economic-political landscape. There will always be some level of epistemic uncertaintly around these things aswell, and even if we do discover what the cause(s) of the mental health crises are, that certainly doesn't necessarily provide us with or prove any solutions. And ultimately - what do I know? But I don't want to write off the impact of the internet altogether, as it feels like it unavoidably has had some impact on these things.
I'd consider it a harm that kids can't read as well as they used to:
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
This. 🙏 “…many of those who propagate hate are especially interested in blocking children from technology for fear that allowing their children to be exposed to difference might make them more tolerant. (No, gender is not contagious, but developing a recognition that gender is socially and politically constructed — and fighting for a more just world — sure is.)”
I also have to side-eye the adults who want to blame phones and social media but who don’t take any time to get to know their kids, allow them to be seen and heard, and are available for social connection. You can’t take away a form of social connection with no real scaffolding for a replacement.
Do you believe social media use makes people more tolerant?
"It’s not reasonable to presume that you can design a system that allows people to interact in a manner where harms will never happen. As every school principal knows, you can’t solve bullying through the design of the physical building."
There is actually a simple system that can eliminate all harms to children from social media: not giving them access to social media in the first place.
Literally, there is no good reason why kids younger than 16 should be on social media. The way social media affects young brain development + cyberbullying, isolation, grooming, misinformatiin etc. etc. is much more damaging then any potential upside there may be.
Enforcing a ban for kids to use social media would be easy: require all users to upload national ID for verification before they can create an account.
Making young kids independent of social media in their formative years is the only responsible thing to do, in the exact same way as we teach kids not to smoke and do drugs.
Social media is a cesspool of hate, misinformation, and disturbing content, besides it's more addictive to the brain than cigarettes. I don't understand how anyone in could conscience can say that kids should use social media to learn about the world.
Teach kids and young people how to make real life friends and create real communities
Have been a fan since the early 2000s, and really appreciate your work. You're right in that tools are neither inherently good or evil, but I think that advertising has had its clutches so tightly on the internet as a whole that intent has become built into these tools and platforms we are talking about. I also wrote a quick rant here: https://tribolum.com/how-advertising-shapes-social-media-324a34457749
The best ski risk poster I ever saw was actually an advert for the private orthopaedic hospital in St Moritz, Switzerland.
It showed a picture of a guy snowboarding fast on a beautiful sunny day. Beneath it just said:
"Wetter schön, Tempo hoch, Klinik Gut".
("Weather beautiful, speed high, Clinic Good" - Klinik Gut being the name of the hospital).