Mike Masnick

Why Jonathan Haidt’s ‘Protect The Kids’ Proposals Could Make Things Worse For Kids

But the problem with the extreme position presented in Haidt’s book and in recent headlines—that digital technology use is directly causing a large-scale mental-health crisis in teenagers—is that it can stoke panic and leave us without the tools we need to actually navigate these complex issues. Two things can be true: first, that the online spaces where young people spend so much time require massive reform, and second, that social media is not rewiring our children’s brains or causing an epidemic of mental illness. Focusing solely on social media may mean that the real causes of mental disorder and distress among our children go unaddressed.

The latest fearful response to modern technology and social change is upon us: the effects of social networks on young people. Every generation faces one of these moments from their parents, only for those young people to age, birth their own children, and perpetuate the same problems upon the next generation. Every generation acts in ignorance to something new. Perhaps the response is based on our biology, where we shrink from the unknown to save ourselves; too many instances in our history of watching others ignore danger and get hurt in the results, perhaps. The rational upper levels of our minds are shut off from working through a problem when our response is based in fear, and it takes education and exposure to gain understanding of a new situation; however, a few popular authors and journalists are capitalizing on the current anxieties and fomenting that ignorance and worry.

I lived through several of these moral panics. In my childhood, many parents were afraid that secret messages played backwards in popular rock music could be subliminally decoded by the listeners to become enchanted by these magical messages. If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it was and always has been. There was no true scientific data to back up these claims, but fear worked wonders.

I was told that bending my body in yoga poses and saying words like “Om” would unlock my body and mind to a spiritual realm that would assume control of both without my knowledge, and I would become a living husk to be used by dark forces for malicious purposes. If this sounds like superstitions from the era of the Salem witch trials, it’s because that is the same sort of nonsense that fueled speculation and harm in that time. Mind-boggling as it might be, this is still a place of anxiety for the Christian community.

Games of all sorts have received their share of fear. The Ouija board game was supposedly a portal to ghosts, when it was always just a subconscious group effort to scare the others in the room and was never anything more than that. Dungeons and Dragons was a group play, not a connection to Satan, but plenty of parents banned their children from playing a game of make-believe. Video games faced an attempted ban for being too violent, even though scientific studies showed there was little to no negative correlation between violence in video games and violence perpetuated by the average gamer playing them.

We are plagued with advice with no mooring to reality. Empirical data is essential to make informed and logical decisions, and we too often listen to our unreliable anxieties and fears, sometimes even in the midst of good data.

What the data shows about social media is not as grim as some would say. Some might even be surprised to know that Jonathan Haidt’s own colleagues are in disagreement with him and are directly accusing him of cherry-picking.

Youth-Nex

Making Sense of the Research on Social Media & Youth Mental Health

There is widespread concern about the high rates of mental health difficulties affecting adolescents and emerging adults, but considerable debate in the field about the causes of the alarming rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicidality. Dr. Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Candice Odgers are leading figures in this field but have differing views on what the research really says about the role of social media in supporting or harming youth mental health.

To move the field forward and determine how we can best help youth, we need to move beyond sensational news headlines and have real conversations among people who disagree on what the evidence says but share a deep commitment to supporting youth. In this livestream, Drs. Haidt and Odgers will be interviewed to understand why they draw different conclusions from the research, learn where they agree and disagree, and consider what research is needed to truly move the field forward and get to the solutions we all seek.

Social media definitely has its failings: it has caused moments of jealousy, anger, frustration, and hopelessness in me. If taken with the focus that Jonathan Haidt and others peddling this panic use, one would ignore that these feelings were present within my normal life years prior. I didn’t get on social media because it sent signals to my brain chemistry to change how I think; I got on social media for all the good things it offered me to help me cope with the feelings that were already present in my life. Through social media, I got to see more of my friends, catch up on the lives of old coworkers and family members with whom I’d lost touch, and find new communities that matched my interests. Social media got popular because it was so helpful. I was already dealing with negative feelings when I made a profile online — in fact, it was because I had those feelings that I went online in the first place. I wanted to join a community that I couldn’t find in my social life outside of the computer.

We do not need to limit our children because of our own ignorance. We do not need to get in the way of knowledge because we aren’t familiar with the manner in which it is dispensed. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of previous generations and succumb to another moral panic.