Episode 25: Is it the phones?

Everyone seems to have decided that it’s the phones. That is, they’ve decided that heavy smartphone and social-media use is to blame for the current wave of mental illness, despair, and depression that’s affecting young people - teenage girls in particular.

Except… we need to ask how strong the evidence is. What do the studies actually show about what’s causing the mental health crisis? And, wait - is there actually a mental health crisis to begin with? In this extra-long episode of The Studies Show (it’s a big topic after all), Tom and Stuart attempt to find out.

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Show Notes

* UK MP calls for a ban on social media “and perhaps even smartphones” for under-16s; Prime Minister is considering it

* Jonathan Haidt’s upcoming book The Anxious Generation

* His November 2023 interview with The Spectator on the “rewiring of childhood”

* His big Google Doc of all the relevant studies in this area

* Jean Twenge’s famous Atlantic article, “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?”

* Her book iGen

* One of Twenge’s studies, which the book is based on: n = 500,000 analysis of depression traits and “new media screen time”

* Amy Orben’s critique

* Flurry of articles by well-respected writers in 2023 expressing some degree of confidence that “it’s the phones”: John Burn-Murdoch; Noah Smith; Matt Yglesias (though he’s more interested in other reasons)

* Haidt’s 2023 article arguing we can now say it’s a cause, not just a correlation - and “a major cause” at that

* Evidence that the US suicide rate is increasing

* Evidence that the suicide rate in other countries is not increasing: Norway, Sweden, Denmark; the UK - see below for the heatmap of age-group vs. year and suicide rate for the UK:

* 2023 NBER paper cautioning that some of the rise in the US suicide rate might be due to measurement differences

* Chris Ferguson et al.’s 2021 meta-analysis that concludes there’s a lack of evidence to suggest that screen time affects mental health

* Przybylski & Vuorre’s 2023 paper - across 168 countries, internet connectivity is correlated with better wellbeing

* Orben & Przybylski’s 2019 “specfication curve” paper (the “potatoes” one)

* Twenge & Haidt’s own specification curve paper suggesting social media use is a stronger predictor of poor wellbeing than is hard drug use

* Stuart’s article for the i going into detail on some of the causal studies of phones/social media and mental health

* Dean Eckles criticising the “Facebook arrives at universities” study

Credits & Acknowledgements

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re grateful to Chris Ferguson and Andy Przybylski for talking to us about their research.

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