Social media is neither inherently beneficial or harmful to young people
April 25, 2024 12:58 PM Subscribe
The Coddling of the American Parent by Mike Masnick (TechDirt) debunks Jonathan Haidt's panicky new book on teens & the internet. Developmental psychologist & scholar Candice Odgers' article for Nature: The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.
From Odgers' piece:
From Odgers' piece:
The good news is that more young people are talking openly about their symptoms and mental-health struggles than ever before. The bad news is that insufficient services are available to address their needs. In the United States, there is, on average, one school psychologist for every 1,119 students.
Meant to include these quotes from Masnick's essay:posted by spamandkimchi at 1:01 PM on April 25 [12 favorites]
I heard a long interview with Haidt and got pretty suspicious, sure enough he thinks transgender kids are infected by social media/peers and is supportive of his colleagues who refuse to use a student's correct pronouns, under the guise that "truth" is more important than "social justice."
posted by muddgirl at 1:17 PM on April 25 [42 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 1:17 PM on April 25 [42 favorites]
Reading Haidt’s book, you might think the evidence supports his viewpoint, as he presents a lot of it. The problem is that he’s cherry-picking his evidence and often relying on flawed studies
as it is with just about every single gd NYT bestselling pop-science "non"-fiction book out there. I hate that there's about to be 500000 parenting blogs regurgitating this crap
wrt Haidt's comment that was basically 'kids don't deserve to have human rights', at least that's in line with the popular opinion by US political elites (ie ethically repellent and yet still normalized)
posted by paimapi at 1:18 PM on April 25 [9 favorites]
as it is with just about every single gd NYT bestselling pop-science "non"-fiction book out there. I hate that there's about to be 500000 parenting blogs regurgitating this crap
wrt Haidt's comment that was basically 'kids don't deserve to have human rights', at least that's in line with the popular opinion by US political elites (ie ethically repellent and yet still normalized)
posted by paimapi at 1:18 PM on April 25 [9 favorites]
Rebecca Watson just released a video (20:15) on this that seems to be a nice summary.
posted by JSilva at 1:30 PM on April 25 [6 favorites]
posted by JSilva at 1:30 PM on April 25 [6 favorites]
My take is that the kids who came of age during the rise of social media are most impacted; children growing up now will have the broader understanding of what social media is - easily manipulated to curate an image, reactionary, nothing to base your identity on etc. that being said I’m avoiding the cel phone for my kids as long as humanly possible - anyone know of good analog phones that just call and text? I sense a market opportunity.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:34 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:34 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
My take is that the kids who came of age during the rise of social media are most impacted;
there is a Nature editorial that is quite literally linked multiple times in both the posted article and directly in this post that addresses your claim lol
posted by paimapi at 1:50 PM on April 25 [9 favorites]
there is a Nature editorial that is quite literally linked multiple times in both the posted article and directly in this post that addresses your claim lol
posted by paimapi at 1:50 PM on April 25 [9 favorites]
It seems clear that the 2008 housing crisis had an outsized impact on the US as a whole. In addition to the obvious financial calamities, it also caused new housing to pretty much stop being built, a major causative factor for the current housing crisis. And so the stressors of housing and financial precarity of course impact the mental health of those subjected to those stressors. Social media just happened to come of age at the same time.
What was interesting to me, as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, is the fact that suicides and depression were higher then than in the late 90s and 2000s.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:12 PM on April 25 [6 favorites]
What was interesting to me, as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, is the fact that suicides and depression were higher then than in the late 90s and 2000s.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:12 PM on April 25 [6 favorites]
I should add, as a parent to a young child, Haidt's interview was very emotionally compelling, but when he started talking about (a) the innate difference between boys and girls and (b) his experiences at a college professor my skeptical sensor started to ping. I'm grateful so many other academics are doing the work to try and debunk his book.
posted by muddgirl at 2:13 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 2:13 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
Our current furor over social media (and phones for kids) have all the trappings of a moral panic. They come and go every couple decades, and they are almost always wrong.
I feel pretty confident people will look back at this moral panic in 50 years and laugh.
I regularly get eviscerated by smart people when I say this, but I don’t much doubt that I am correct. I say this as an old.
posted by teece303 at 3:32 PM on April 25 [14 favorites]
I feel pretty confident people will look back at this moral panic in 50 years and laugh.
I regularly get eviscerated by smart people when I say this, but I don’t much doubt that I am correct. I say this as an old.
posted by teece303 at 3:32 PM on April 25 [14 favorites]
It is possible that Haidt is fearmongering and distorting research to sell books, and that social media, as instituted, often has negative health consequences. The Nature article just says that the sweeping generalizations in Haidt’s book requires exceptional evidence, which does not exist. My opinion as a parent of 3 teens is that this book is largely bullshit, as are most parenting books, but that it is always a good idea to redirect as many activities away from virtual as I can, if only to provide variety of activity. Phones are addictive, particularly in my family’s flavor of neurodivergence. But I am not convinced my kids’ current environment is necessarily worse for their overall mental health than it would have been thirty years ago, when one of their gender choices wouldn’t even have existed.
posted by q*ben at 3:34 PM on April 25 [12 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 3:34 PM on April 25 [12 favorites]
Kids are depressed because every metric has them worse off than their parents and much worse than grandparents at their age. Everything is fucked. Don’t blame phones ffs.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:43 PM on April 25 [27 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:43 PM on April 25 [27 favorites]
Kids are depressed because every metric has them worse off than their parents and much worse than grandparents at their age. Everything is fucked. Don’t blame phones ffs.
Bolded for emphasis? I mean, every metric? C'mon.
Also, why can't it be both the shittiness of the world and smartphones/social-media?
It's not anecdata to observe the vast reduction in attention span that has occurred in parallel with the rise of smartphones/social media! There is a clear mechanistic link! Members of this site and grownups self-report it constantly!, It's literally been engineered as a a dopamine reward system predicated on short highly emotion-valence bursts and intermittent-variable-reward (the latter of which has absolutely conclusively been shown to generate gambling addicts)..... and it's not an antiscientific suggestion that if it works on adults, it will have a profound effect on developing brains.
posted by lalochezia at 3:51 PM on April 25 [18 favorites]
This is and was the subject of my life's work. I've been online since I was 13. I've done case studies, and am a stepmom and have helped raise quite a few kiddos.
The online dangers are the loss of privacy and identity, the inherent dangers of posting something you can't erase, loss of real human interaction, and parents who have to rely on them for cheap We aren't for sale.
posted by lextex at 3:52 PM on April 25 [8 favorites]
The online dangers are the loss of privacy and identity, the inherent dangers of posting something you can't erase, loss of real human interaction, and parents who have to rely on them for cheap We aren't for sale.
posted by lextex at 3:52 PM on April 25 [8 favorites]
Kids are depressed because every metric has them worse off than their parents and much worse than grandparents at their age. Everything is fucked. Don’t blame phones ffs.
All the cool kids like to say this, but it's pretty untrue. The biggest reason any kids believe it is because the grown ups like to sound cool, too. And kids are surprisingly interested in what grown ups are saying.
Frankly, the kids have no idea how good they got it. Nor do most adult Americans.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:14 PM on April 25 [8 favorites]
All the cool kids like to say this, but it's pretty untrue. The biggest reason any kids believe it is because the grown ups like to sound cool, too. And kids are surprisingly interested in what grown ups are saying.
Frankly, the kids have no idea how good they got it. Nor do most adult Americans.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:14 PM on April 25 [8 favorites]
I mean, it goes without saying that social media is designed by weapons-grade engineers to completely fry the user's brain, irrespective of age, with a torrential onslaught of reward and stress signals that erodes the user's capacity for critical thinking... right?
I'm not keeping my hypothetical kids off social media because of some panicky nerd (unless you'd describe me as a panicky nerd, which... accurate), but because of my own repeatedly terrible experiences with it.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 4:16 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
I'm not keeping my hypothetical kids off social media because of some panicky nerd (unless you'd describe me as a panicky nerd, which... accurate), but because of my own repeatedly terrible experiences with it.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 4:16 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
I wanted my kids high school to ban phones before Jonathan Haidt wrote his book. I haven’t read his book and I still want my kids high school to ban phones.
It’s kind of funny seeing people say, “Haidt’s data is bogus, ipso facto social media and smart phone usage by adolescents is benign. Let’s blame the 2008 financial crisis.”
Solid data will be hard to come by, and short of that, we have to operate on common sense, intuition, and anecdata. I think the possible harms of delaying smart phone use among kids are much lower than the possible harms of the virtually uncontrolled use we have now. And one thing Haidt is right about, it is a group problem. My daughter is the only kid in her middle school class without a smart phone. We think that’s the right decision, on balance, given her neuro makeup, but the fact that all the other kids have smart phones makes it harder and has its own price.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:43 PM on April 25 [15 favorites]
It’s kind of funny seeing people say, “Haidt’s data is bogus, ipso facto social media and smart phone usage by adolescents is benign. Let’s blame the 2008 financial crisis.”
Solid data will be hard to come by, and short of that, we have to operate on common sense, intuition, and anecdata. I think the possible harms of delaying smart phone use among kids are much lower than the possible harms of the virtually uncontrolled use we have now. And one thing Haidt is right about, it is a group problem. My daughter is the only kid in her middle school class without a smart phone. We think that’s the right decision, on balance, given her neuro makeup, but the fact that all the other kids have smart phones makes it harder and has its own price.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:43 PM on April 25 [15 favorites]
Yeah, those Oxford studies suck. The Facebook one on its positively bonkers age groups:
We examined 72 countries’ per capita active Facebook users in males and females in two age brackets (13-34yrs and 35+years).’
The ABCD one, on its self-reported data:
Their responses could range from no time at all to over four hours a day.
This shit just doesn't answer the question. It's hard and expensive to design a study that does, funders are chickenshits, etc, but this kind of research needs high-quality evidence, precisely so that it can smack down the Haidts of the world.
posted by McBearclaw at 4:44 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
We examined 72 countries’ per capita active Facebook users in males and females in two age brackets (13-34yrs and 35+years).’
The ABCD one, on its self-reported data:
Their responses could range from no time at all to over four hours a day.
This shit just doesn't answer the question. It's hard and expensive to design a study that does, funders are chickenshits, etc, but this kind of research needs high-quality evidence, precisely so that it can smack down the Haidts of the world.
posted by McBearclaw at 4:44 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
Also, the idea that "almost all" moral panics are wrong is really weird in the wake of the election of a cartoon villain primarily by Fox News viewers and a pandemic that was aggressively downplayed and also killed millions.
posted by McBearclaw at 5:00 PM on April 25 [3 favorites]
posted by McBearclaw at 5:00 PM on April 25 [3 favorites]
Also, the idea that "almost all" moral panics are wrong is really weird in the wake of the election of a cartoon villain primarily by Fox News viewers and a pandemic that was aggressively downplayed and also killed millions.
I don't think we are using the term the same way.
Social media and smart phones are a new social phenomenon. Every new social phenomenon like this was going to "destroy society" going back to the Romans and farther. Every time that idea was pretty much wrong. The kind of alarm we see now around smart phones and social media has been used in much the same way against: writing, novels, radio, tv, the internet, dungeon and dragons, etc.
An equally flawed corollary is "the kids these days..." (they suck, they are doomed, they are slackers, they have failing morality, etc, etc.). That is as old as time and as wrong as time, to abuse a term.
While certainly there are unique and problematic trends among our current set of new social technologies, yes, but that has been true for all of human history.
Fox News and cheeto man don't resemble a moral panic in any way, shape, or form to me, so I really don't know what you are trying to say there. The problem in that instance is a propaganda network and a bloc of voters that really, really dig the venality and xenophobia and racism, and vote for it.
posted by teece303 at 5:23 PM on April 25 [5 favorites]
I don't think we are using the term the same way.
Social media and smart phones are a new social phenomenon. Every new social phenomenon like this was going to "destroy society" going back to the Romans and farther. Every time that idea was pretty much wrong. The kind of alarm we see now around smart phones and social media has been used in much the same way against: writing, novels, radio, tv, the internet, dungeon and dragons, etc.
An equally flawed corollary is "the kids these days..." (they suck, they are doomed, they are slackers, they have failing morality, etc, etc.). That is as old as time and as wrong as time, to abuse a term.
While certainly there are unique and problematic trends among our current set of new social technologies, yes, but that has been true for all of human history.
Fox News and cheeto man don't resemble a moral panic in any way, shape, or form to me, so I really don't know what you are trying to say there. The problem in that instance is a propaganda network and a bloc of voters that really, really dig the venality and xenophobia and racism, and vote for it.
posted by teece303 at 5:23 PM on April 25 [5 favorites]
Another important thing to remember here: the sentiment among teens that things are bad, or in rising suicidal ideation among teens, or in rising suicide rates among teenagers (girls in particular, iirc), predate by a bit the things they are being blamed on (social media or smart phones; if you hedge and say "screens" the broad data fits better, then, in that one respect, but you create a new problem in that the trend now post-dates the "screens" by a wide margin).
posted by teece303 at 5:47 PM on April 25
posted by teece303 at 5:47 PM on April 25
Social media isn’t new or newly popular. Smartphones have been around and widely adopted for what, 15 years now, and Facebook and MySpace etc predate them. I don’t think it’s right to call it a moral panic because 1) its not a new social phenomenon, 2) it is widely accepted and used, 3) people self-report negative effects (Not a lot of D&D players were convinced that it was Satanic at the time but couldn’t stop themselves from playing, unlike what you hear from teens and adults re: social media/smartphones today)
posted by shesdeadimalive at 6:33 PM on April 25 [5 favorites]
posted by shesdeadimalive at 6:33 PM on April 25 [5 favorites]
It is possible that Haidt is fearmongering and distorting research to sell books, and that social media, as instituted, often has negative health consequences.
I agree. I think contemporary social media is problematic and harmful to our culture.
I also think Haight is a terrible pundit who twists arguments into swill.
posted by ovvl at 8:51 PM on April 25 [2 favorites]
I agree. I think contemporary social media is problematic and harmful to our culture.
I also think Haight is a terrible pundit who twists arguments into swill.
posted by ovvl at 8:51 PM on April 25 [2 favorites]
It's been 25 years and I'm starting to think that it was something besides Marilyn Manson and Doom that caused the Columbine school shooting.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:04 PM on April 25 [4 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 9:04 PM on April 25 [4 favorites]
Fox News and cheeto man don't resemble a moral panic in any way
Right, but Cheeto Man was profoundly enabled by TV. So was proto-cheeto Silvio Berlusconi. TV news has led to all kinds of moral panics that are hard to imagine coming from newspaper and radio, like the entirety of suburban America wetting their beds during the Black Lives Matter protests. TV has also basically destroyed amateur/collegiate sports by enabling a level of income (and consequent corruption) that no other medium could. So people who argued that TV would erode crucial societal underpinnings were... pretty much correct.
Along similar lines, the personal automobile is a disaster that's been unfolding for a century. The moral panic aspect isn't my interest here - my point is that just because a technology doesn't immediately provoke the apocalypse doesn't mean that it can't fundamentally alter your society for the worse.
posted by McBearclaw at 11:35 PM on April 25 [10 favorites]
Right, but Cheeto Man was profoundly enabled by TV. So was proto-cheeto Silvio Berlusconi. TV news has led to all kinds of moral panics that are hard to imagine coming from newspaper and radio, like the entirety of suburban America wetting their beds during the Black Lives Matter protests. TV has also basically destroyed amateur/collegiate sports by enabling a level of income (and consequent corruption) that no other medium could. So people who argued that TV would erode crucial societal underpinnings were... pretty much correct.
Along similar lines, the personal automobile is a disaster that's been unfolding for a century. The moral panic aspect isn't my interest here - my point is that just because a technology doesn't immediately provoke the apocalypse doesn't mean that it can't fundamentally alter your society for the worse.
posted by McBearclaw at 11:35 PM on April 25 [10 favorites]
Every new social phenomenon like this was going to "destroy society" going back to the Romans and farther. Every time that idea was pretty much wrong.
Traditional Roman society did get destroyed though; that very much did happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age
posted by vincebowdren at 4:33 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
Traditional Roman society did get destroyed though; that very much did happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age
posted by vincebowdren at 4:33 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
we have the available knowledge to understand cause & effect finally, but what we choose to believe is fairy tales.
posted by graywyvern at 5:53 AM on April 26
posted by graywyvern at 5:53 AM on April 26
Traditional Roman society did get destroyed though; that very much did happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age
Anybody reading Nixey's book would be coming away with a wildly inaccurate and biased misreading of the history of Rome, the history of Christianity, the meaning of what the Dark Ages really were, the concept of what Roman society was and how it changed, what "traditional" meant to Romans and how it changed, and several major tenets of history and historiography.
The book, and indeed the core concept it espouses, is considered unreliable bunk by many historians. A great start on how much it gets wrong, complete with a number of sources, can be found in this AskHistorians thread on Reddit (note: the subreddit is extremely well-moderated, much more strict than even this website).
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:18 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
Anybody reading Nixey's book would be coming away with a wildly inaccurate and biased misreading of the history of Rome, the history of Christianity, the meaning of what the Dark Ages really were, the concept of what Roman society was and how it changed, what "traditional" meant to Romans and how it changed, and several major tenets of history and historiography.
The book, and indeed the core concept it espouses, is considered unreliable bunk by many historians. A great start on how much it gets wrong, complete with a number of sources, can be found in this AskHistorians thread on Reddit (note: the subreddit is extremely well-moderated, much more strict than even this website).
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:18 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
Will be reading this for bookclub. It’s good to hear alternate perspectives and these critiques.
This discussion has me thinking of Hamilton vs. Jefferson or horizontal control of information versus vertical control. I’m still thinking this through but to use a concrete example: the difference between getting your news from newspapers of record versus getting your news from “citizen journalist.” There’s real value and real peril from both ends of the spectrum IMO.
While I value the critique that an age limit such as 16 is an arbitrary number, as a parent of a first grader we have chosen (with all the attendant privileges) to send our child to an outdoor school. We chose this, in part, because of the proliferation of screens in public schools, starting at kindergarten. We aren’t guessing this is happening, we know this is happening through discussion with teachers and families. IMO the prevalent culture will ensure and even demand that screens and screen time become an important feature of my child’s life. I support any effort to carve out an alternative path towards experiencing the world and expressing oneself within it.
I anticipate a future where our experiences will become more and more mediated through technology —- from virtual reality to ubiquitous self checkouts. In upper and middle class communities, the choice not to engage with reality via screens is becoming smaller and smaller. I just want my kids to be aware of that choice and have the ability to really choose for themselves.
Like others are saying, I don’t need hard data to back up this hope. My own lived experience of how small amounts of screen time enrich my life and how unlimited screen time has wrecked it at various points, is enough.
posted by CMcG at 6:31 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
This discussion has me thinking of Hamilton vs. Jefferson or horizontal control of information versus vertical control. I’m still thinking this through but to use a concrete example: the difference between getting your news from newspapers of record versus getting your news from “citizen journalist.” There’s real value and real peril from both ends of the spectrum IMO.
While I value the critique that an age limit such as 16 is an arbitrary number, as a parent of a first grader we have chosen (with all the attendant privileges) to send our child to an outdoor school. We chose this, in part, because of the proliferation of screens in public schools, starting at kindergarten. We aren’t guessing this is happening, we know this is happening through discussion with teachers and families. IMO the prevalent culture will ensure and even demand that screens and screen time become an important feature of my child’s life. I support any effort to carve out an alternative path towards experiencing the world and expressing oneself within it.
I anticipate a future where our experiences will become more and more mediated through technology —- from virtual reality to ubiquitous self checkouts. In upper and middle class communities, the choice not to engage with reality via screens is becoming smaller and smaller. I just want my kids to be aware of that choice and have the ability to really choose for themselves.
Like others are saying, I don’t need hard data to back up this hope. My own lived experience of how small amounts of screen time enrich my life and how unlimited screen time has wrecked it at various points, is enough.
posted by CMcG at 6:31 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]
Speaking from a UK perspective, I can definitely see mental health value in social media for kids where it allows marginalised individuals to find like minded people and a sense of belonging outside of their immediate local spaces e.g. school. Going through school in the pre-internet age could be pretty damn isolating if you didn't fit in with the popular crowd, and I can't imagine that has entirely stopped.
On the other hand, Andrew Tate et al is an utterly poisonous influence that is visibly and obviously causing significant issues for female teachers, female students etc - I know of several young male students that have definitely got sucked into that alt-right conspiracy-laden women-hating worldview and aren't shy about sharing it, and making their 'secret' hand sign and smirking contempt at women. Some part of that is definitely down to the tech industry algorithms that help drive susceptible students down that rabbit hole (e.g.), and it is NOT easy to get them back out.
There's been a moral panic about kids seeing porn going on longer than I've been alive; while it can also be helpful for them to explore their sexuality, there are some valid issues (e.g. how expectations of real sexual relationships can be altered by the high percentage of violence-based porn, effects on body image etc) yet often campaigners are really just working towards e.g. banning abortion and information for LGBQT+ students rather than actually helpful education about it.
So, I'm happy to accept that social media (and indeed TV) is not the be-all, end-all of mental-health-crisis-causing agent some would have us believe, and it's much more nuanced than that. I'm still going to try to continue to get our kids to spend some time outdoors, mess about on bikes, read books, go swimming, play board games, messy art etc etc and other things that involve their eyes, brains and legs than just sitting devouring kids youtube and roblox all day.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 7:21 AM on April 26 [5 favorites]
On the other hand, Andrew Tate et al is an utterly poisonous influence that is visibly and obviously causing significant issues for female teachers, female students etc - I know of several young male students that have definitely got sucked into that alt-right conspiracy-laden women-hating worldview and aren't shy about sharing it, and making their 'secret' hand sign and smirking contempt at women. Some part of that is definitely down to the tech industry algorithms that help drive susceptible students down that rabbit hole (e.g.), and it is NOT easy to get them back out.
There's been a moral panic about kids seeing porn going on longer than I've been alive; while it can also be helpful for them to explore their sexuality, there are some valid issues (e.g. how expectations of real sexual relationships can be altered by the high percentage of violence-based porn, effects on body image etc) yet often campaigners are really just working towards e.g. banning abortion and information for LGBQT+ students rather than actually helpful education about it.
So, I'm happy to accept that social media (and indeed TV) is not the be-all, end-all of mental-health-crisis-causing agent some would have us believe, and it's much more nuanced than that. I'm still going to try to continue to get our kids to spend some time outdoors, mess about on bikes, read books, go swimming, play board games, messy art etc etc and other things that involve their eyes, brains and legs than just sitting devouring kids youtube and roblox all day.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 7:21 AM on April 26 [5 favorites]
It is possible that Haidt is fearmongering and distorting research to sell books,
If he thinks trans kids become trans because of social contagion, he's definitely a fearmonger, and also an idiot.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:33 AM on April 26 [3 favorites]
If he thinks trans kids become trans because of social contagion, he's definitely a fearmonger, and also an idiot.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:33 AM on April 26 [3 favorites]
Can't wait for If Books Could Kill's response to this! Their episode on The Coddling of the American Mind is great. (Link includes transcript and lots of sources)
posted by librarina at 11:41 AM on April 26
posted by librarina at 11:41 AM on April 26
Maybe don't conflate concern about smartphones and social media with racism?
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:42 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:42 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: ...conflate concern about smartphones and social media with racism?
posted by Jarcat at 12:21 PM on April 26
posted by Jarcat at 12:21 PM on April 26
an anecdote vs researchers who cite multiple meta-analyses
Unless I missed something, the meta-analyses don't claim that smartphones and social media are provably benign; they just say that the research is inconclusive all around. Those are very different things. When there isn't good research, it make sense for parents to rely on anecdotes and their own experience
As for Masnick's piece, I thought it was pretty good until he mis-capitalized danah boyd's name.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:59 PM on April 26
Unless I missed something, the meta-analyses don't claim that smartphones and social media are provably benign; they just say that the research is inconclusive all around. Those are very different things. When there isn't good research, it make sense for parents to rely on anecdotes and their own experience
As for Masnick's piece, I thought it was pretty good until he mis-capitalized danah boyd's name.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:59 PM on April 26
I honestly cannot tell if some of you are doing performance art to bolster people’s sense about how awful social media is…
posted by CMcG at 2:48 PM on April 26 [2 favorites]
posted by CMcG at 2:48 PM on April 26 [2 favorites]
Mod note: A couple removed. Guidelines: "Allow others to express themselves," "Speak for yourself, not others," "Be considerate and respectful." And since we cannot list every possible unwanted behavior, I'll just note that completely misrepresenting, distorting, and repositioning another person's straightforward reportage of their own entirely unrelated personal experience to suggest they are like racists is also not on.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:52 PM on April 26
posted by taz (staff) at 11:52 PM on April 26
The Boston Globe just published an article about a recent study from Norway on the effects of banning smartphones in middle schools.
Link to study: Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:02 AM on April 27 [3 favorites]
The study examined more than 400 middle schools in Norway that had implemented phone bans and relied on three primary data sources: a nationwide pupil survey, survey data on middle schools’ smartphone policies, and a compilation of Norwegian administrative datasets, including health and family registers.The study showed improvements in mental health, bullying, and academic performance in schools with smart phone bans. The extent of the improvements often correlated to strictness of the bans, and how many years they had been in place. I'll be curious to see what the experts say about the methodology. On the surface, it looks more rigorous than previous research.
Link to study: Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:02 AM on April 27 [3 favorites]
I'm on a trans discord where almost everyone is younger than me-- mostly teenagers. I can tell you that their mental health would be worse without this resource to get help and support. Many of them don't have support at home or in their schools.
I can imagine there are a number of other reasons teens would want to reach out for help online and merely banning phones or social media will just cut them off from help.
posted by blueberry monster at 2:05 PM on April 29 [2 favorites]
I can imagine there are a number of other reasons teens would want to reach out for help online and merely banning phones or social media will just cut them off from help.
posted by blueberry monster at 2:05 PM on April 29 [2 favorites]
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