“The Anxious Generation” Author: Social Media Is Spreading Mental Illness

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, smartphones and social media have altered children’s development, and our next guest is issuing a call to action. In his new book, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigates the sudden collapse of mental health among adolescents. He joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how parents can manage the negative impacts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jonathan Haidt, thanks so much for joining us. Your latest book is called “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” And you and I have talked before, and, you know, you have been very careful about not seeming alarmist. And this book, what’s fascinating to me about it, is that you supplement so much of your ideas with empirical data and research that is proving this point. What is the epidemic of mental illness, and where do we find the data for that?

JONATHAN HAIDT, AUTHOR, “THE ANXIOUS GENERATION”: When you and I first spoke about this, it might have been back in 2019, I was not as alarmist because we weren’t sure. It was clear that something that was going wrong with teen mental health. We had graphs showing that around 2013, rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm began rising rapidly. But there was an academic debate, and there still is, there’s an academic debate about whether it’s caused by social media. It’s correlated with it. Girls who use it heavily are three times as likely to be depressed. But, you know, scientists are going to debate, is it causal or is it just a correlation? Since then, I have learned a lot. I’ve gathered all the studies I can find, including experiments. There are now a lot of experiments that show that when you randomly assign people to different conditions, it causes them to get more depressed or less depressed. So, we have experimental research. But the really shocking thing to me, the thing that really made me into, I’d like to say an alarm ringer not an alarmist, is the discovery that the exact same thing happened to us in America as happened in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia at the same time in the same way, hitting girls hardest and young girls even harder. So, once it became clear, this is an international epidemic of teen mental illness. It began in the early 2010s. It’s hitting girls hardest, although the boys’ story is really interesting and is also very bad. It’s just a little different. So, that’s why I’ve been in this book, if you want to say I’m sort of leaving my old self behind and saying we need to act like now, like not in 2025, like we need to really make changes this year because otherwise, another year of kids is going to be consigned to this phone-based childhood, which interferes with the development.

SREENIVASAN: So, your argument is not that it’s the technology that’s bad or that it’s the internet that’s bad. I mean, you actually try to draw kind of a timeline from, well, getting one of these supercomputers in your pocket to the front facing selfie camera to broadband and then social media. I mean, what have each of this kind of technological evolutions done to how our brains evolve?

HAIDT: So, the technology — that technology is great, the internet is great, but things really change in the early 2010s. And so, just to walk you through it. In 2010, I really go into this in detail in the book, in 2011, only 20 percent of American teens had a smartphone. Kids were still using flip phones. They did not have high-speed internet. Most of them, they did not have unlimited data plans. You use your flip phone to text or call your friends to get together. That’s it. Kids were still seeing other kids in 2010. That’s the beginning of what I call the great rewiring. Over the next few years, the smartphone gets a front facing camera in 2010. Instagram comes out in 2010, but it becomes super popular in 2012 when Facebook buys it. So, that’s when the girls really rush on and they move their social lives on to Instagram in particular, also Tumblr, a few others. So, you get these super viral social media platforms. It wasn’t like that in 2005. So, you get front facing camera, high speed data. Oh, you get notifications. The original iPhone didn’t interrupt you. You pulled it out when you wanted it. So, what I’m saying is in 2010, there is no sign of a mental health crisis. Everything’s fine. So, we were all super optimistic in 2011, even up to 2012. But that’s when the mental illness crisis begins, and all the numbers go way up for girls and also up substantially for boys. So, by 2015, what we have is the millennials, they just barely made it through puberty before they got this. So, the millennials were in college or late high school when they adopted this phone-based life. Because we’re all doing it. We’re all dominated by our technology.

SREENIVASAN: Walk us through the actual harms that’s now scientifically connected to kids use and increase use of screens and social media specifically on smartphones.

HAIDT: So, first we have to establish the numbers here, which are stunning. The latest data from Gallup is around nine hours a day is what they spend on their phones and screens. Five hours a day of that is social media. Another three to five is all the other stuff that they do. So, imagine if your child, if you take nine or 10 hours out of their day, every single day, where’s it going to come from? They spend less time sleeping, less time with other kids, less time outside, less time exercising, a lot more time just being sedentary and solitary. So, for all those reasons — oh, nobody — very little reading of books, no hobbies, there’s no time, there’s no time for anything. So, that’s the first thing, it pushes out all the good things of childhood that we want our kids to have. When you give a kid a smartphone, it’s likely to move to the center of her life, and that’s what she’s going to do for the rest of her life. And so, that’s one of the main ways of harm, it just deprives you of everything else. Another thing it does is it fragments your attention. You and I are probably — you know, we can pay attention to things, we can do our work, but it’s harder now than it was 10 years ago. There’s constant interruptions, but we’re still able to do it, but it’s a struggle. A teenager just starting puberty, age 10, 11, 12, the prefrontal cortex has not yet rewired for the adult configuration. They’re not very good at paying attention. And early puberty is when that skill really develops. And so, to have them trying to develop that skill while being interrupted every few minutes, the average teen now gets, one study found, 257 notifications a day, 257 interruptions every day. It’s very hard to focus on anything. So, you get fragmented attention, and we don’t know how permanent this is. Another harm is addiction. The brain adapts to that constant level of stimulation that when you’re not getting it, you’re in a deficit mode. You’re irritable. You’re unhappy. You feel terrible. So, these devices are designed to grab hold of our kids’ attention and never let go, and they’re very effective at that. I could go on. There are so many other avenues of harm, but those are some of the big ones that I cover in the book.

SREENIVASAN: Can we talk a little bit about also the data and how it works on the impacts to girls versus boys?

HAIDT: When I started writing the book, I thought it was going to be a story primarily about what social media is doing to girls, because I’ve got a lot of data on that and because the graphs, as you said, are like hockey sticks. It’s like they’re going along, there’s nothing happening, and then all of a sudden, one day in 2013, they all start shooting upwards, and it’s the hospitalizations for self-harm that are the most stunning. And they’re the same in Britain, Canada, Australia. It’s absolutely stunning what’s happened to girls since 2013. For boys, I couldn’t find a smoking gun. I couldn’t say, oh, well, it’s video games or it’s social media. For boys, the rise in mental illness is slower, and the key thing about boys, it’s not so much that this modern age is giving them diagnosable mental illness. What I finally figured out working with my research partner, Zach Rausch, we finally figured out is that for boys, the issue is they’ve been withdrawing from the real world, really since the ’80s and ’90s. They’ve been spending much more time online. They don’t go outside. They don’t wrestle. So, boys are basically blocked in their development. They’re not turning into men. They’re dropping out of school. They’re dropping out of the workforce. So, we’re losing a generation of boys. It’s not as clear for — when you look at wealthy, educated groups, there, the gender gap is not so big. Once you get to sort of middle-class and below, the girls are doing OK in terms of school and work, and the boys are just not. So, the problems are more diffuse, but they’re extremely serious for boys.

SREENIVASAN: You know, there are so many parents that will tell you that if you take a smartphone away from a child, that there’s almost like that you’ve broken this tractor beam, that they’ve had this lock, and they’re really, generally speaking, aggressive. It’s a very strange equation. It’s like if it was any other kind of an addictive substance or drug, a parent would probably say, well, let’s get that out of the house and not use it.

HAIDT: The most powerful argument a kid can make is, mom, I have to have a smartphone because everyone else has one, and I’ll be left out. I have to have Instagram because everyone else has it, and I’ll be left out. So, that’s what’s called a collective action problem. It’s hard for us as parents because everyone else is doing this. And so, what I’m proposing is that we coordinate, we set some norms, and norms that would be hard to do on our own, but much easier to do if we do them together. So, just to go back to the parent struggling to put limits on, to maybe give a warning, what you were describing is actually quintessential withdrawal symptoms from any drug. When brain circuits are used to getting this stimulation from, whether it’s cocaine, heroin, slot machines, or social media, if that happens every day, when you take the kid off, they feel horrible for a couple of weeks. It takes two or three weeks, three or four weeks, actually, to detox for the brain to reset. So, it’s vital that we give our kids — that we delay the entry into this craziness, and that we give our kids time away.

SREENIVASAN: Let’s deal with some of the reservations that I’m sure you’ve heard. You know, besides my kid is going to miss out, one of the things that, I think, parents are concerned about is giving their kids devices to be able to get in touch with them in an emergency. What are ways to do that without necessarily giving them a full smartphone loaded with social media?

HAIDT: As a parent of two high school kids, I totally understand the desire to be able to reach your children, and the desire for them to reach you if something goes wrong. So, that’s the first thing. We’re not saying cut them off and don’t communicate, we’re saying don’t give them the most powerful distraction device ever invented to have in their pocket all the time, including when they’re going to sleep, when they’re in class, et cetera. So, give them a flip phone. The millennials had flip phones, and they turned out fine. My second point, though, is school security experts say there are procedures in place to deal with a school shooting, and they involve listening and cooperating and working together with the teacher and the administration. So, where would you rather send your kid? I would ask any parents who have this concern, and we all have the concern. Would you rather send your kid to a school in which when there’s a potential problem? Everyone, they’re silent, they follow directions, they do what they’re supposed to do, they follow the procedure. Would you rather have one where at the first sign of a serious problem, everyone pulls out their phone, they’re crying to their parents, they’re making a lot of noise, they’re not listening? So again, I understand the human urge to talk to your kid if there’s a crisis, but the teacher has a phone, all the administrators have phones. So, we have to let the professionals do their job and not interfere as parents.

SREENIVASAN: One of the ideas that there are so many different types of communities who have found each other over social media. In a section in your book, you talk about how, ironically, some of these communities that might find the most benefit are also the ones who are susceptible to the largest of negative effects by being social media, explain that.

HAIDT: Yes. So, you know, we often confuse the internet and social media. What you’ve described is a problem that the internet largely solved. Kids were isolated in the ’90s. They could find, you know, if you’re gay, if you’re bi, if you’re trans, they could find other kids beginning in the ’90s, the internet is amazing for that. Once you start getting communities on social media, what you get is a move to the extremes. So, let’s look at mental health Tumblr or mental health Instagram or mental health TikTok. You might think, well, it’s great if a person has a particular disorder, it’s great that they can interact with other people who share their disorder. I don’t think that’s true. There’s just increasing amounts of research that social media is spreading mental illness. It’s just not a good idea to have teenagers hanging out with influencers who are motivated to be more extreme to get followers. So, I don’t buy the argument that this is somehow good for members of historically marginalized communities. And as I report in the book, studies show that while most kids recognize that these platforms are bad for them, LGBTQ kids are even more vociferous in saying, these platforms are bad for us, these platforms lead to bullying and harassment. So, you know, the internet is amazing, but social media does far more harm to kids than whatever shreds of benefit you can find from it.

SREENIVASAN: You have taken this message to social media companies directly. Are they getting it?

HAIDT: Well, there’s been no response, certainly. They — I think they’re kind of hemmed in — well, I should just put it this way. Meta did try a small thing. They tried hiding the light counter. That didn’t work to have an effect. I’ve spoken with their research staff there. I’ve spoken with leadership there. I do believe that if they could make it healthier and not lose any users, they would do it. But Meta in particular has shown it’s always prioritized growth over everything else. There have been many internal whistleblowers pointing out problems. They generally don’t respond. They don’t do the things that would be effective because that would, for example, kicking off underage users. They know how old everybody is. But, you know, when most 11 and 12-year-olds have an Instagram account, they should be kicked off, but Meta won’t do that. Snapchat won’t do that because they lose most of their users. So, they know what the problems are. There have been many internal reports, and they don’t act. And they don’t have to because Congress gave them immunity from lawsuits. This is one of the most insane things about our country. We have this thing, this environment that is incredibly toxic for our kids’ development, and we can’t sue them.

SREENIVASAN: You know, there — at a Senate hearing, CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, said, “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.” Is he misinformed by his lawyers?

HAIDT: No, he’s properly informed by his lawyers that he can point to studies that support that conclusion. He can point to a few meta-analyses that support that. He can point to a study by the National Academy of Science that came to that conclusion. But there is so much evidence on the other side, so they’re cherry-picking. Even that National Academy’s report that claims that there’s not enough evidence to prove causation. In that very report, people should read chapter four. It’s an amazing catalog of the research that shows causality. So, it’s a bizarre report in which the report itself documents dozens and dozens of avenues of harm and dozens and dozens of experiments. But yet, for some reason, the way it was written, they said, well, we can’t prove that it’s causal. I’ve collected — if you go to my Substack, afterbabel.com, I’ve gone through all of the studies. We itemized them. We show how the correlational studies come out, how the longitudinal studies come out, how the experimental studies come out. There is a ton of evidence. The preponderance of the evidence shows it’s not just a correlate, it’s a cause. Zuckerberg was pointing to the few studies he could, but in the long run, I believe they’re going to lose that case because the evidence keeps mounting. And by now, everybody sees it. The teachers, the parents, all those parents we saw at that Senate hearing, like, were they wrong that their kid — you know, that their kid is dead because of something that happened on social media? Were they all wrong about that? So, at this point in time, it just defies belief that social media isn’t contributing to this mental health crisis.

SREENIVASAN: Do you think that legislation, like what Ron DeSantis is proposing in Florida, or other states are thinking about doing to try to delay or ban the use of social media by a certain age will work?

SREENIVASAN: I think the DeSantis bill is great. I think the Florida bill is great. We have to delay the age at which they get into social media. I think 16 is the right age. I mean, for health reasons, it should be 18. But realistically, we’re not going to get 18. 16, I think, is a reasonable compromise at which we can begin treating kids like adults on the internet. Right now, current law says 13. At 13, companies can do whatever the hell they want to your kids. They can take their data. They can do anything. They don’t need your permission. They can treat them like adults. That’s current law. And there’s zero enforcement. As long as they don’t know your kid is 10, they can do whatever they want to your kid. So, the current law is horrible. It’s not enforced. The age is too low. It’s 13. We need to raise that to 16 and enforce it. And that’s what the Florida bill is going to do. They have a little carve out so that if parents really want their kid to be on it, 14 and 15, they can specifically sign a permission. That’ll be interesting to see how the tech companies implement that. But I’m a big fan of the Florida bill. I hope all 50 states do it because there is no way to make social media safe for middle school children.

SREENIVASAN: Author and professor Jonathan Haidt, thanks so much for joining us.

HAIDT: Thank you, Hari.