# Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s The Evidence. - Host: [jonathanhaidt.substack.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/jonathanhaidt.substack.com/) - Saved: February 23, 2023 (2023-02-23T23:30:42Z) - Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/0a797aaf5beb/ - JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/0a797aaf5beb.json ## What Jamie wrote This analysis of 55 different studies of social media use and mental health is a tremendous read. Everyone should read this and consider it, particularly parents, especially those of teen girls. Some highlights here. The bold is my addition. > Granted, these correlations don’t prove causation, but the frequent finding that the correlations are consistently higher for social media, and higher for girls, tells us that we’re not just looking at random noise here. There is a **consistent story emerging from these hundreds of correlational studies**. and … > But 33 studies used a month or more (20 were annual) and of these, 24 found a significant effect. So a simple dose-response model in which social media is like poison (where cutting consumption on Monday makes you feel better on Tuesday) does not seem to be supported. But **73% of the studies that looked for causal effects a month or more in the future found them**. and … > For example, Hunt, Marx, Lipson & Young (2018) randomly assigned college students to greatly reduce the use of social media platforms (or not reduce) and then measured their depressive symptoms four weeks later. They found that “**The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to the control group**.” and … > As the company expanded to new colleges, did mental health change in the following year or two at those institutions, compared to colleges where students did not yet have access to Facebook? Yes, it got worse. The authors say: > > > **We find that the roll-out of Facebook at a college increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression, and led to increased utilization of mental healthcare services**. We also find that, according to the students' reports, the decline in mental health translated into worse academic performance. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons. and to finish it off. > There is one giant, obvious, international, and gendered cause: Social media. Instagram was founded in 2010. The iPhone 4 was released then too—the first smartphone with a front-facing camera. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, and that’s the year that its user base exploded. By 2015, it was becoming normal for 12-year-old girls to spend hours each day taking selfies, editing selfies, and posting them for friends, enemies, and strangers to comment on, while also spending hours each day scrolling through photos of other girls and fabulously wealthy female celebrities with (seemingly) vastly superior bodies and lives. **The hours girls spent each day on Instagram were taken from sleep, exercise, and time with friends and family. What did we think would happen to them?** To me the answer here is obvious. Social media is toxic, particularly to kids developing their identity still. It feels like we are watching the same story that unfolded with tobacco use and cancer. The companies selling these products seem to be taking a very similar playbook. Some thoughts that I was left with. 1. I’m really glad that both of our kids have opted out of social media in all forms. 2. While the term selfie isn't used a lot in this article, the specific role of photo-based social media like Instagram combined with the advent of front-facing "selfie" cameras is interesting. It seems like an optimization that meaningfully increased the negative properties. 3. These studies routinely suggest the impact on boys is less, and I’m very curious why. Stereotypically we know that boys spend more screen time on gaming and YouTube. And the studies do highlight that screen time is not the same as social media usage. So the devices and the Internet seem much less of the issue than specifically social media. 4. Given the impacts on young people and teen girls, what do you suppose these same mechanisms do to adults. Nothing seems a completely untenable answer. ## Facts - Kind: [Newsletter](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/newsletter/) ## Appears in - [WT243: Weekly Thing #243 / Montaigne, Ordinals, Salsa + Ukraine Fundraiser!](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/243/), Featured ## Saved the same week - [It’s not about the land… – Rhoneisms](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/3d0e995ff7ab/) (patrickrhone.net, February 23, 2023) - [One year of war in Ukraine: Internet trends, attacks, and resilience](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/428c9a54c948/) (blog.cloudflare.com, February 23, 2023) - [Salsa ✦ Meet & Chat through POAPs](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/2fcc0370a855/) (salsa.me, February 23, 2023) - [The age of cargo cult Agile must end. | Jason Yip](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/8c27c7e27863/) (jchyip.medium.com, February 23, 2023) - [How Your LED Lights and Screens are Killing You](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/04e7e9469de1/) (sevarg.net, February 23, 2023) ## Elsewhere - Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic