Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

psycnet.apa.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 137 posts

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#11

Post by insane_dreamer »

Not so sure about this; would need to read the whole paper. "No evidence" could just mean that causality could not be proved (admittedly very difficult to prove), which doesn't mean that there is indeed no causality. I'm not sure I'd trust this researcher any more than I'd trust any other single paper on the topic; and the preponderance of papers has shown there is a link though the details may be in dispute.

What is not in doubt is that there has been a sharp increase in teen mental health difficulties in recent years: look at this 30% increase from 2017 to 2021[0]. This also coincides with a significant increase in social media use among young people. Correlation is not causation, but there haven't been many other theories as to what might be driving this change.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/mental-health/mental-health...

I'd also want to know where the funding for this meta study came from.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#17

Post by beala »

Jimpulse wrote: post #10

Jonathan Haidt, who's been driving a lot of the work against social media for kids, directly refutes these findings in this post https://www.afterbabel.com/p/fundamental-flaws-part-3 .

Refutes is a strong word. This is an ongoing debate and it’s not clear to me Haidt is on the right side of it. The Studies Show did a great episode on this, but unfortunately it’s paywalled. However, the show notes are public and link to the relevant back and forth if folks want to make up their own minds. https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/paid-only-episode-12-jon...

Edit: And here’s a link to their earlier free episode recorded before this new meta analysis: https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-25-is-it-the-pho...

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#18

Post by wpasc »

invalidname wrote: post #9

That sounds odd considering pretty clear statistics correlating teen girls suicide rates with the rise of Instagram. Can someone who understands the subject matter more than I do comment on this further?

Someone commented above, but Jonathan Haidt "the anxious generation" is a place to start for a deeper analysis on the issue. Here is part 1 of a 3 part series of posts of his. I can't speak to the correlations and study directly, but Haidt's work is probably what you're looking for. https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-case-for-causality-part-1 (the commenter elsewhere linked part 3 which I believe directly refutes this meta analysis)
Post reply on HN