The Anxious Generation

I just finished listening to the audiobook of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and thought it’d be worth sharing my thoughts. Now I should offer at least some background for those who might not have it; my academic supervisor (Andy Przybylski) and Jonathan Haidt are in something of a battle over interpretations of various social media/mental health studies.

My understanding (wholly my surmising from public comments) is that my supervisor believes that Haidt is over-interpreting and is starting with a conclusion (social media bad) and using data to try to find that interpretation. Haidt believes that my Andy is burying findings by lumping all screen time and genders and ages together.

The Thesis

Haidt shows a growth in a number of ‘bad’ mental health problems affecting teenagers across the developed world. Depression, anxiety, suicides and more have all seen sharp rises - especially amongst girls and especially since 2012.

Haidt then dismisses a number of plausible hypotheses (things are worse now, global warming, political turmoil) by showing that the timing/geography doesn’t line up. Instead, he points to social media during adolescence as the key change. He draws upon a collection of research aiming to link social media and mental health outcomes, and says that our mental health crisis is due to adolescence on social media, and the rise of “safetyism” - an overabundance of caution in the real world.

What I’m Sceptical About

As a data scientist, I’ve lost count of the number of investigations like this I’ve carried out. We see an important number move and we want to know why - so we go digging and try to find out where it happened.

Those investigations are brutal, draining, and it’s easy to make mistakes. In order to be confident it’s important to be exactly right - close isn’t good enough.

Based on what I know of the psychological research, there’s a fair amount of evidence that heavy social media use is negatively correlated with mental health. However, the evidence isn’t uniform and it doesn’t show strong negative effects. There are potentially a bunch of reasons for that, but Haidt doesn’t dig into them.

I’d also love to have seen much more on comparing social media adoption rates and mental health impacts across countries. If Latin American countries adopted Facebook 6 months later than European countries, and the effect is as pronounced as Haidt suggest, we should see a 6 month lag on all mental health metrics.

If certain regions were quick/slow/heavy users/light users, we should see regional impacts. If religious communities or different language speakers or…

The point is, a good inter/intra-country comparison could be worth its weight in gold when it comes to causality. I didn’t read any of that in Haidt’s book. Given how thorough he was, I’m erring on the side of that evidence simply not existing. If it doesn’t, what does that say of the thesis? If it doesn’t seem to matter when a country adopted social media, what kind of causal chain satisfies that claim?

Finally, I wish there was more about the relative importance of “safetyism” and social media. Perhaps they’re intertwined too closely, but given that they occurred at different rates and at different times and impacted different genders at different levels…surely something should be doable here?

What I Loved

You know how sometimes you read a book just to hear your own thoughts echoed back to you, only better? I needed to hear the safetyism chapter. Needed it deep to my core.

I’ve been wrestling with the notion of childhood independence for a little while, and this has culminated in letting my 6 year old cycle back home from school by himself. It makes my wife a little uncomfortable, but as I keep on telling her…we live in a small village where, 30 years ago, every child would have walked or cycled to school. The village is safer than it used to be. Why wouldn’t we let him?

I see the pressure everywhere - hover over your children and make sure everything they say and do is OK. Make sure they’re not in any danger. Guard guard guard. And at every juncture, they try to gain independence. And there we are, showing them that we don’t trust them and questioning their decisions.

Haidt’s diagnosis that children have been forced into the online world for any degree of independence feels spot on. We’ve traded independently playing with kids a couple of years older at the park for talking with strangers halfway across the world. The risk of (short-term) physical harm has decreased…but to what end?

I also think Haidt did a good(ish) job at showing that it’s not just anxiety that has risen. It’s easy to say that maybe the (over?)diagnosis of mental health conditions is really what we’re seeing here. Haidt covers a number of conditions and shows that all of them are moving in what looks like a dangerous way.

Haidt talks about the problems being collective action problems - that is, problems that are better tackled by all of us, rather than each individual. I don’t disagree, but as I’ve discussed elsewhere, I find mandating a solution both practically difficult and rife with hypocrisy. Can I really tell a child to be bored for 2 minutes when I pull my own phone out given a 30 second gap?

What Next?

I need to know more about safetyism. I’m living it right now, and have already taken steps to correct my behaviour. At the Scottish wedding I went to, I left my 6-year old to play with the older children outside as they were wrestling and throwing sticks and chasing and doing whatever else. He loved it, and I had a much better time not trying to police his behaviour.

If all that The Anxious Generation gives me is that, it’s already more than earned its place on my (and maybe your) reading list. Who knew parenting could be this much easier, when you trust your children and let them behave as 6-year old boys want to?

For my next read, I need to know more about the origins of safetyism. What impact did it specifically have (separate to social media)? Is it a legal concept, or just socially expected? And can we just ignore it, or will I get social services called on me if I let my children play at the park by themselves?