There seems to be a lot of room for controversy when the subject is something that is infeasible to measure due to required sample size, difficulty of recruitin

There seems to be a lot of room for controversy when the subject is something that is infeasible to measure due to required sample size, difficulty of recruiting human subjects, and multicollinearity of features. Because of the above, the language of suggestion ("associated with" or "correlated with") dominates these studies. The underlying problem is one of separation: the studies do not say that social media use causes "plummeting teen mental health," nor do they say that social media use alone affects teen mental health. There are some interesting conclusions by the cited studies however: > The 12-month prevalence of major depressive episodes (MDEs) increased from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.3% in 2014 in adolescents and from 8.8% to 9.6% in young adults (both P < .001). The increase was larger and statistically significant only in the age range of 12 to 20 years. [0] > Rates of major depressive episode in the last year increased 52% 2005–2017 (from 8.7% to 13.2%) among adolescents aged 12 to 17 and 63% 2009–2017 (from 8.1% to 13.2%) among young adults 18–25. Serious psychological distress in the last month and suicide-related outcomes (suicidal ideation, plans, attempts, and deaths by suicide) in the last year also increased among young adults 18–25 from 2008–2017 (with a 71% increase in serious psychological distress), with less consistent and weaker increases among adults ages 26 and over. [1] [0] https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/138/6/e20161878/52639/National-Trends-in-the-Prevalence-and-Treatment-of https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/138... [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pd...