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Couldn’t there be a common cause, like lost sleep? Considering the role of sleep in washing away the daily damage to the brain.

• deltarholamda 4y ago
  It can be many things, and sleep certainly is important. Social media is a lot of things, some of them good, some bad, but young people are not well-suited to handle the bad. Heck, most adults aren't either. You have to be a particular sort of person to handle a couple thousand people all over the world screaming "LOSER!" at you because you said something awkward. I've seen a lot of "you need to touch grass" comments recently, and it kind of gets to the heart of the problem. We didn't evolve in an environment where every facet of your life is available for inspection from freaking everybody in the world. One can counter that we should train our children to be circumspect in how they manage their online activities--a kind of abstinence education for the digital world--but that is a massive uphill battle. Digital communications are pretty good overall. I know my kids make use of it to manage homework, keep in touch with friends who are not local, etc. But there is a pretty big difference between texting the folks you met at summer camp and Instagram.