In a recent Ezra Klein show interview [1] with social scientist Jean Twenge on the documented rise in teenage depression, Twenge found it correlated with a rise

In a recent Ezra Klein show interview [1] with social scientist Jean Twenge on the documented rise in teenage depression, Twenge found it correlated with a rise in social media use, but also found that increasing social media use was correlated with fewer hours of in-person social interaction among teens than previous. While Twenge wanted to talk about both things (and I'm somewhat suspicious of the certainty of her conclusions), I found it pretty thought-provoking to focus on the drop in in-person social interaction as the driver. Social media use can quite likely lead to lower in-person socialization (I do think it's likely causation, and in that direction). And there may be other social factors doing such too. Covid obviously. (note that rise in teen depression trend started well before covid though). Over-protectiveness (for teens) or general fear of risk of "the world"/focus on risk reduction. (They talked about this a bit). To me it seems pretty clear (just my intuition/perception, not from actual social science) that our society is having a crisis of lack of meaningful relationships/community and lack of feeling of purpose in one's life, and this is leading to depression and anxiety. (As well as possible political disaster). What exactly is causing that lack of meaninful relationships and purpose, and what can be done, is harder. I think the internet is a (large) part of it, but so are other parts of the social/political/economic system. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jean-twenge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...