There is probably no single factor that totally explains the trend, but rather a multitude of contributing factors that will be extremely difficult to disentang

There is probably no single factor that totally explains the trend, but rather a multitude of contributing factors that will be extremely difficult to disentangle. Most of the world’s big headline problems are similar - most have no single smoking-gun root cause, but a whole bunch of factors that come together and interact in complex ways. We seek simple narratives, but that’s just not the way the world at large works. Accordingly, I think “social media causes depression” and “social media doesn’t cause depression” could be equally bogus takes.