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Jonathan Haidt has a new book, The Anxious Generation, where he presents evidence that smartphones and social networking really do cause a decline in teenager m

Jonathan Haidt has a new book, The Anxious Generation, where he presents evidence that smartphones and social networking really do cause a decline in teenager mental health.

CraigJPerry 3y ago
He did a pretty terrible job defending the hypothesis on Conversations with Tyler recently https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-a...
- hobom 3y ago
  FWIW, I thought he did pretty well and came away more convinced of his theses. For most of Tyler's alternative and let's say colorful explanations of the data, Haidt provided different sets of data and explanations that were more convincing. As a libertarian and techno optimist, Tyler seemed pretty biased, for example when he offered as an explanation for the plummeting mental health of teens at the exact time smartphones get introduced a random " maybe everyone's mood just got worse randomly". The only thing Haidt didn't refute that well was Tyler's (imo overconfident) assertion that teens will just use AI to summarize social media to them and spend more time with friends.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > teens will just use AI to summarize social media to them and spend more time with friends Yeah, this seems a bit off. People spend time with friends via social media. That's part tof the issue.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    For what it's worth, it doesn't seem like TikTok would be any less addictive if there was a way to summarize it.
NoGravitas 3y ago
Haidt's claims are not supported by a preponderance scientific studies: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 > Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people. ... > Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Here is Haidt's detailed rebuttal of the piece you cite: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...

Jonathan Haidt has a new book, The Anxious Generation, where he presents evidence that smartphones and social networking really do cause a decline in teenager mental health.

CraigJPerry 3y ago

He did a pretty terrible job defending the hypothesis on Conversations with Tyler recently https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-a...

hobom 3y ago
FWIW, I thought he did pretty well and came away more convinced of his theses. For most of Tyler's alternative and let's say colorful explanations of the data, Haidt provided different sets of data and explanations that were more convincing. As a libertarian and techno optimist, Tyler seemed pretty biased, for example when he offered as an explanation for the plummeting mental health of teens at the exact time smartphones get introduced a random " maybe everyone's mood just got worse randomly". The only thing Haidt didn't refute that well was Tyler's (imo overconfident) assertion that teens will just use AI to summarize social media to them and spend more time with friends.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > teens will just use AI to summarize social media to them and spend more time with friends Yeah, this seems a bit off. People spend time with friends via social media. That's part tof the issue.
- cubefox 3y ago
  For what it's worth, it doesn't seem like TikTok would be any less addictive if there was a way to summarize it.

NoGravitas 3y ago

Haidt's claims are not supported by a preponderance scientific studies: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 > Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people. ... > Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.

cubefox 3y ago
Here is Haidt's detailed rebuttal of the piece you cite: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...