Are we using screens as a scapegoat for teen mental health?

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0:38Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today, we are talking about the relationship between kids, screens, and social media. Sound familiar? Yeah, it's a topic we have covered on the show before. And it's fraught. Most of us have heard how harmful tech can be for kids and their mental health. The anxiety levels are through the roof. The mental health issues are through the roof. Are we just going to sit by and watch that happen?

1:18In response, many states in the U.S. have passed laws banning cell phones and schools. These devices have no place in a formal education process. Vote yes. Some countries are banning teens from social media altogether. In Australia who use Instagram, Facebook and threads are about to start seeing their accounts closed down. But maybe these tactics don't address what's really going on. This is child psychologist Candice Ogers. I study children's mental health and spend a lot of time working with them on their mobile devices, trying to understand the influence of all the things in their life, but digital technology in particular on mental health, sleep, and their well-being.

2:03Candice does her research at UC Irvine and at Duke University. and she understands why parents are worried. But she says the message that we've been getting, that technology is causing an epidemic of mental illness in young people, is not based on solid science. I'm not saying there are no harms. What I am saying is that the story that we're repeatedly told as parents and policymakers and people that are invested, that social media is universally harmful, that it is damaging brains, that is leading to an epidemic of mental health problems that simply isn't supported by the data. Blaming tech as the root cause versus taking a more nuanced approach to teen mental health.

2:50It's a debate that has been roiling academic circles for years. And it's hard for parents to know what to think. Candice wants us all to take a deep breath and be open to a larger conversation about what is happening with kids today. When you compare all the factors that contribute to youth mental health, social media often doesn't make the list. It's one of the least influential factors in predicting children's mental health. On the show, the controversy over teens and screens, what can we blame tech for, and when do we need to take a harder look at how we're all letting down young people, especially here in the U.S.

3:33Developmental psychologist Candice Ogers explains what teens are really stressed out about, including rising rates of anxiety and depression in the adults in their lives. And we'll also get into how to know if tech is or isn't a problem for your child. A warning, this episode includes mentions of suicide. So let's get back to Candice Ogers. Here she is on the TED stage. Since 2008, we've been working with thousands of 10 to 14-year-olds, getting information every day from their phones on how they're feeling, how they spend their time, who they're with. We look at their school records, we track their sleep data, we look at their step count, and we see what they're doing online.

4:20Importantly, we listen to them about what upsets them and what they need to be well. It has been a really incredible and at times wild ride. It's also been an illuminating one because one of the most consistent things we have found is that the stories that you and I are told repeatedly every day about teenagers today, that they are lost, that they are worse off than ever, that somehow smartphones and social media have destroyed them and their brains, it doesn't match the data. and it doesn't match what they tell us. There is a massive gap. And as I've tried to make sense of this gap, I keep coming back to a simple truth that we all know.

5:06Scary stories sell. They always have. And the more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true. And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents. We are an anxious lot. You have been doing this research, Candice, for two decades. Take us back to when you first got started and how you began doing it. Yeah, so we were bringing at that point young people into the lab who we'd recruited from schools and communities. And we were setting them up with mobile devices to get them to report on what they were doing and how they're spending their time. And parents had a ton of questions for us about what, you know, the kinds of things we're still asking today.

5:49So what's the age at which my child should be given a phone? Are children losing their communication skills? You know, is this harmful for them to be spending time online? And, you know, at that time, we didn't know the answer. This was a new field. And I expected that there would be some negative effects. And we were really shocked because what we found was that there wasn't this overly negative story in the research at that time. And we started to add questions about what young people were doing online. And, you know, of course, over time, the methods have really evolved. We now do passive sensing and we scrape data and we do screen capture and we have much more sophisticated methods.

6:28But at that time, we were just surprised that, you know, there wasn't, you know, kind of a more consistently negative effects that people were finding. And so we started to add these measures of children's digital experiences alongside all the other things that we typically measure, which is, you know, stress at school and family conflict and how much exercise they're getting in a day, for example. Yeah, we have to remember, 20 years ago, social media wasn't really big. And so you were really using technology as a tool. You were not studying technology's effect on kids necessarily or just starting to.

7:00Yeah, but what turned out is we had a front row seat to the rise of it, right? So it was a really fascinating time. We were sitting there on teenagers' phones and talking to them about digital technology as it rolled out. And so that was a bit of a unique vantage point. So what did you see starting to happen? Take us through the conversation that was going on in the culture versus what you were observing. Yeah, so at that time, we were really in a panic over video games. So they were commissioning panels to try and understand, you know, is it that time online or time with these first shooter games is leading to increases in violence or for these horrible acts we're seeing with gun violence in our schools?

7:42And so the focus was really on video games at that time. And then it shifted and that it was screens in general. So what are screens and screen time doing to our children? And there was this Atlantic article by a psychologist named Jean Twenge that asked this question, have smartphones destroyed a generation? And everybody quickly said yes, right? Yes, they have. And so the target then became screen time in general. And that was set off a whole debate about whether screen time was associated with poor outcomes. And we had all of these data that essentially showed there's no association or this tiny correlation.

8:20And then suddenly that started to narrow down, well, it's not just screen time, it's social media. And it's, oh, well, it's not just social media, it's social media among girls. And the conversation really narrowed and we became laser focused on young girls and social media as the primary culprit. So we kind of moved our target. And now our new target is artificial intelligence and conversational agents. And so the new tech will continue to evolve and that will be continued to be the new target of kind of our ire as parents and policymakers. Okay, so here we are all these years later. How do you do your work now?

8:56Yeah, and so we're really fortunate. We have a partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. So we're able to draw a sample from a roster of every child attending public school in the state. And that means that we can survey adolescents and bring in a group of adolescents as representative of the larger state population. And North Carolina maps fairly well onto the U.S. population. And so in these studies, what we do is we typically, you know, assess young people and their parents. We are able to look at their school records and, you know, information on test scores and suspensions or absenteeism.

9:30We know the poverty levels of their neighborhoods and their families. We know a lot about them. And then when we go in and we'll take a subsample of those young people, So we started out with, you know, in one study, it was 2 ,100 adolescents. And we followed them across four years and then did these deep dives where we install an app on their phone and start to track mental health symptoms every day, sleep through wearable devices. We've done other studies where we passively sense for over 90 days on their phone. So getting information on kind of where they are, what they're doing, how much they're moving, what kind of information they're typing into their keyboard.

10:07And this is all with their consent. And we involve youth at every stage. So we have a youth advisory board that screens our protocols and that works with us to make sure that we're asking the right questions. And we're not just another bunch of adults who are making assumptions. I want to share with you a few science-based facts about kids today. And I'm going to focus on American teens because that's where a lot of the stories that you and I are hearing come from. So in the past 20 years, we've had some major wins. Rates of teen violence, alcohol use, pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows.

10:42You are looking at the most educated generation ever in terms of high school graduation. Young people are inventors. They're activists. They're leaders. They're amazing. But they're also telling us that they're sadder and they're more worried about the world that they're growing up in. So they report increased concerns about safety at school, climate change, racism, their future. In our studies, what we find is the most frequently reported stressors are conflict in their home and pressure to do well at school. And those are also the things that predict their mental health day to day. Now, since 2008, we've seen an uptick in youth suicide risk.

11:28But perhaps this shouldn't be surprising because adult suicide has been increasing dramatically in the United States since 1999. We are in the middle of an adult mental health crisis. And caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of teen mental health by far. People ask me all the time, what could have happened during this period other than social media coming online? The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying. Social media and smartphones also increased during this period. But here's the weird thing. In our longitudinal studies, social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health.

12:15Many others find the same, concluding, and I'm going to quote, that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting teen mental health. Now, despite this, adults are quickly converging on banning social media for under-16s as a simple and singular solution to solving the youth mental health crisis. And here is the crazy part. There's not one single study to date that has actually tested whether shutting it off impacts their mental health. And when we do this among adults, we find on average impacts that are close to or indistinguishable from zero. The National Academies of Sciences, one of the most well-respected organizations in the world, convened an expert panel, and they came to this conclusion also.

13:04When we come back, more with child psychologist Candace Audgers on kids, their mental health, and why she thinks screens are not the biggest problem for teens. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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14:52Hey there. Whether you are listening on Apple, Spotify, the NPR app, or somewhere else, please make sure you're subscribed to the TED Radio Hour. Hit that follow button, never miss an episode, and thank you. Now back to the show. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. A couple months back, we had NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the show. He is the author of the book The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Children is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. His book has been on the bestseller list for years now, and many lawmakers and parents cite his research when they push for banning phones in schools.

15:36and getting teens off social media. All over the world in the 2010s, family life became a fight over screen time. Parents saw their children being pulled away, pulled away from them, pulled away from each other, pulled away from life, pulled into this weird world where all kinds of weird and horrible things happened to them. They saw kids getting depressed, anxious, suddenly coming down with eating disorders. 2012 is the crucial year where kids are switching over from flip phones to smartphones, iPhones in America. But child psychologist Candace Odgers says we need to look beyond just technology.

16:12It's not the only thing that happened over the last 10, 15, 20 years. We've seen an increase in school shootings during this time as well. We've seen a change in the demographics of U.S. adolescents. So now in California and Texas, for example, 70 % of students in high school actually identify with a group that has been traditionally minoritized or discriminated against. And we know that that matters for daily health. And so there's a lot of factors. And so when we look at that period and people draw these graphs and say, well, social media increases, like what else could possibly be happening?

16:48You know, we have to have a discussion about adult mental health, you know, in this conversation. So we need to broaden the tent. You know, to some layperson, mapping the rise in suicides and depression and anxiety in young people with the rise in use of social media and smartphones. I mean, it's compelling, Candice. Like it's it also I think is like, oh, look, we can see why this is happening so we can fix it. Yeah, I think, you know, it is it is simple to scare people with statistics. And, you know, I'm a quantitative psychologist as well. And I teach graduate statistics. And, And, you know, we can draw a lot of scary, scary graphs.

17:35And that happens. Unfortunately, that happens in the media every day. And whenever I see one of these graphs, what I do is I do the thing where I expand the axes and say what's really happening. And then I go back to the original source. There is so much incentive right now to sell these scary stories about our young people because it sells. And we just did a survey of California voters. And the only thing that Democrats and Republicans and independents agreed on was that they wanted to ban smartphones in schools and they wanted to get kids off of social media. There are no differences between Democrats, independents and Republicans on that issue in America today, which is incredible.

18:17So if you are running for office, this is an easy thing to target. Children don't vote. They're not going to get a say, you know, in terms of advocating to have right to this information that's online or to have access to these types of platforms. So they're an easy group to push aside and to tell stories about. It's a political win. Now, this isn't to discount the harm or to advocate for big tech. I mean, no, but what we're doing is we're actually giving them a pass when we go right to a ban. It means that they don't have to clean up and fix these fundamental issues with the digital ecosystem, right, where adults have really broken the internet.

18:56They've done it. They've finally just broken it. And now we're just going to kick kids off and say that the problem is solved. Instead of cleaning up the online world and prosecuting perpetrators of online harm, regardless of the office or the position in society that they hold, we are punishing victims. We're kicking them out of the spaces they go to be with friends, to consume youth culture, and yes, sadly, many times to escape people that are harming them offline. So a social media ban might feel good for the adults in the room, but teens tell me, and I believe them, it's not going to work.

19:39It'll push them into less safe and less regulated spaces, and it will prevent us from doing what we really need to help them to be well. Yeah, that is where I think people get tangled up, or I certainly get tangled up, is like we agree, everyone agrees, that tech companies take advantage of human behavior for their own quarterly earnings report. They allow dangerous people into online communities. They allow false information to flourish. They take little responsibility for safety on their platforms. We clearly need regulations and standards so that we get more of the good parts of being online and less of the bad.

20:17So I guess part of what I hear from people is like, well, nothing else is working. So what's the harm in using kids as a way to start to put pressure on tech companies? Those companies, their parents, too, that work at those places. We have to ring an alarm bell that's loud enough to actually make a change. And why would it be bad if this is the way we do it? That's a great question. And people actually have approached me because I've been pretty vocal on this and said, OK, Candice, just back off. Like, what's the big deal? What's the harm in going forward, you know, and using children as the tip of the spear here if it's going to result and be the thing that we can finally, you know, use to slay social media companies?

21:02And, you know, I have thought about this a lot. And one of the parallels I draw is that if someone was going around and saying, you know, purple dye is the cause of pediatric cancer, I would want a pediatric oncologist to stand up and say, actually, it's not the main cause of childhood cancer. I mean, these are serious issues. Childhood depression, anxiety. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability in the world, right? People are dying. people are being harmed due to mental health problems, right? And so we need to have a clear eyed view on what the causes of that are, and what we can do that can actually help prevent mental health problems early on, because it has always been the case that the first signs of mental health problems emerge in early adolescence.

21:50And that was true long before smartphones and social media came on. So we have this window of opportunity, and we need to use it. But instead, if we allow ourselves to tell a story that social media or time online damages children's brains, right, that it means that they are addicted, that the behavior that they're engaging in is shameful, that parents should be ashamed of letting their children engage in these activities that are pretty normative and that they do themselves. You know, we are sending messages that are not based on evidence, right, that are shaming our young people and that are really allowing us to, you know, bypass the harder work that has to be done in order to actually support young people and address mental health issues.

22:38It's tricky because I think many people cheered, right, when a California jury a couple months ago found Meta and YouTube liable in this landmark or bellwether case that accused the tech giants of intentionally addicting a specific young woman and hurting her mental health. And the prosecutors leaned on the design element that the way that the platforms had been designed created addictive behaviors that led this young woman down a very dangerous dangerous mental health crisis. And as much as I know that you're not a big fan of Meta or YouTube necessarily, do you think that the jury was right on this?

23:28And will there be, like, in terms of an appeal, will those companies have a case because this is on shaky ground? Based on what your research says, I think so. Yeah, so it's a civil trial, and juries are going to take their pound of flesh, right? It feels good to hate social media right now. And these are going to be chances to kind of get retribution and get a payout for sure. Now, whether or not it would meet the standard of evidence if you had to actually prove that this was a cause, you know, that's going to be a much harder case to, you know, to make. And I think, you know, the cases are tricky because the arguments now are being made on the design elements of the platforms.

24:12And we can agree that the autoplay is not good. There's many, it should be safety by design. I agree at all of those things, but we cannot separate design from content, right? So if you had an autoplay of me teaching statistics, kids would not watch that, right? Even if you autoplayed it, right? So structural occasion modeling, no, no, no, no, right? But, you know, an autoplay of them doing the latest, you know, it's not six, seven anymore, but, you know, whatever is the latest trending, thing. They're going to watch that. And so we're trying to, you know, separate these hard things and attack it on kind of harmful design principles.

24:49And that seems to be effective. And we'll see where that takes us. But we're going to have a flood of lawsuits. And I know because my phone rings every day from all signs to testify. And what I do is I simply ship them off a fact sheet because what I say about this is not going to change, you know, depending on who who I'm talking to, right? So I just have a simple fact sheet that said, this is the evidence. This is what the National Academy of Sciences says. Here's where all of the reviews of all this evidence say, you know, here's what the numbers are. Here's what, you know, the people who are doing the most work closest to young people are saying about this.

25:26And I share that and both sides can do with it what they may. So I'm a bit agnostic about the court cases because they're going to play out for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with science. Or what teens even really need, I suppose. Right. So at this point, one might be listening and thinking, okay, well, fine. What do you want me to do as a parent, as someone who cares about young people, at least with getting phones out of schools or banning kids from social media. These are clear, concrete rules that like nobody has to be the most amazing parent, you know, like, yeah, sure. I'd love to have conversations, deep conversations with my kids, but maybe that's not happening.

26:16Like, what are we supposed to do? You're talking about an entire society that is falling apart from so many different ways, some people would say, whether it's like lack of health care and social support and poverty and, you know, food scarcity even. Yeah. So I think the first thing to do is to, it's going to feel good to ban and to blame. And that's, you know, maybe that's okay for adults to feel good about that for a while. But I think if we're looking, it's not at all clear that that's going to help young people, right? So we know that the bans are coming, that they're hugely popular, and those are really normative and value-based judgments.

26:58I mean, adults and parents want their kids on technology less. They don't trust tech companies with this, right? So they want a different reality for the young people in their lives. And that, I am not here to tell anybody, you know, how much screen time their child should have or how they should make these decisions in terms of what they want kind of normatively. But if you're doing this from a position of fear and you're being told that you should do this because social media causes all of these things, for example, you know, that's a message that's not supported, you know, by the science. And, you know, we could make those decisions based on values, but I wouldn't make them from a place of fear where your child is going to fall into.