Adults Broke The Internet, And They’re Trying To Fix It By Kicking Kids Off

from the the-anxious-generation-are-the-boomers dept

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of developmental psychologist Candice Odgers. I’ve mentioned her and her work on the site many times, and she was a guest on my podcast as well. She actually has expertise and has done the work to look at the impact of social media on kids. In many ways she’s the anti-Jonathan Haidt with actual facts, not made up nonsense (which is why when she debated Haidt, he came out of it looking pathetic).

Odgers gave a TED Talk recently, which is now online. It’s worth watching in its entirety (only about 12 minutes) as she details how the moral panic about kids and social media is bullshit, and how banning kids from social media will do way more damage to their mental health:

A few choice quotes (though, again, watch the whole thing). First, she points out that on many important metrics (including the metrics many teenagers were judged by in past generations), we’re doing incredibly well:

in the past 20 years, we’ve had some major wins.

Rates of teen violence, alcohol use, pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows.

You 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 singers. They’re Olympians. They’re amazing.

And, yes, in some cases they’re more anxious and sadder about the world. Though, some of that may just be the state of the world today. And while she doesn’t say this, I know I’ve heard her talk about it before: some of her work from way back started from the premise that the reason kids were stressed out and anxious was because of social media, but repeated studies failed to find any indication of that (some of which we’ve reported on).

As Odgers points out, the reality is that it’s the adults that are the problem. There’s a mental health crisis among adults, and much of it may be driven by issues like the opioid epidemic:

Now, since 2008, we’ve seen an uptick in youth suicide risk. But perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, because adult suicide has been increasing dramatically in the United States since 1999.

Remember when I said that adult mental health and caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of child mental health? Well, with that in mind, I want to take a look at this slide.

This graph here shows you that between 2011 and 2021, the rate of overdoses due to drug use among parents more than doubled. 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.

And, she points out that the data suggests no significant impact for young boys, and for young girls the correlation is reversed. Those who are facing mental health problems and don’t have support go online more — not the other way around.

She also discusses how adults keep closing off spaces for kids to be kids, and banning them from social media just takes away yet another space for kids to be a part of a community.

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.

We’ve already kicked teenagers out of public spaces.

In the US, we’ve created a society where firearms are the number one killer of our children, and now we’re telling our kids that we’re going to take away the spaces that they’re going to virtually gather and create community, because adults broke that, too?

Yeah, I’m saying adults broke the internet and they’re trying to fix it by kicking kids off.

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.

It’ll push them into less safe and less regulated spaces, and it will prevent us from doing what we really need to help them be well.

And, no, contrary to some of the YouTube comments on the video, she’s not giving a talk in support of social media platforms. She admits that there are issues there, but notes that kicking kids off doesn’t solve them. It also makes it more difficult to fix the actual underlying societal problems. She comes up with a list of solutions which I won’t spoil, but it involves taxing some of the tech companies to pay for better support for children.

It’s a 12-minute TED talk, so it’s designed to be quick and straightforward, without going too deep into the data and the science, but given how those in favor of banning social media have taken over the narrative, it’s good to have the counter narrative out there.

As Odgers herself said about this talk when she posted it to Bluesky, the kids can be alright. “This isn’t an anxious generation, it’s a resilient one. Let’s start treating them that way.”

The real work, then, is making sure kids have the tools, spaces, community, and knowledge to be safe in the world — both online and off.

Filed Under: age verification, candice odgers, jonathan haidt, kids and social media, social media, social media bans