I truly fail to understand the defense of social media access and the denial of its impact. If I didn't know better, I'd like these journals are funded by tech companies.
Thank you for exposing your experience with Lancet. Examples like these make it so difficult to trust even the most well-know journals and publications. Thank goodness for Substack where research like yours can be amplified without captured gatekeepers.
I appreciate Jean Twenge’s taking this on, but she’s getting a very important issue backwards.
The best information we have from the full 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys is that social media is associated with fewer suicide attempts and less self-harm among younger girls.
Twenge’s speculation that young girls’ self-harm is due to “social media” providing “an endless way for other kids to be cruel” along with harmful images and contacts happen even more in real life, except that in real life, girls can’t handle them with a <delete> or <block sender> click.
More important, social media may be an important resource helping ameliorate bullying and severe troubles inflicted by parents and household adults (see https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/data/index.html for full survey numbers).
We need better evidence, but what we have so far paints an entirely different picture.
The CDC survey back in 2021 found that for the 1,200 girls ages 12-15 who responded, those who rarely used screens (less than 1 hour a day) suffered many more self-inflicted, suicidal injuries (6.0%) than girls who used screens 3 or more hours a day (2.6%). Girls who used screens 1-2 hours a day had the lowest rates (2.3%).
The 2023 CDC survey including 3,200 girls ages 12-15 refined these measures. Girls under age 16 who never use social media suffer many more self-inflicted injuries (6.6%) than girls who used social media once a week or less (4.9%), girls who used social media daily (4.4%), and girls who used social media many times a day (4.0%).
What, then, is causing girls to harm themselves?
Bullying (emotional abuse) by parents and/or household adults was associated with greatly increased percentages harming themselves: never-abused girls (2.6%), occasionally abused girls (2.7%), sometimes abused girls (4.7%), and frequently-abused girls (14.7%).
Further, girls whose parents, guardians, and household adults are addicted, mentally disturbed, jailed, absent, and/or frequently violent and abusive are 20 times more likely to harm themselves (6.6%) than girls in families where such troubles are rare (0.3%). Girls’ self-harm is almost non-existent in families with healthy grownups. Adults ages 25-64 suffered sharply rising drug/alcohol deaths and hospital emergencies numbering in the millions during exactly the period (2010-22) teens became more depressed.
The CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a5.htm?s_cid=su7304a5_w) reports very high associations of adverse childhood experiences led by parental/adult bullying, violent abuse, and poor mental health with 66% of teens’ sadness and 85% of teens’ suicide attempts. In contrast, the CDC analysis (like the limited Norwegian study Twenge cites that does not include parental abuses) associates social media use, school bullying, and cyberbullying with less than 10% of teens’ mental health (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304-H.pdf), barely distinguishable from random.
Do parents have to be perfect, then? No. Very large majorities of girls in families where parents and adults occasionally are emotionally abusive or suffer troubles and normal conflicts are not depressed, suicidal, or self-harming. However, for the girls in more severely troubled families who comprise the most self-harming group, social media use is associated with fewer suicide attempts and less self harm. We should halt efforts to ban or restrict teens from social media and smartphones and study this entire question more carefully.
I truly fail to understand the defense of social media access and the denial of its impact. If I didn't know better, I'd like these journals are funded by tech companies.
But maybe I don't know better.
Thank you for exposing your experience with Lancet. Examples like these make it so difficult to trust even the most well-know journals and publications. Thank goodness for Substack where research like yours can be amplified without captured gatekeepers.
Keep saying it, again and again.
I appreciate Jean Twenge’s taking this on, but she’s getting a very important issue backwards.
The best information we have from the full 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys is that social media is associated with fewer suicide attempts and less self-harm among younger girls.
Twenge’s speculation that young girls’ self-harm is due to “social media” providing “an endless way for other kids to be cruel” along with harmful images and contacts happen even more in real life, except that in real life, girls can’t handle them with a <delete> or <block sender> click.
More important, social media may be an important resource helping ameliorate bullying and severe troubles inflicted by parents and household adults (see https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/data/index.html for full survey numbers).
We need better evidence, but what we have so far paints an entirely different picture.
The CDC survey back in 2021 found that for the 1,200 girls ages 12-15 who responded, those who rarely used screens (less than 1 hour a day) suffered many more self-inflicted, suicidal injuries (6.0%) than girls who used screens 3 or more hours a day (2.6%). Girls who used screens 1-2 hours a day had the lowest rates (2.3%).
The 2023 CDC survey including 3,200 girls ages 12-15 refined these measures. Girls under age 16 who never use social media suffer many more self-inflicted injuries (6.6%) than girls who used social media once a week or less (4.9%), girls who used social media daily (4.4%), and girls who used social media many times a day (4.0%).
What, then, is causing girls to harm themselves?
Bullying (emotional abuse) by parents and/or household adults was associated with greatly increased percentages harming themselves: never-abused girls (2.6%), occasionally abused girls (2.7%), sometimes abused girls (4.7%), and frequently-abused girls (14.7%).
Further, girls whose parents, guardians, and household adults are addicted, mentally disturbed, jailed, absent, and/or frequently violent and abusive are 20 times more likely to harm themselves (6.6%) than girls in families where such troubles are rare (0.3%). Girls’ self-harm is almost non-existent in families with healthy grownups. Adults ages 25-64 suffered sharply rising drug/alcohol deaths and hospital emergencies numbering in the millions during exactly the period (2010-22) teens became more depressed.
The CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a5.htm?s_cid=su7304a5_w) reports very high associations of adverse childhood experiences led by parental/adult bullying, violent abuse, and poor mental health with 66% of teens’ sadness and 85% of teens’ suicide attempts. In contrast, the CDC analysis (like the limited Norwegian study Twenge cites that does not include parental abuses) associates social media use, school bullying, and cyberbullying with less than 10% of teens’ mental health (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304-H.pdf), barely distinguishable from random.
Do parents have to be perfect, then? No. Very large majorities of girls in families where parents and adults occasionally are emotionally abusive or suffer troubles and normal conflicts are not depressed, suicidal, or self-harming. However, for the girls in more severely troubled families who comprise the most self-harming group, social media use is associated with fewer suicide attempts and less self harm. We should halt efforts to ban or restrict teens from social media and smartphones and study this entire question more carefully.