Are the Kids Alright? — with Jonathan Haidt

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4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. Since 2011, the rate of U.S. hospitalizations for preteen girls who have self-harmed is up 189 percent, and with older teen girls, it’s up 62 percent. Tragically, the numbers on suicides are similar — 151 percent higher for preteen girls, and 70 percent higher for older teen girls. NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has spent the last few years trying to figure out why, working with fellow psychologist Jean Twenge, and he believes social media is to blame. Jonathan and Jean found that the mental health data show a stark contrast between Generation Z and Millennials, unlike any demographic divide researchers have seen since World War II, and the division tracks with a sharp rise in social media use. As Jonathan explains in this interview, disentangling correlation and causation is a persistent research challenge, and the debate on this topic is still in full swing. But as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and the next big thing fine-tune the manipulative and addictive features that pull teens in, we cannot afford to ignore this problem while we sit back and wait for conclusive results. When it comes to children, our standards need to be higher, and our burden of proof lower.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why did rates of depression and anxiety skyrocket right around 2012, especially for girls?
0:06.0	That's Jonathan Hight, a social psychologist who's been studying the effects of social media on teen mental health.
0:12.0	millennials are not really more depressed than previous generations,
0:16.0	but suddenly kids born in 1996 and later are very different from the millennials
0:22.0	and this is a real puzzle and this is a very are very
0:25.0	interesting, interesting psychological and demographic puzzle.
0:28.0	Jonathan is a careful researcher.
0:30.0	He doesn't leap from data to definitive conclusion.
0:32.0	More often, he leaves room for debate like this.
0:34.9	Well, a piece of the puzzle is social media.
0:38.3	But there's one trend that Jonathan argues
0:40.0	is remarkably clear.
0:41.7	Generation Z, the kids who grew up on social media, are being swept up in
0:46.0	a current of mental health issues, unlike anything researchers have seen since World War II.
0:50.9	You never get really sharp lines between generations. The only one I know of is
0:55.0	is 1946. So if you were born when you know the soldiers came home, there's a baby boom, you're
1:00.9	born 1946, you're different from kids born in
1:03.4	1944 okay so that's like a really sharp line big changes in American history
1:08.0	if you've seen the film the social dilemma you probably remember Jonathan's
1:11.9	searing presentation on teenage depression and
1:14.4	suicide rates, both of which skyrocket along with social media usage. But the correlation
1:19.3	is so distressing, you might reasonably ask, is that correlation or causation.
	...

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