Right now, there are two identically possible situations (well, even more, but you get the jest):
A) smartphone -> depression
B) depression -> smartphone
But the author does not do a good job in explaining why he choose A instead of B, except "it feels logical to me".
It feels like a coin toss. (and sure, the author has some arguments, but they are arguably disputable, more than in other cases where the idea that there is causality ends up being adopted as a consensus)
It does not mean it is impossible to reasonably attribute causality. It just means that the author does a bad job at the "reasonably" part.
This is misleading. They are not "identically possible", which I assume to mean that you think they are "equally plausible". There is more evidence for smartphones and social media causing issues, because we don't see those declines until after the smartphone is introduced, regardless of age.
Furthermore, other factors causing both depression and social media use would have to be cross-cultural because the issue is global. Other than social media, what factors do you know of are cross-cultural? Guess what, they eliminated most of them in prior articles.
Haidt and co have published multiple articles going over the data and the possibilities, so I recommend reading them all before claiming the situation is so murky.
> because we don't see those declines until after the smartphone is introduced, regardless of age.
Again, there are a lot of identically possible explanation: the whole society has changed and became globally more anxiogenic, the measurement of the decline may be biased as people are nowadays more incline to be honest with their mental health or less incline to "shake it off", or ...
> Furthermore, other factors causing both depression and social media use would have to be cross-cultural because the issue is global. Other than social media, what factors do you know of are cross-cultural? Guess what, they eliminated most of them in prior articles.
What do you mean "cross-cultural"? Isn't the study showing that it's mainly a US problem? And how can you have a cross-cultural effect when the usage of the smartphone amongst young people is so linked to cultural trends that are very different from country to country? I have the impression the argumentation jumps from one to the others according to what benefits the authors: if it happens at two places, they say "see, it proves there is no other sources", if it does not happen in other places, they say "sure, but it's just because the smartphone usage is socially different in these countries".
> Haidt and co have published multiple articles going over the data and the possibilities, so I recommend reading them all before claiming the situation is so murky.
And other experts, with similar credentials than Haidt, have been critical of the work. My position is that we should not jump to the conclusion: the jury is still out. Your conclusion seems to be "I choose to trust Haidt and to distrust equivalent scientists, just because Haidt's explanation seems more obvious to me".
It's not one society, it's every society in which smartphones and social media are available. It's simply implausible to suggest that every society on Earth nearly simultaneously became more anxiogenic for no common reason. The common reason very clearly seems to be social media.
> the measurement of the decline may be biased as people are nowadays more incline to be honest with their mental health or less incline to "shake it off", or ...
He covered this in prior articles too.
> What do you mean "cross-cultural"? Isn't the study showing that it's mainly a US problem?
No:
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-il...
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-il...
You're ignoring a whole body of work across a decade, and this article also clearly says these reports are international but he's focusing specifically on the Anglosphere in this article. He literally links to all of the prior work discussing the trends and possible explanations, so like I said, I suggest reading them before claiming the situation is murky.
> And other experts, with similar credentials than Haidt, have been critical of the work.
And he's reviewed those as well: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/why-some-researchers-th...
The jury is not as far out as you think, only a few jurors are holding out but the direction of the verdict is quite clear now.
It's a fair point. But what explains the uptick in depression and mental health issues starting around 2012, disproportionately impacting pre-teen girls and not contained to any geo. The author's entire point is that social media is the only explanation that that has been proposed [1]. Moreover, it's not a far-fetched explanation. He very aware that correlation does not provide causation, and that it could be the other way around. However, no one (according to him) has offered up a theory which explains the data like the social media theory does.
[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
I don't know what is the reality, maybe indeed the smartphone is causing the problem. But the author is just jumping to the conclusion without proper scientifically caution.
There are a lot of other hypothesis that explain exactly the same observations, and that are not far-fetched (as you say, there is none _according to the author_, who then list all of these hypotheses in his rebutal). In his article, he goes through a lot of them but don't address them properly. For example, the more recent social anxiety about climate change is just "I don't think so".
Personally, if I have to bet, I think it is social media. But then, 1) I will not claim "it is social media", just "it may be social media", 2) it would be stupid of me to then isolate smartphone: if it is social media, then forbidding smartphone but not the laptops would be totally useless (and if the argument is turned into "no but the problem is the constant usage all the time, which you cannot do with a laptop", then, again, it's just pure conjecture: it may end up being true, but it is still scientifically incorrect to present these conclusions as scientific)
Banning platforms from allowing under 16s to have accounts is harder because kids will work around it very easily, but I would be happy to see it happen anyway, and made Facebook's problem to deal with.
C) X -> depression AND X -> smartphone
First example, X could be "strongly needs to feel included"
We can't just consider all theories equal because they are all in the realm of the possible.
Some evidence, while not proof, strongly points toward social media being the cause or at least a very strong factor.
I agree with multiple other commenters here, that banning phones in school would be a high reward chances / low risk decision.
We're talking about LOTS of kids getting their mental health damaged, but in many comments I don't hear the sense of urgency, rather a detached a almost snobbish focus on correlation != causality. I think such answers are partially missing the point.
The "smartphone change" is the "what people who don't know sociology think a sociology change looks like". It is still a sociology change, but it's the "nose in the middle of the face".
> I agree with multiple other commenters here, that banning phones in school would be a high reward chances / low risk decision.
And, surprise, I'm 100% for the ban in school too. But we need to solve the problem, not hide it. The problem can be, for example, social media. Banning smartphone at school will not solve the depression crisis, because people will still have their fix on their laptop after school, and will just maintain the toxic social media relationship dynamic in "real life" in school.
If you really care about the kids, you should understand why some people are so unhappy about having a conclusion as naive and simplistic as "let's just ban the smartphone and change nothing in the fundamental ways we are building a society, and I promise you, everything will magically be fine".
(and again, it does not mean smartphones are not part of the equation. But we need to find the real cause, and this is why correlation != causality is important. Nobody cares about the theory, people raise this argument because they know this mistake will have bad consequences)
