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 does not make sense: social media, and even more smartphones, can be used in a lot of different ways, and is strongly linked to social behavior of the community you live in. If you are arguing that different societies will not become more anxiogenic at the same time, you cannot also argue that usage of the smartphone, due to a magical reason, turn out to be toxic exactly the same way at the same time for different societies.
What you are saying is both that it is very improbable that every society reacts in the same way when it comes to reaction to globalisation (which, by definition, is affecting the majority of society), but that it is very probable that every society reacts exactly in the same way when it comes to use social media AND ALSO happen to react exactly the same way when adopting smartphones.
I would argue that the first one is way more plausible: globalisation has a stronger chance to affect societies in a similar way than just smartphones, because for globalisation there is an explanation of why they react the same way (a stressful situation is a stressful situation, it does not matter if you are Chinese or Argentinian), while there are no explanation of why all over the world, people started to use the smartphone in a toxic way at the same time, especially if you are pretending that these societies are separated.
> 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,
But that's my point: he is switching to what is more convenient for his conclusion. The elements found in the "focus specifically on the Anglosphere" are NOT the same scale and the same details as in the other society. He just cherry-picks: "this aspect is different, which prove I'm right because US is different than other society, but this aspect is the same, which prove I'm right because these other societies also have smartphones".
> so like I said, I suggest reading them before claiming the situation is murky.
It's interesting that you are saying I haven't read them.
> And he's reviewed those as well: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/why-some-researchers-th...
Yes, I know this article, and it is very disappointing, a lot of his counter-argument either don't understand the initial criticism, or use arguments that apply to his own work (for example, the whole "in social science, we cannot prove causation, so if I say A -> B it's ok, but if you, you say B -> A, then magically it's not ok")
> he 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.
Are you sure you are not seeing just the Haidt bubble? I may myself see the situation through a bubble, but what I see is people who are working in Haidt's field and are saying that his theses are not taken that seriously inside this field. How do you know the "verdict is quite clear"? What does it mean for the long list of experts disagreeing (list long enough that Haidt needed to address them, something that would not happen if "the verdict is quite clear"), do you accuse them of being dishonest or biased? Why is it fine when you are accusing these experts of such dishonesty and not when others suspect that Haidt was honest but not careful enough?
