How social media access prevents teen suicide – particularly by younger teens
The obvious, yet ignored findings from the CDC’s survey are compelling
My last post raised a major mystery in the Centers for Disease Control’s definitive 2021 Adolescent Behavior and Experiences Survey with grave implications: why, compared to teens who rarely or never go online, teens who go online the most report MUCH MORE depression and suicidal thoughts yet MANY FEWER suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Here is a more detailed picture:
These percentages result from the same 7,000 teens answering the same questions from the same CDC Survey — yet, how can this be? Depression is considered the most powerful predictor of suicide. Yet, depressed teens who rarely/never go online are far MORE likely to actually attempt suicide than depressed teens who frequently go online.
This post explores what this huge contradiction tells us about how teens actually use social media — as opposed to the current panic. At first, I thought that teens who go online a lot might obtain curative mental health services there, deterring their depressed fraction for going on to attempt suicide. True, depressed teens are 4.6 times more likely to get mental health services online (depressed girls, 8.5 times more likely) than non-depressed teens – a fact none of those concerned about “teen suicide” (especially by girls) seem at all interested in exploring. However, depressed teens who rarely/never go online are equally likely to obtain mental health services online compared to teens who are frequently online, so the mystery remains.
However, the key seems to relate to a finding in the 2023 Pew Research study, which found a large majority of teens (including 77% of girls) reporting that social media keep them in contact with “people who can support them through tough times.” The CDC survey shows that just 45% of depressed teens who rarely/never go online report being in regular contact friends, family, and groups, compared to 67% of depressed teens who frequently go online. This problem is especially acute for depressed teens under age 16 who rarely/never go online, just 30% of whom maintain regular social contacts, compared to 66% of under-16 teens who frequently go online.
The critical role of social media and online access in keeping depressed and potentially suicidal teens (especially younger ones) from actually attempting and committing suicide by keeping them in contact with supportive friends, family, and groups – compared to the much greater isolation of teens who rarely/never go online – has been COMPLETELY overlooked in the political stampede to ban younger teens from going online. The best information we have is that social media access, while troubling for a small fraction of youth, is a deterrent to suicide and self-injury for depressed teens as a whole.
The next post will examine the very disturbing real reasons, again from the CDC survey, that many teens are depressed and some consider and attempt suicide – and the also-disturbing insistence by authorities to ignore compelling realities teens are clearly telling us they face.
Thank you Dr. Stein for the reply (see below). First, my many posts on the subject never remotely implied anyone is an incompetent idiot or myself a towering genius; you’re the one indulging ad-hominem condescension.
Second, Haidt, Twenge, and everyone cite the same CDC survey I do, but only a few selected questions rather than the entire survey challenging their claims. If the National Academies did graph the CDC findings on social media and suicide and self-harm, as you and I both wish, they would show adolescents who are NOT on-screen are most at risk by far for suicide, self-harm, and major dangers.
Third, the Gallup survey you cite mashes “suicidal thoughts” with much-rarer self-harm into one number and then miscites its own numbers. What we need are actual suicide attempts and self-harm shown separately, as the CDC does.
Fourth, Haidt certainly does argue for “no social media before 16” – none of which, including legislation passed and pending, makes the distinctions for teens at risk you now argue for. Haidt’s claims about liberal teens are ideologically, not evidence, driven. See also psychologist Chris Ferguson’s meta-analyses debunking scores of “studies.”
Finally, no one – not Haidt or Twenge, or anyone else I can find – has provided evidence beyond “correlation equals causation” (Haidt promises causation, then doesn’t provide it). Instead, Twenge and Haidt correctly acknowledge the “correlation between social media” use and teens’ happiness is “small,” but she then states a “positive correlation” is all that matters. Of course, small correlates don’t prove causation, either, and cannot cause big effects or changes. Then, presenting no evidence of causality – not even correlation – all sweepingly blame social media for the teen suicide increase.
When 55% of teens (including 62% of girls and 74% of LGBQs) report abuse by parents and household adults, and parent/grownup abuse is associated with 13 times more depression and infinitely more suicide and self-harm by teens than anything remotely attributable to social media, it doesn’t take a “towering genius” to argue that we should prioritize analyzing domestic abuse, along with parents’ soaring drug-alcohol crises across the Anglo world. From 2011 through 2021, when teen depression and suicide rose, an appalling 722,000 US adults ages 30-59 died from self-inflicted overdoses and suicides, equivalent to the entire middle-aged population of Nebraska gone. Haidt’s claim that the virtual world is more dangerous to teens than the physical world is patently ridiculous – though the dangers of both are unconscionably exaggerated.
Bizarrely, major commentators refuse to touch parental issues beyond Twenge’s astonishing insistence that we don’t want to know the larger causes of teen depression. Do you see a Surgeon General’s alert or major commentator analysis of parental abuse/addiction and teen depression/suicide? That dereliction abrogates science and fundamental responsibility for adolescents’ safety. The best evidence (with some inexcusable gaps) indicates that teens’ unhappiness and suicide are functions of larger social forces: rising all-ages addiction, growing awareness of crises such as global injustices and climate change, and more difficult adults, and that social media helps teens deal with that unhappiness.
I posted the following on Jonathan Haidt's After Babel substack:
Why do those on here blame more screen time for more teen suicide and self-harm when the definitive CDC and other surveys show just the opposite? For all ages, sexes, races, and statuses, teens who never/rarely go online (<1 hr/day) suffer greater risk of suicide attempt and self-harm than teens who go online regularly (1-4 hrs/day) or frequently (5+ hrs/day).
The CDC survey consistently shows that teens under age 16 who rarely/never go online suffer the greatest risks of suicide attempt, injurious self-harm, smoking, heroin use, methamphetamine use, cocaine use, school violence, domestic violence, dating violence, rape, gun-carrying, fights, prescription abuse, increased alcohol/drug use, missing school, exercising less than 3 days/week, and having few contacts with supportive people. While some risks like vaping and lack of sleep are similar or worse for online teens, on balance, the worst troubles are concentrated in non-online teens. (I invite downloading and analyzing the full CDC survey and the few broader ones, such as Pew’s.)
Offline teens are slightly more Black or Hispanic, demographics with low suicide rates. Overall, the most troubled teens – those reporting depression, sadness, abuse by parents/adults, suicidal ideation, and female, younger, minority, LGBQ status –are much safer if regularly or frequently online. For example, non-online LGBQ teens who consider suicide are twice as likely as their frequently-online counterparts to attempt suicide and self-harm.
True, the CDC survey associates more screen time with poorer teen mental health. That makes it even more fascinating that the same teens on the same survey associate more screen time with lower risks of suicide attempt, self-harm, and other troubles. Studies fixated on social media missed vital insights into what really generates teens’ unhappiness and how they use social media.
The dangers of both the virtual and real worlds have been wildly exaggerated. Teens don’t need more restrictions.