Those who blame social media and iPhones for teens’ depression admit the effect is small – even when they ignore everything else

Then, they turn around and pretend screens are the only cause.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, in a particularly strange new post, tries to prove that because her limited investigation uncovers no other factor, “the surge in teen depression” must be “caused by the rise of smartphones and social media.”

No, it isn’t – according to Twenge herself

In a rare analytical paper, Twenge and fellow psychologist Jonathan Haidt estimate the maximum raw correlation (the crude “r-value”) of teenagers’ social media use with their poor mental health is a small 0.10 to 0.15.

That means social media’s potential causal effect (the more rigorous “R-squared value”) – even assessing social media alone as if no other issue affected teens – would explain at most 1% to 2% of teens’ depression.

That’s too small an effect even to detect, let alone create a national hullaballoo over and push policies to fix.

Further, had Twenge and Haidt included parental abuses, sexual victimizations, and assessments of suicide attempts and self-harm, they would have put social media’s effect at near zero.

But even citing their own exaggerated effects, social media not only can’t possibly explain any significant amount of teen’s depression, it can’t explain the recent increases, either. (We should not accept Twenge’s and Haidt’s advocacy for weakened scientific standards to accommodate their tiny-association notions. Social science needs more rigor and precise specifications, not more permissiveness and bigger piles of invalid, unreplicable “studies.”)

Girls as one example

I went over this “effect size” problem with girls’ increased depression in a previous substack. One trend far more compelling than social media is the explosion in drug and alcohol abuse among grownups of the age to be parents, parents’ partners, relatives, teachers, etc., as Gen Z grew up. One measure is overdose deaths and ER cases involving age 30-64:

243,000 in 2002

465,000 in 2010

1,111,000 in 2021

This is just the tip of soaring adult addiction teens endure in their homes and communities. In 2022 alone, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates a record peak of over 5 million hospital ER treatments of adults age 26-64 for all illicit-drug-related issues. Yet, Twenge insists that couldn’t possibly be why girls are more depressed.

When asked on the massive 2021 Centers for Disease Control survey, 62% of girls cited abuses by parents and household grownups, accounting for 19% of their feelings of depression – 13 times more than attributable to all screen time put together. Better questions for future surveys would query teens directly on grownups’ drug/alcohol abuse and then match their answers to those on poor mental health and suicidality.

LGBTQ youth: the same issues arise

For now, let’s take another group whose increased depression Twenge blames entirely on social media: LGBTQ teens.

“It’s commonly argued that LGBT teens gain mental health benefits from social media access.” Twenge declares. “If that is true for LGBT teens as a group, their rates of depression should decline — or at least increase less than straight teens’ — as social media became more widespread.”

Again: no, they shouldn’t, according to Twenge’s own analysis confirming major reviews showing the effects of social media and smartphones on teens’ mental health are too small to detect, let alone explain anything.

After ignoring massive attacks on LGBTQ lives and rights in the Trump and Red-state era to claim that life has gotten sunnier for non-binary teens, Twenge’s speculation once again is a non-sequitur:

“It seems much more likely that both LGB and straight teens were affected by the same trends: More time online, less time with friends in person, and less time sleeping. That’s a terrible formula for mental health no matter what your sexual orientation.”

Again: no. While Twenge cites CDC surveys, she completely ignores what LGB teens [the CDC did not separate transgender or questioning youth] told the CDC’s 2021 survey – loud and clear – is a real factor in their poor mental health (and lack of sleep, and suicidality, and self-harm): bullying and violence by parents and household adults, reported by a staggering 74% of LGB respondents.

The appalling results: 86% of frequently-abused LGB teens reported poor mental health, triple the proportion for their non-abused counterparts. LGB teen responses associated 17.5% of their depression with grownup abuses, compared to 0.2% (that is, just about “none”) with social media screen time. As readers can see from these numbers, there remains a lot we don’t know about what drives teens’ depression.

As for lack of sleep, a whopping 76% of frequently abused and 65% of sometimes-abused LGB teens reported fewer than 6 hours a night, far higher than for non-abused LGB teens. Likewise, of the most parentally-abused LGB teens, 53% attempted suicide and 25% self-harm, compared to 7% (attempted suicide) and less than 1% (self-harmed) among non-abused LGB teens.

Non-abused LGB teens are no more suicidal and self-harming than straight teens as a whole – a highly useful finding. Even Surgeon General Vivek Murtha, who unconscionably refuses to talk about adult-inflicted abuses on teens, singularly acknowledged (buried in a 2022 report) that for LGBTQ students, “74% reported emotional abuse by a parent” compared to “50% of heterosexual students,” which he linked to LGBTQ teens’ poorer mental health. As far as I can find, Murtha never mentions that publicly.

Meanwhile, the CDC’s results for screen time are surprising. Of the LGB teens who never or rarely go online, 70% report getting less than 6 hours’ sleep a night, versus 60% of those who spend 1-4 hours per day using social media, and 65% of those who spend 5+ hours a day on social media.

Similarly, 39% of LGB teens who never/rarely use social media attempted suicide and 13% self-harmed, compared to 22% (attempted suicide) and 7% (self-harmed) of those on social media 5+ hours a day.

Twenge yet again completely ignores these findings from the CDC survey she cites. Against clear evidence that not using screens accompanies higher risks of attempted suicide, self-harm, sleeplessness, and other troubles in the only survey to query these issues, Twenge insists that being online can’t be a protective factor for LGB teens.

Enough non-science

Social media blamers have wildly overstated their case – even according to their own rare scientific analyses (which suspiciously wind up arguing that their pet theories should enjoy more permissive standards).

No doubt: popular authorities, media, and politicians would much rather point fingers at easy pop-culture villains like teens and social-media than confront distressing, unpopular real-life crises like grownups’ addictions and abuses. That’s why the obsession with social media is a dangerous distraction from the tough analyses filling in the huge gaps regarding mental health, drug/alcohol debilitation, bullying, and violent abuses across all ages.