By Eva Carr and Gil Somers, Illustrations by Anastasia Zhang
On October 8th, 2024, leading figures in the field of youth mental health, Drs. Haidt and Odgers, met to debate how digital technology and social media are contributing to the youth mental health crisis. The two distinguished scholars came together to discuss their differences for the first time at a UVA TYDE event, hosted by Dr. Bethany Teachman, professor of psychology and director of clinical training at UVA, and Dr. Nancy Deutsch, director of Youth-nex. Drs. Haidt and Odgers discussed key areas of disagreement such as why they hold differing beliefs on the causes of rising rates of teen mental health difficulties. Both ended the discussion by providing suggestions on the direction future research should take to find solutions to this pressing issue. If you’d like to watch the whole video, you can find the recording on our website here.
Who are Jon Haidt and Candice Odgers?
Dr. Candice Odgers is a professor in the department of psychological science and director of research and faculty development in the school of social ecology at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Odgers is also director of the Adapt Lab and co-director of CERES. Dr. Odgers’ focus is on how early experiences in social inequalities influence child and adolescent development, with an emphasis on how digital technologies can be leveraged to understand and improve the lives of young people, and she is a leading voice on technologies and adolescent development.
Dr. Jonathan Haidt is a Social Psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business and formerly taught here at UVA in the Department of Psychology with Dr. Bethany Teachman. Dr. Haidt is the author of multiple New York times best sellers, including his most recent work, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, which has seen extensive press coverage and had a wide impact on how parents see social media and technology. Haidt is one of the leading public voices on the ties between social media and youth mental health.
Is there a youth mental health crisis?
To start, both Haidt and Odgers definitely agree on one thing: there is a rise in youth mental health problems in the U.S. Odgers cites an uptick in emergency room visits and suicide rates among adolescent girls over the past decade as a clear indication of the crisis. Similarly, Haidt notes that around 2012, rates of internalizing disorders started trending upwards, with a steeper uptake for adolescent girls. While the two are in agreement regarding the existence of a crisis, they disagree on what is causing it and how/if technology is playing a role.
What does Odgers say?
According to Odgers, the rise in mental health issues in teens is clear, and has been clear for the last decade: there is an increase in emergency room visits and suicide in young girls. However, there are some positive changes within the last decade as well, such as the increase in willingness of young people to talk about mental health. Additionally, annual screenings for depression and anxiety among young people, especially girls, have been institutionalized with the affordable care act, making it easier for people to access the help they need.
Odgers also says that the DSM-5 (the manual used to diagnose mental disorders) has changed the definitions for anxiety and depression, which, combined with a willingness to talk about mental health issues and an increase in mental health screening, could be part of why we are seeing the rise in mental health issues in young people.
In other words, if people are more open about their mental health issues and we are looking for them readily, then it makes sense that there would be a rise in mental health issues being reported. Essentially, Odgers is saying that it may not be that there are more mental health issues now than there were before, but that there are just more people seeking treatment for them.
Odgers notes that there is an increased rise in mental health issues in adults as well and that while it’s important to recognize the mental crisis in youth at the moment, we should remember and include in the conversation the rise in mental health issues among adults, as those affect youth as well.
What does Haidt say?
Haidt believes that the rise in mental health problems during the early twenty first century is not a result of better mental-health awareness and services. Instead, he argues that the significant increase in internalizing disorders observed in 2012 is no coincidence and that this increase is a direct response to the popularization of the smart-phone during that period. Furthermore, Haidt looks towards cross-cultural differences in mental health as a key evidence for the social-media driven mental health crisis. Studies done on the incidence of suicide rates show that the U.S. and many Scandanavian countries show a large increase in suicide rates starting around 2010, whereas many non-western countries are not seeing the same increase.
Haidt’s argument is twofold: first, he asserts that the increase in suicide rates across multiple countries shows that the increase in reported mental health issues cannot just be due to factors restricted to the U.S., such as the Affordable Care Act. Second, Haidt says that the discrepancy in suicide rates across cultures is because teens in more Westernized countries have more free time than their non-western counterparts, who tend to have more restrictive values on free time, meaning western teens have more time to spend on smartphones and social media.
Essentially, he is claiming that the increase in accessibility of smartphones and subsequent use of social media is causing mental health problems. This is fundamentally different from Odger’s belief that there is less of an increase in mental health problems themselves, and more of an increase in the seeking and accessing of mental health services among teens. This is a key area of disagreement for the two professionals who hold differing views on the extent to which youth technology use aligns with the changes observed in the current mental health crises.
Does Social Media Play a Role?
Unavoidably, youth technology use means more teens are using social media. One of the most contested topics in the field of teen mental health right now is the extent to which social media is causing or contributing to increases in mental health issues. Both Haidt and Odgers acknowledge the potential harms of social media use and agree that tech companies need to do better at protecting their young users. But they differ in their belief of the role social media is playing in mental health.
Haidt believes that social media is directly harming teen mental health. He cites a recent lawsuit in which New Mexico State is suing Snapchat for enabling large scale sextortion, where there has been over 10,000 reports of sextortion a month. Additionally, Haidt asserts that sexual harassment occurs on a large scale on Meta platforms such as Instagram. High rares of online sexual harassment is Haidt’s proof that social media platforms are causing “harm to children on an industrial scale”. He argues that the exploitation teens are experiencing online is certainly causing an increase in mental health issues.
Odgers, on the other hand, argues that while there is a teen mental health crisis, the evidence doesn’t point toward social media being the cause. She asserts that current research has only been able to show a correlation relationship between the two, and, further, that 90% of these studies cannot disentangle cause from effect. In other words, she looks towards the lack of evidence on social media causing mental health problems to support her position that social media may not be as harmful as some think.
She proposes the idea that social media might actually pose certain benefits for teens, especially for those who might be seeking support in online communities. Teens with marginalized identities, for example, might show substantial gains from using social media because these online platforms provide the opportunity to explore and connect with supportive communities. Thus, banning social media altogether may prevent teens who are struggling with various identity-related issues from finding the necessary support and acceptance that they might not have access to otherwise.
Problems with the Available Data
One of main reasons why these two experts disagree on such a cornerstone issue is the differing evidence available on whether social media is causing poor mental health among youth. Odgers proposes that instead of social media causing poor mental health, poor mental health is causing problematic engagement on social media platforms that can lead to extortion and other maladaptive online behaviors.
Haidt also sees limitations in the available data. He points out that meta analyses analyzing the effects of tech use are only capturing the general use of digital devices through broad metrics such as screen time, rather than more precise measurements that would differentiate between social media use and other activities. Under this perspective, the current research is only capturing a portion of what’s truly going on, leaving us with unsubstantiated opinions on teen tech use.
Despite their differences, both Haidt and Odgers agreed that more research is needed to have a clearer understanding of the role that social media plays in youth mental health.
Is there a Policy Solution??
When it comes to what, or whether, policies should be implemented, Odgers and Haidt disagree. To start, Odgers believes bans on social media are ineffective because teens will likely continue to access it anyways, leaving this environment completely unregulated. In other words, banning social media altogether does not solve the problem of teens being harmed online because elicit use will continue and there will have been no protective policies put in place. This approach, from Odger’s perspective, essentially gives adults a way to pat themselves on the back for a job well done, when in actuality, nothing is solved.
Instead, Odgers advocates that incorporating youth voices in the discussion is vital to understanding how we can better protect teens. She asserts that since it is the young people on these apps witnessing online harassment and understanding how it’s happening, then they are essential in creating policies that actually prevent the harm that has remained pervasive online despite adult efforts. The bottom line for her is that since it’s youth mental health on the line, then they should have a voice in this too.
On the other hand, Haidt calls for what he refers to as “norms” (as opposed to “bans”): first, young people should not have a smartphone before high school; second, young people should not have social media accounts before the age of sixteen; third, schools should be phone free (something the two do agree on); and finally, children should be given more independence and time for free play.
The bottom line is that there are rising mental health concerns for young people, and social media may or may not be playing a key role. Haidt would likely say that social media is the direct cause of this rise. Odgers however, would argue that social media isn’t necessarily causing these problems, and that if we focus solely on social media as the cause of the rise in mental health issues in young people, we may miss what’s really going on. Both agree that the issue requires further research to better understand how to meet the needs of struggling youth.
