The Washington Post dishonestly claimed on Monday that there is no “clear scientific evidence that social media is causing mental health issues among young people” in a misleading article that pushes back against the increasingly popular anti-social media movement.
The piece follows Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s op-ed in the New York Times on Monday urging Congress to add warning labels stating that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” He also declared that the mental health crisis in young people is an “emergency” and requires swift action. Given that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms, the urgency of his pronouncement is justified.
The Washington Post’s article starts by referencing a psychological study conducted at the University of Oxford that properly notes that the datasets pertaining to youth mental health and social media “are cross-sectional and therefore only provide correlational evidence, making it difficult to pinpoint causes and effects.”
There is no doubt a “correlation doesn’t equal causation” problem here: Does social media cause depression and anxiety, or do individuals with depression and anxiety disproportionately use social media?
There’s no concrete answer to that question, considering the relative lack of studies on the topic. The article erroneously weaponizes this fact when it references experts saying that “it’s too early to make sweeping statements about kids and social media.”
Murthy saw this argument coming from a mile away. No one in the country is better equipped to understand the limitations of quantitative medical data than he is.
He easily debunks the article’s faulty logic in the very first paragraph of his op-ed. He writes, “One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.”
Given the clear correlation between social media and depression, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disclosing that the number of suicides in females aged 15-24 has increased by 87% in the last 20 years, it’s clear that this crisis requires proactive rather than reactive policy.
This “it’s too early” rhetoric is equally irrational and dangerous.
But what might make even less sense is the free speech argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation linked in that same third paragraph.
The San Francisco-based nonprofit group that promotes “internet civil liberties” claims that Murthy’s decision was “shameful fear-mongering” and that social media provides online platforms necessary for teenagers. The EFF cites a survey it conducted featuring responses from thousands of young adults ranging from 15 to 20. Overwhelmingly, the respondents said that social media helps them and can provide a sense of community.
This argument holds up to a certain extent. A common predicament with teenagers and social media is that all their friends are on it. Nobody wants to be an outsider, and no parent wants to alienate their children from their peers by imposing limits upon them.
Sympathizing with these parents is justifiable, given that many are in a lose-lose situation. Another Washington Post article about social media from mid-April cited a study showing that 64% of adults think social media has a “mostly negative impact on life in this country.”
Though the EFF and the teenagers they interviewed think that social media helps more than it hurts, it’s necessary to listen to the adults in the room on this one. Sometimes the best way to protect children is to tell them “no,” even when it’s uncomfortable.
And since that same earlier article from the Washington Post also reveals that experts say infinite scrolling releases dopamine and threatens relative addiction, it’s even more important to do so.
Though such a blatant contradiction between the two articles should render yesterday’s attack on Murthy objectively worthless, that’s not even remotely close to being the end of the story. Persistent social media use also threatens children’s attention spans. Increasingly poor results in public schools may have something to do with our children substituting playing outside and reading books for scrolling on TikTok.
The article published yesterday also discusses another key culprit: Social media, as the Washington Post oddly puts it, “leaves some people feeling bad.” Murthy’s op-ed references that nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies. Downplaying such a sad reality is not only shameful but completely ignorant of the plights of young people.
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Comparison has long been the thief of joy. There should be no confusion regarding the fact that teenagers perpetually consuming content from celebrities and influencers will indeed make them feel worse about themselves. Leftist publications such as the Washington Post claim to care about young women and girls but are content to promote perspectives that diminish rather than nurture their sense of self, all in the name of technology companies reaping large profits.
It has long been said that the best way to judge a society is to see how it protects its children. Dishonorable and misleading statements such as the one touted last night by the Washington Post ensure that we sadly still have a long way to go.