Jonathan Haidt started a social-media war. Did he win?
How a fight about science and screens got messy, fast.
Are you doomscrolling today? Does the algorithm fill you with dread and anxiety and nausea, and yet you find yourself utterly unable to look away?
I’ve got the story just for you, and it’s not about the election. It’s about mental distress, whether social media causes it, and what the scientific research says about whether social media causes it. These issues have been debated for years, but became an even greater part of the discourse this spring when Jonathan Haidt, the New York University social psychologist, published The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, an instant New York Times best-seller and sensation in parenting circles.
Specifically, I wrote about a study that challenged The Anxious Generation and the fierce, and illuminating, discussion that ensued between Haidt and three other scientists who have competing views on all of the above questions. Here’s a preview from my story in The Chronicle of Higher Education (which is free to read by making an account with your email):
In the debate over whether technology is harming Generation Z, The Anxious Generation’s recommendations — no social media before 16, no smartphones before high school — are gaining traction with parents (and celebrities like Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey). Haidt is being cited in legislative efforts to keep minors off social media in Alabama, Florida, and Australia, and schools are banning phones, another favorite reform of his.
But scholars who study how technology affects youth and well-being — topics on which Haidt has done almost no academic research — accuse him of exploiting parents’ fears. Many other researchers have failed to find persuasive evidence that social media is a major factor in mental-health outcomes. The Anxious Generation, critics say, conflates correlation with causation: Just because smartphone use rose over a period of growing teen depression and anxiety, “the great rewiring of childhood” is not necessarily “causing an epidemic of mental illness,” as the book’s subtitle asserts. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has noted that research “has not shown a causal link,” while lawsuits from dozens of states accuse Facebook and Instagram of making their apps addictive and harmful for children.
Haidt and Ferguson’s clash, in other words, had real-world implications for policy, industry, and parenting. Others jumped into the fray with their own arguments: a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist. Their debate — in which all four ultimately revised their positions to some degree — unfolded in journals and newsletters, on blogs and X and preprint servers, demonstrating how, in today’s information ecosystem, peer review never really ends. Every scientist’s voice can be heard.
Thanks for reading. And happy doomscrolling.