When it comes to mental health, is digital technology a culprit or scapegoat? Bianca Castillo/Unsplash
Even a casual follower of the news over the last few years is likely to have encountered stories about research showing that digital technologies like social media and smartphones are harming young people’s mental health. Rates of depression and suicide among young people have risen steadily since the mid-2000s, around the time that the first smartphones and social media platforms were being released. These technologies have become ubiquitous, and young people’s distress has continued to increase since then.
Hearing a ‘fact’ repeated enough times across enough sources, especially news and exposé, can mean it can be accepted without question by the general public. Such is the question for the link between young people’s use of social media and poor mental health. This The Conversation piece suggests the claim is based on flawed data. We have included a link to one related item.
In an effort to protect young people from the harms of digital tech, some politicians have introduced legislation that would, among other things, automatically limit users’ time spent on a social media platform to 30 minutes a day. If the evidence is so definitive that digital technology is harming America’s youth in such substantial ways, then reducing young people’s use of these devices could be one of the most important public health interventions in American history.
There’s just one problem: The evidence for a link between time spent using technology and mental health is fatally flawed.
