Social Media Use by Girls Is Associated With Depression

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The hypothesis here is heavy use of social media by girls is associated with pression. Only a few of the analyses are actualy about social mediates, mostly about screen time. And on the outcome side, they don't just use the questions about depression. They have this one measure of mental it's not even mental health. Itit's got 32 questions on all sorts of things. Only four or five are actually about depression. So this one scale accounts for thousands and thousands of analyses when only a couple are relevant. Anyway, there's a lot of other stuff like this. I'm not accusing them of anything. This is not like they're trying to be devious. The analysis

We are in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. Since 2011, the rate of U.S. hospitalizations for preteen girls who have self-harmed is up 189 percent, and with older teen girls, it’s up 62 percent. Tragically, the numbers on suicides are similar — 151 percent higher for preteen girls, and 70 percent higher for older teen girls. NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has spent the last few years trying to figure out why, working with fellow psychologist Jean Twenge, and he believes social media is to blame. Jonathan and Jean found that the mental health data show a stark contrast between Generation Z and Millennials, unlike any demographic divide researchers have seen since World War II, and the division tracks with a sharp rise in social media use. As Jonathan explains in this interview, disentangling correlation and causation is a persistent research challenge, and the debate on this topic is still in full swing. But as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and the next big thing fine-tune the manipulative and addictive features that pull teens in, we cannot afford to ignore this problem while we sit back and wait for conclusive results. When it comes to children, our standards need to be higher, and our burden of proof lower.