Scapegoating avoids addressing reality

I will include two links in this post. One is text, the other a TED talk - so choose your preference.

The main thread idea of these links runs counter to the popular discourse that banning young people from social media is a rational response to increases in youth presentations of mental illness.

The presenter, Candice L Odgers, is a researcher in the field, who notes correlation in the data but disputes the causation.

Her data indicates that the most accurate predictor of teenage mental liness is not use of smart phones and social media, but is instead the mental health of their carers, the adults in their lives.

To me this actually makes some sense. Teenage suicide rates are concerning, but that data should be viewed in the same context as adult suicide rates and mental illness.

The response to ban teenagers and children from social media is a reductive response that conveniently provides a way of avoiding individual responsibility and the overall social issues in society that affect not only the teenagers and children but their carers as well.

Its convenient to blame social media for social problems, but doing so avoids the more significant causes such as drug addiction, gambling addiction, domestic violence, poverty and econmic stress, job precarity and social divisions and social inequality. Trauma that affects social well being has systemic origins.

Odgers does not let social media off the hook. She agrees that more should be done to address problematic online content. She suggests that it is adults that have broken society and addressing the issue of increased mental illness requires that support should be increased for adults and care givers and that excluding teenagers from social media excludes them from connection with peers and support communities.

No one has started to advocate for banning social media for everyone or that access be controlled or licensed (except the Taliban in Afghanistan).

Certainly the social media mechanism has an amorality embedded and the algorithms maximise profitability in preference to rationality, but this only reflects the nature of our social system.

To change it we should start to be a bit more honest.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

https://www.ted.com/talks/candice_odgers_what_we_re_getting_wrong_about_teens_and_tech