Are Phones and Social Media the Villains We Think They Are? It’s Complicated.

Hey Dall-E, "create me an image that represents a surprising plot twist in a story about smartphones and social media." 

What if the rise in adolescent mental health issues is driven more by mundane policy shifts rather than smartphones and social media? That’s what David Wallace-Wells argued in his latest opinion piece in the New York Times: Are Smartphones Driving Our Teens to Depression?

The story is simple, familiar, and satisfying: the rise of the smartphone and social media, combined with the front-facing camera and the “like” and “reshare” buttons, lead inexorably to the rise of anxiety, depression and self-harm among young people. It’s more complicated of course, as we discussed a few weeks ago, but it’s a clear story that resonates with much of our experience. It also provides us with a tantalizing set of techno-villains and a convenient scapegoat.

What if it’s not true? What if the truth is mundane, bureaucratic, and boring? According to Wallace-Wells, there is an alternative account we should consider: “In 2011, as part of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a new set of guidelines that recommended that teenage girls should be screened annually for depression by their primary care physicians and that same year required that insurance providers cover such screenings in full. In 2015, H.H.S. finally mandated a coding change, proposed by the World Health Organization almost two decades before, that required hospitals to record whether an injury was self-inflicted or accidental — and which seemingly overnight nearly doubled rates for self-harm across all demographic groups. Soon thereafter, the coding of suicidal ideation was also updated.” That’s a twist!

Should we thank unnamed H.H.S. public health officials for detecting teen mental health issues more accurately rather than blame Meta and the iPhone for causing a crisis? It’s probably not that simple.

Citing a study published last month using eleven years of hospitalization data in New Jersey, Wallace-Wells contends that these policy changes made a stable rate look like a “crisis.” The researchers themselves make a more modest claim: “These results suggest that underlying suicide-related behaviors among children, while alarmingly high, may not have risen as sharply as reported rates suggest. Hence, researchers should approach reported trends cautiously.” That sounds reasonable, right? Just as improving disease detection techniques can create the impression that rates are rising, the reality is often that we are just getting better at finding the disease that was already there in the first place.

The plot thickens: A broader look at the global data shows that some countries with the highest rates of smart phone use, like Denmark, saw their rates of self-harm decrease.

• In Germany, rates have been steady for three decades, with significant declines in the 1980s.

• According to the latest data (just published in February 2024) adolescent suicide deaths in the United States “peaked in 2018 but have declined in recent years.” That sounds like good news. And teens are not using their smartphones any less.

It’s complicated. Far too many young people are suffering from anxiety, depression, and self-harm. But there is no certainty about the cause or causes. We need more research on the impacts of smartphones and social media on adolescent mental health. In the absence of scientific consensus, what can we do?

• Accept ambiguity. Conflicting data and theories mean we can be modest and cautious in our judgments. Yes, there are reasons to be concerned, but there’s good news too. Check out the World Happiness Report. For more than a decade life satisfaction among 15-24 year olds has been improving.

• Focus on children over data. With so much variation in the mental health data depending on location, gender, socio-economic status, etc., let’s focus on our actual children. We can’t do anything about the data, but we can start conversations at home, spend a little more time with our kids, and encourage pro-social behavior.

• Learn. Knowledge is power so use trusted resources like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to learn What to Look For and When to Act. Hopefully you won’t ever need to use this information, but you’ll feel better having it in your back pocket.

Providence High School has been advancing and strengthening how we support our students’ social-emotional learning, mental health, and resiliency. Among other things we

• became the first Work2BeWell school in California and our students were on their first national Teen Advisory Council.

• redesigned our Counseling department to allow students to stay with their counselor throughout their time at Providence which increases our ability to fulfill our promise: know me, care for me, ease my way.

• built our Wellness Center and Ms. Shanica Dale will be our Dean of Wellbeing next year.

• secured a grant from the WellbeingTrust to provide an additional mental health support, Rozalyn Sandville.

• provided Mental Health First Aid training for almost all of our faculty and staff this year from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing.

Go Deeper: I highly recommend the following resources. They don’t agree on everything, but they are all accessible and worth reading.

• To get the perspective of a psychologist who has consulted with independent schools for decades, read anything by Dr. Lisa Damour.

• For the perspective of a social psychologist, read and watch Jonathan Haidt.

• Want something with a higher education slant but for parents, read Julie Lythcott-Haims’ How to Raise and Adult.

• Want something uplifting? Read The Book of Joy, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams.

See you next Saturday,

Scott McLarty
Head of School