Speaker
Candice Odgers
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1 episodes
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1
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Longitudinal research finds social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health and is cited as one of the least influential factors across multiple studies.
Over the past 20 years, rates of teen violence, alcohol use, and pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows, and current teens are the most educated generation in terms of high school graduation.
Caregiver mental health is described as the most important predictor of teen mental health by far, making the adult mental health crisis central to understanding teen distress.
The correlation between screen time and poor teen outcomes accounts for less than 1% of the variation — the same size as correlations found for wearing glasses, eating potato chips, or being left-handed.
Experimental studies randomly assigning adults to give up social media, as well as smartphone ban studies in schools, find average effects on mental health, learning, attendance, and bullying that are zero or close to zero.
A study published in JAMA found that between 2011 and 2021, deaths among parents due to firearms and drug overdoses more than doubled, illustrating the depth of the adult mental health crisis.
The ratio of counselors to students in US middle schools is 1 to 500, highlighting the chronic underinvestment in youth mental health support infrastructure.
After Australia's social media ban for under-16s took effect, tracking data showed that over 70% of affected young people were still accessing the platforms.
Adult suicide in the United States has been increasing since 1999, predating the rise of social media, and the youth suicide uptick since 2008 closely mirrors this adult trend.
Depression is one of the leading causes of disability in the world, making accurate identification of its causes critical rather than allowing misleading narratives to redirect policy efforts.
In California and Texas, approximately 70% of high school students now identify with a group that has been traditionally minoritized or discriminated against, a demographic shift relevant to understanding teen mental health.
Research finds that depressed girls go on to use social media more, but social media use does not meaningfully predict future mental health problems — indicating the direction of effect is often reversed.
Early data from Australia's social media ban for under-16s showed no changes in levels of online bullying, calling into question the effectiveness of the policy.
After phone bans were implemented in Florida schools, suspensions increased, disproportionately affecting Black and Brown students — an unintended harm of the policy.
In longitudinal studies, social media fails to emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health. The correlations found are less than 1% of the variation in outcomes — the same size as correlations found for being left-handed or eating potato chips.
Phone bans in schools are costing millions and producing perverse outcomes: in Florida, suspensions rose immediately after bans, disproportionately hitting Black and Brown students. Meanwhile, kids are putting old phones and calculators into Yonder pouches.
Smartphones and social media have not destroyed a generation — the data simply doesn't support it. After 25 years of longitudinal research tracking thousands of teens daily, Candice Odgers says the stories we keep hearing are a massive mismatch with reality.
Teen violence, alcohol use, and pregnancy rates have plummeted to historic lows over the past 20 years. Today's teens are the most educated generation ever — facts buried beneath fear-based narratives.
Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-16s, but on day one, teens lost their accounts — and with them, parental controls, content filters, and safety protocols. Over 70% are still on the platforms. The solution: harvest everyone's biometric data.
The counselor-to-student ratio in US middle schools is 1 to 500. Spending millions on Yonder pouches doesn't fix that. Odgers proposes hiring teachers and counselors, building youth drop-in centers, and funding it all with a tax on Big Tech.
The fear cycle is predictable: video games caused violence, then screens caused everything, then social media caused depression in girls, and now AI is the new target. Each moral panic follows the same pattern and conveniently obscures more complex causes.
Haidt's Anxious Generation maps rising teen depression against rising smartphone use in compelling graphs. Odgers says this kind of statistical storytelling is misleading — axes get cherry-picked, lines get manipulated, and people are being scared with cooked data.
Teens are primarily listening to music and consuming content online, not creating it. Social media is more like television than the interactive social platform adults imagine — and real social interaction happens in small Discord and group chat spaces with people they know offline.
Teens will be enthusiastic early adopters of AI, tech companies can't be trusted to set appropriate guardrails, and banning won't work. The urgent task is building digital literacy and safety education before AI amplifies existing inequalities in education and employment.
The single most powerful thing a parent can do when giving a child a phone: promise that if something bad happens online and they tell you, you will never take the device away as punishment. Teens don't tell adults about online harm because they fear losing access.
Instead of prosecuting online harm and regulating tech companies, adults are banning teens from the digital spaces where they socialize, find culture, and sometimes escape abuse. Adults broke the internet and are now trying to fix it by kicking out kids.
Odgers began her career working with sexually exploited youth in Vancouver courtrooms, not studying tech. She adopted mobile phones in 2008 purely as a better measurement tool for studying teens' daily lives — and ended up with a front-row seat to the rise of social media.
No single study has tested whether banning social media actually improves teen mental health. When adults are randomly assigned to quit social media in experiments, the average effect is zero or indistinguishable from zero.
The biggest predictor of teen mental health is caregiver mental health — and adults in America have been in serious, sustained distress since 1999. Between 2011 and 2021, parental deaths from overdoses and firearms more than doubled.
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What they talk about
- Health & Fitness 25%
- Society & Culture 25%
- Technology 25%
- Science 17%
- Government 8%
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