Jonathan Haidt@JonHaidt · Apr 13, 2022

Thread: In the early 2010s, something changed in the wiring of society, and things got weird -- first on campus, then…

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Summary

A scholar summarizes their decade of research across four Atlantic articles examining how social media has contributed to rising mental illness in Gen Z and dysfunction in democratic institutions since the early 2010s, providing open-source Google docs with correlational and experimental evidence while acknowledging counterarguments.

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#1
Thread: In the early 2010s, something changed in the wiring of society, and things got weird -- first on campus, then everywhere. I've been struggling to understand it, writing a series of four articles in @TheAtlantic. 1) In 2015, with @glukianoff: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
#2
2) In 2019, with @TobiasRose theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
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3) In 2021, drawing on work I've been doing with @jean_twenge to document the rise of teen mental illness and its connections to social media usage: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
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4) In 2022, this week, pulling it all together for the first time: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
#5
My mission as a scholar is to use research in social and moral psychology to help important institutions work better. Reforms should be based in evidence. I have gathered the relevant evidence about social media's effects in 3 open source Google docs: [thread continues...]
#6
A) What is happening to the mental health of Gen Z? As late as 2018, many said it was just a moral panic, based on self-report data only. But it's not, as this Google doc shows (with @jean_twenge) tinyurl.com/TeenMentalHeal…
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B) OK, so there's an epidemic of mental illness and suffering in Gen Z, but what is the evidence that social media is a major contributor? There's a lot, both correlational and experimental (with @jean_twenge) tinyurl.com/SocialMediaMen…
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C) OK, so social media may be damaging Gen Z, but what is the evidence that it is damaging democratic institutions and norms? This is a new doc, just launched. Preponderance of evidence points to harm. With @chris_bail: tinyurl.com/PoliticalDysfu…
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D) If you want to see arguments/evidence opposed to me, you can find them in Appendix C of the Political Dysfunction collab review: docs.google.com/document/d/1vV… and also in this essay in the New Yorker, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus: newyorker.com/culture/annals…
#10
E) For my most recent summary of the case, see my Senate testimony on teen mental health: judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/… and see my interview with @lexfridman, where I directly respond to Zuckerberg’s claims that social media is good for teens and democracy: youtube.com/watch?v=f0un-l…
#11
F) And here's my 5th article in @TheAtlantic. @Meta wrote a rebuttal to my Babel essay. Here I respond, bringing in new evidence that polarization IS rising globally, since 2015, and echo chambers ARE real--not for news exposure, but for social networks: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…