The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
[READ IN FULL AS A TEXT-EXTRACTABLE PDF OF THE REVIEW, hosted for a University of Wisconsin course and footed 'This article has been excerpted for PSY 532'. IT IS THEREFORE AN EXCERPTED COURSE COPY RATHER THAN CERTAINLY THE COMPLETE TEXT, and any use of it must say so. The excerpt carries the standfirst, the argument and the closing section. REFERENCE NUMBERS 1 TO 7 APPEAR IN THE TEXT BUT THE NUMBERED REFERENCE LIST WAS NOT IN THE EXCERPT, so none of the seven works it cites can be named from it] Odgers, C. L. (2024). 'The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?' Nature, 628, 29-30. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00902-2. NOT A STUDY: an invited book review in Nature by a named researcher in the field, and the most prominent published criticism of the seed book. HER CORE CHARGE, VERBATIM: 'the book's repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children's brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.' On the standard of proof: 'Such serious claims require serious evidence.' On what the field produced, and she includes herself in it: 'Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.' THAT LAST CLAUSE IS A CLAIM ABOUT DIRECTION, not only about size, and it is the sharpest disagreement in the file. THE TWO THINGS EVERY SUMMARY DROPS AND THIS ENTRY WILL NOT. One, she does NOT dispute the trend: 'A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer.' Two, she agrees with part of the policy programme: 'Two things can be independently true about social media. First, that there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children's brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, that considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them. Many of Haidt's solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice, or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.' TWO FURTHER EVIDENCE CLAIMS IN THE EXCERPT MAY NOT BE CITED TO A NAMED STUDY, because both are keyed by number to the missing reference list: an analysis across 72 countries reporting no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the global rollout of social media, and a statement that the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital technology use. Both are high-value and both need their primary source retrieved first. DO NOT GUESS WHICH PAPERS THEY ARE. ONE FACT ABOUT THE BOOK, stated as a fact about the book and not as a criticism of anyone: a search of the complete text of the seed book, including notes and references, finds her name zero times, and her review is neither cited nor answered in it. The review appeared in the month of publication, so the book could not have answered the review itself.
[READ IN FULL AS A TEXT-EXTRACTABLE PDF OF THE REVIEW, hosted for a University of Wisconsin course and footed 'This article has been excerpted for PSY 532'. IT IS THEREFORE AN EXCERPTED COURSE COPY RATHER THAN CERTAINLY THE COMPLETE TEXT, and any use of it must say so. The excerpt carries the standfirst, the argument and the closing section. REFERENCE NUMBERS 1 TO 7 APPEAR IN THE TEXT BUT THE NUMBERED REFERENCE LIST WAS NOT IN THE EXCERPT, so none of the seven works it cites can be named from it] Odgers, C. L. (2024). 'The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?' Nature, 628, 29-30. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00902-2. NOT A STUDY: an invited book review in Nature by a named researcher in the field, and the most prominent published criticism of the seed book. HER CORE CHARGE, VERBATIM: 'the book's repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children's brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.' On the standard of proof: 'Such serious claims require serious evidence.' On what the field produced, and she includes herself in it: 'Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.' THAT LAST CLAUSE IS A CLAIM ABOUT DIRECTION, not only about size, and it is the sharpest disagreement in the file. THE TWO THINGS EVERY SUMMARY DROPS AND THIS ENTRY WILL NOT. One, she does NOT dispute the trend: 'A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer.' Two, she agrees with part of the policy programme: 'Two things can be independently true about social media. First, that there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children's brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, that considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them. Many of Haidt's solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice, or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.' TWO FURTHER EVIDENCE CLAIMS IN THE EXCERPT MAY NOT BE CITED TO A NAMED STUDY, because both are keyed by number to the missing reference list: an analysis across 72 countries reporting no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the global rollout of social media, and a statement that the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital technology use. Both are high-value and both need their primary source retrieved first. DO NOT GUESS WHICH PAPERS THEY ARE. ONE FACT ABOUT THE BOOK, stated as a fact about the book and not as a criticism of anyone: a search of the complete text of the seed book, including notes and references, finds her name zero times, and her review is neither cited nor answered in it. The review appeared in the month of publication, so the book could not have answered the review itself.
Written from the rEAD IN FULL AS A TEXT-EXTRACTABLE PDF OF THE REVIEW, hosted for a University of Wisconsin course and footed 'This article has been excerpted for PSY 532'. IT IS THEREFORE AN EXCERPTED COURSE COPY RATHER THAN CERTAINLY THE COMPLETE TEXT, and any use of it must say so. The excerpt carries the standfirst, the argument and the closing section. REFERENCE NUMBERS 1 TO 7 APPEAR IN THE TEXT BUT THE NUMBERED REFERENCE LIST WAS NOT IN THE EXCERPT, so none of the seven works it cites can be named from it.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Odgers, C. L. (2024). The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? Nature, 628, 29-30. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00902-2