The author of a best-selling book fuelling a global push to ban kids from social media and smartphones has privately accused dissenting academics of concealing evidence that would support his case, according to emails sent to an Australian politician.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness author and New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been at the forefront of a international public debate over the harms caused to children by social media and smartphone use.
Haidt argues that there is clear evidence of a causality between social media use and harmful impacts on children. “We are now 12 years into a public health emergency that began around 2012. In The Anxious Generation, I offer a detailed explanation of what caused it (drawing on many academic fields) and a detailed path by which we can reverse it. I know of no plausible alternative explanation, nor have I found anyone offering a realistic alternative pathway out,” he wrote in his newsletter earlier this year.
Haidt’s side of this debate has been winning. His public advocacy has helped support initiatives from governments like Australia’s to limit or ban kids from social media. But he, too, has faced opposition from other researchers and academics who say the evidence is far less clear cut than Haidt suggests.
Publicly, Haidt is magnanimous about “sceptics” and their contribution to academic debate. “We certainly need sceptics to challenge alarm-ringers, who sometimes do ring false alarms. God bless the sceptics,” he said.
But in private, Haidt’s tone is much more disparaging and suspicious. Emails between the author and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas obtained by Crikey through a freedom of information request show how Haidt lobbied the Australian politician to ignore critics.
“If you face critics who say that the data is ‘just correlation’ and there is no evidence of causation, don’t worry. [Researcher] Zach [Rausch] and I have a ton of evidence and we will be bringing out a lot more in the next few months,” Haidt wrote.
“We can show exactly how a small group of researchers consistently buries the effects in datasets,” he alleged.
Haidt did not respond to an emailed request for comment about his claims or specific examples of what he alleged.
Crikey contacted several people who Haidt had previously called out by name as “sceptics” to see their response to these whispered allegations. Each recognised the complexity of the body of research but refuted Haidt’s claims that his evidence supports such unequivocal conclusions.
Crikey is publishing their responses in full (with some light editing for readability).
Professor Candice L. Odgers, University of California, Irvine’s director of research and faculty development, School of Social Ecology and professor of psychological science and informatics
It is shocking that Haidt refers to having a “ton of evidence” and claims that there is a “small group of people who bury effects”. To be clear, his views are not opposed by a small group of sceptics. Instead, his messaging runs counter to the scientific consensus that has been reached to date by the field, including from the National Academies of Sciences who convened an expert committee and spent a year considering this question. It released this report in December 2023, and concluded that:
Available research that links social media to health shows small effects and weak associations, which may be influenced by a combination of good and bad experiences. Contrary to the current cultural narrative that social media is universally harmful to adolescents, the reality is more complicated.
More recently, in October 2024, the Lancet Commission on Self Harm released its report, which stated that while potential vulnerabilities related to social media use have sparked much debate:
Research on the effects of social media has so far produced mixed results. Indeed, for some young people, it might have benefits, facilitating connections for those who are isolated, providing online support networks, and delivering therapies.
This conclusion was consistent with the findings from a number of large scale meta-analyses and reviews, including, for example:
- Hancock et al. 2022. Psychological Well-being and Social Media Use: A Meta-Analysis of Associations between Social Media Use and Depression, Anxiety, Loneliness, Eudaimonic, Hedonic and Social Well-being. Analysed 226 studies and concluded that, across 275,728 participants, social media use was not associated with overall wellbeing, with an effect size equal to approximately zero.
- Valkenburg et al. 2022. Social Media Use and its Impact on Adolescent Mental Health: An Umbrella Review of the Evidence. Reported weak and mixed associations between the use of social networking sites and well-being.
- Orben. 2020. Teenagers, Screens and Social Media: A Narrative Review of Reviews and Key Studies. Reviews 80 systematic reviews and meta-analyses and again concluded that while a small negative correlation between digital technology and adolescent well-being can be located, it is not clear whether the association is driven by other factors.
- Ivie et al. 2020. A Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Adolescent Social Media Use and Depressive Symptoms. This study performed a meta-analysis of 11 studies (10 cross-sectional, 1 longitudinal) from 2012-2020 with a total of 92,371 and cautioned interpretation of an association due to the small effect size and high variability across studies. It concluded that “prevention programs and public policy would be better served focusing on these well-established risk factors with larger effect sizes than contributing to a moral panic about the effect of technology use, especially given the lack of supporting data”.
Findings from this meta-analysis are consistent with the findings from a recent large-scale study where the authors concluded that social media is likely one of the least influential factors related to mental health. That is, if you were making a list of the main factors that contribute to depression and anxiety, social media would not be on the list; although where it may come in, and where it is increasingly being tested, is as a tool for delivering interventions, and reaching young people in distress, like this example.
We need quasi experimental and experimental data. There is currently limited research and virtually no studies that include the 10-13 year olds that everyone is focused on right now. But among the small number of studies performed to date, there does not seem to be cause for alarm from the experimental work. I wrote about this in The Atlantic.
I am happy to talk more if it would be helpful, but this type of purposeful misrepresentation of research represents a brazen attempt to weaponise science to slay social media companies, all under the guise of saving children. I understand the impulse, but sadly we will fail miserably if we hate social media more than we care about young people and supporting their mental health online, and offline.
Professor Andrew Przybylski, University of Oxford professor of human behaviour and technology
To be honest, this is all a bit bizarre. There is a large healthy community of researchers who critically analyse the position and effects of online platforms on humans and society, many based in Australia and New Zealand who share their expert views. As [is] the nature of science, we don’t all agree, but [people are] working diligently to understand mental health and make the online world a better place for young people. Haidt [is] being pretty silly by singling out [a] handful researchers and pretending there’s a small cabal who are criticising him. At the end of the day, he’s making poor arguments, based on inaccurate interpretation of data, and popularising ineffective policy positions. It’s just a shame.
Aaron Brown, New York University and University of California San Diego statistic professor and columnist at publications like Bloomberg
I won’t respond directly to the question of Haidt accusing me of burying effects. I have enough actual critics who speak directly without piecing together separate emails and blog posts — neither of which I’ve seen — to take offense. Haidt is perfectly capable of telling me things to my face if he believes them.
Taking them one at a time, I agree that there has been a lot of criticism of Haidt’s social media work that seems motivated by desire to forestall legislation rather than sincere skepticism about the link between social media use and teenage depression and other mental issues. I’ve also seen considerable commentary that misrepresents Haidt’s positions to make them seem much more authoritarian than they are. I haven’t look hard enough to have an opinion about whether this is a small group of researchers, an industry-encouraged effort or an ideologically motivated objection to government regulation.
On the other hand, I also see quite a bit of legitimate dissent, some from people who disagree with the social psychology, some from people who have different explanations for the data.
On the issue of listing me as a sceptic, that’s fair. I have no useful opinion on the relation between social media use and teenage depression. My point is that Haidt claims strong scientific support from a large number of studies that range from appallingly bad to weak. He has a few good studies, but none that support his view, and the best ones contradict it. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, only that he does not have the weight of the evidence on his side. If you believe him it’s because you trust his judgment on social psychology — and he is a very smart guy who is usually right — not because the science proves him right.
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