(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Essential Sunday Reading: danah boyd (@zephoria) and @candice_odgers rebut @JonHaidt’s “Anxious Generation”

2024-03-31 09:08:01+00:00

Thought: if we are “losing our kids to smartphones” perhaps we as parents should first go looking for them, and then lead the way?

In the same vein as my yesterday’s post, the redoubtable danah boyd comments on Jon Haidt’s new book:

It is deeply frustrating to watch Haidt cherrypick and twist research that I spent half my career in the thick of. I’m so grateful for Candice Odgers’ willingness to challenge him. He’s leading the public down the wrong path by playing into parents’ anxieties. https://www.threads.net/@zephoria/post/C5J3jy2PGa-/

…and links to the same Nature piece as was circulating yesterday on Twitter, by Candice Odgers at Irvine’s School of Social Ecology:

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 peers1. These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message2–5 … https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Nonetheless it is inevitable that the Haidt book will play to the sunday newspapers and talking heads for the next few months.

We in Civil Society will, once again, have to be relentless in combatting gut feelings with both data and the greater benefits to society of enabling people — even children — to communicate.
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/109533
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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