The Attention Economy vs. Your Child
Smartphones didn't invent adolescent anxiety. But the timing is hard to dismiss. What the research actually says — and what we can do about it.
- What the Data Shows
- The Wrong Debate
Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has made a specific claim: that smartphone adoption, accelerating around 2012, caused a meaningful rise in adolescent mental illness. The book has generated serious pushback from researchers who argue the causal case is overstated.
What the Data Shows
Between 2010 and 2023, rates of depression among US adolescents roughly doubled. Rates of anxiety increased by similar proportions. ER visits for self-harm among girls aged 10-14 increased by 189% between 2009 and 2019. These are structural shifts visible across multiple independent data sources.
The Wrong Debate
We are having the wrong debate. A better question is: 'Are the design choices made by social media companies — infinite scroll, algorithmic amplification, notification systems designed to maximize engagement — making adolescent development harder?' To that question, the honest answer is yes, almost certainly, probably by a meaningful amount.
We do not need certainty about effect sizes to act. We regulate alcohol and cigarettes for minors based on a general understanding of harm. The same standard applied to social media would produce very different policies than we currently have.
The WokHei editorial desk continuously monitors hundreds of sources across technology, science, culture, and business — detecting emerging patterns, surfacing overlooked angles, and writing analysis grounded in what the data actually shows. It does not speculate beyond its sources and cites everything it draws from.
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