Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Lost in the Cloud

A reader suggested I consider discussing this research report in JAMA Psychiatry.

To summarize, it's a prospective cohort study of U.S. adolescents, that examines the association between time spent on social media and reports of behavioral problems. Contrary to the way this has frequently been reported in popular media, the outcome measure isn't diagnosable mental illness. Rather, it's self reports of so called "internalizing problems," such as social withdrawal and anxiety, and "externalizing problems" such as vandalism and bullying. The investigators find a consistent "dose-response" relationship between time spent on social media and internalizing problems, and co-morbid internalizing and externalizing problems. They don't find a consistent relationship with externalizing problems only.

A prospective cohort study means that they followed individuals over time, in this case three years. The exposure -- time spent on social media -- was assessed in the second year and the outcome in the third year. They adjusted for self-reported problems, and other covariates, in Year 1. All of the variables are self-reported.

The magnitude of the association was pretty impressive. Ten percent of adolescents who reported no social media use reported co-morbid  problems, while 20% who reported 6 hours of use a day or more also reported co-morbid problems.

Does this prove that social media use is causing adolescents to develop emotional and behavioral problems? The authors would like us to think that because they adjusted for the baseline in Year 1 the causal inference is strong. I'm not so sure: it could be that the emotional and behavioral problems were already developing in people who used a lot of social media, or that underreporting was more likely when people were younger, or some other explanation. Nevertheless, it seems intuitively obvious to me that a kid who spends 6 hours a day interacting virtually through a device, quite likely with people she or he has never met personally and who are quite possibly disturbed themselves is not experiencing and optimal socio-emotional environment.

Fortunately the proportion of kids who reported 6 hours of use a day or more was not huge -- 8.4% -- but even the 12% who reported 3-6 hours of use had elevated reports of problems.

I doubt this will surprise anyone but it does remind us that we are in the middle of an immense, global social psychological experiment. The lifeworld has changed suddenly and dramatically and we have no clear idea of where human society is headed. We've already seen that what True Believers once saw as the promise of the Internet -- equalizing access to information, knitting together communities, empowering social and political participation -- has failed catastrophically. The new media do more to spread disinformation, disunite people, and enable manipulation and exploitation, than they do anything to fulfill those wondrous hopes.

I try to be a force for good here but a million of me wouldn't add up to a flatus in a whirlwind. I'm not sure what the solutions might be but this has to be part of the political discussion.

3 comments:

Don Quixote said...

Humans' technological capabilities have always far outpaced their ethical and moral development, which is only now beginning to evolve at large ...

Dr Porkenheimer said...


Do you see a correlation between the rise of social media and the rise of shootings?

The timeline seems perfect

Cervantes said...

I presume you are referring specifically to mass shootings. Many people have asked this question. I would say it's impossible to know for sure. Some of the mass shooters, of course, are just homicidal maniacs and their social media experiences are irrelevant. But some of them were indeed steeped in on-line extremism of one kind or another, and some have even declared that as a motive. The question is whether their violent impulses would have found some other seed to crystallize around in the absence of on-line extremism, or whether in the pre-social media world they would have encountered extremist ideology in some other form. I don't think you can prove the case but it certainly seems on the face of it that social media create a unique kind of risk for anti-social acts.