Utah Governor Absolutely Positive That Social Media Harms Kids Despite Study After Study After Study After Study After Study Saying He’s Wrong

Overhype

from the do-we-believe-your-kids-or-the-study-looking-at-a-million-kids? dept

Okay, look, at this point, we need to start calling out those in positions of power who insist that it’s unquestionable that social media is harmful to kids when the don’t present any evidence at all to back up those assertions. Because as we’ve been documenting, every single study that comes out these days seems to say the exact opposite. I know that I’ve posted this a few times lately, but I’m going to do so again, because it’s important to understand just how the research consensus is shaping up these days:

• In the fall of 2022, the widely respected Pew Research Center did a massive study on kids and the internet, and found that for a majority of teens, social media was way more helpful than harmful.
• In May of 2023, the American Psychological Association (which has fallen for tech moral panics in the past, such as with video games) released a huge, incredibly detailed, and nuanced report going through all of the evidence, and finding no causal link between social media and harms to teens.
• Soon after that, the US Surgeon General came out with a report which was misrepresented widely in the press. Yet, the details of that report also showed that no causal link could be found between social media and harms to teens. It did still recommend that we act as if there were a link, which was weird and explains the media coverage, but the actual report highlights no causal link, while also pointing out how much benefit teens receive from social media).
• A few months later, an Oxford University study came out covering nearly a million people across 72 countries, noting that it could find no evidence of social media leading to psychological harm.
• The Journal of Pediatrics published a new study in the fall of 2023 again noting that after looking through decades of research, the mental health epidemic faced among young people appears largely due to the lack of open spaces where kids can be kids without parents hovering over them. That report notes that they explored the idea that social media was a part of the problem, but could find no data to support that claim.
• In November of 2023, Oxford University published yet another study, this one focused specifically on screen time, and if increased screen time was found to be damaging to kids, and found no data to support that contention.

That’s not to say there isn’t some sort of mental health crisis going on these days. Almost every expert believes there absolutely is. It’s just that the rush to blame it on social media is simply unsupported by the data. If anything, as the Journal of Pediatrics study shows, it’s the lack of open spaces where kids can be kids without parents watching their every move (which predates the rise of social media) that may contribute the most to the rise in mental health issues among children. Thus, the simplistic, and almost certainly wrong, argument that social media is to blame may even make the problem worse, because social media has become the one place left where kids often can just be kids without parents hovering over them.

Much of the research above — including the APA and Surgeon General’s report — also find that for many teens, social media is actually very useful and helpful for their mental health, in giving them a place to explore, figure out who they are as a person, and to interact with people beyond the narrow set of folks they might meet otherwise.

However, many of the studies also agree that for a small — but still important — group of teens, social media can exacerbate existing mental health problems, when they seek to use it alone as a kind of medication, allowing them to go deeper. And it’s quite clear that we should be looking for, promoting, and encouraging efforts to help those at risk teens, and provide better tools and resources for them.

But that’s very different from insisting (and regulating) social media as if it is universally bad for kids.

That’s all preamble to what this post is actually about. Utah Governor Spencer Cox has already made it clear he hates social media. He signed one of the first bills in the country that (unconstitutionally) tries to ban kids from social media, and mocked those who pointed out it was unconstitutional (we’ll soon find out, as Utah was just sued over that law).

So, I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise when he goes on TV and claims that he’s absolutely positive social media is bad for kids.

“I think it’s obvious to anyone who spends any time on social media or has kids — I have four kids. I’ve seen what’s happened to them as they’ve spent time on social media, and their friends, that this is absolutely causing these terrible increases, these hockey stick-like increases that we are seeing in anxiety, depression, and self-harm amongst our youth,” Cox, the chair of National Governors Association, said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that aired Sunday.

Now, if Meet the Press were actually concerned about accuracy, its host might have, you know, pointed out all the studies that say otherwise, and questioned Cox on how his anecdotal insistence can possibly stand up to all of those studies. But, that’s not how the mainstream media acts these days (and especially not those that have a vested interest in slamming the internet).

Cox went even further, though, insisting not only does it harm kids (despite the evidence to the contrary), but also that big tech knows this and doesn’t care:

“They know this is harming our kids,” Cox said of big tech companies. “They’re covering it up. They’re doing everything possible to take advantage of our kids for their own gain. And we’re not going to stand for that. And so we’re still pushing forward.”

Now, it’s always possible that some companies are doing this, but from what I’ve seen, the opposite is true. The research that has come out to date has shown companies studying this stuff in order to figure out ways to minimize the harm.

Of course, with some of the spin on things like Meta’s internal research (which, again, was to look at ways to minimize any harm), which was falsely portrayed as Meta “covering up” or “ignoring” harm caused to kids, it’s actually now going to drive these companies to do less research, and do less to stop any harms. Because politicians like Cox, and media outlets like NBC, are still going to spin any such research as “proof” of “covering it up.”

The whole thing is stupid beyond belief. The evidence shows what the evidence shows, and it’s that right now there’s a giant moral panic going on. There is no evidence that social media is inherently bad for teenagers. There is a ton of research suggesting it’s helpful for most kids, and that any interventions should be clearly targeted to the small group of at risk kids.

But, Spencer Cox is absolutely positive he’s right, apparently because of what he has observed with a tosample size of his own kids. Maybe, given all of these studies, it suggests that Cox has been spending so much time raging about culture war moral panics when he could have, you know, taught his kids how to use the internet properly.

Notably, the other guest on that episode of Meet the Press was the governor of Utah’s neighbor to the east, Governor Jared Polis from Colorado. And despite the GOP constantly insisting it’s the party of “parents’ rights” and “keeping government out” of everyone’s business, it’s Polis who argues that Cox is doing the opposite, and suggests he (correctly) thinks these are issues that parents themselves should deal with:

“I think the responsibility belongs with parents, not the government,” Polis, the vice chair of the NGA, said during the joint interview with Cox.

“I certainly agree with the diagnosis that Governor Cox did, and I have some sympathy for that approach. But I do think at the end of the day, the government can’t parent kids,” he added later.

Polis is still wrong regarding the diagnosis. The evidence pretty clearly says that. But he’s correct that this is an issue for parents and schools, not for the government to step in and effectively ban children from the very social media that many of them find so useful.

Filed Under: anxiety, colorado, depression, evidence, jared polis, mental health crisis, protect the children, social media, social media bans, social media harms, spencer cox, teens, utah