Experts Universally Pan Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” As Unscientific Garbage, But Politicians Keep Buying It Anyway

Overhype

from the that's-gotta-burn dept

The verdict is in on Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s devastating. A new piece in TES Magazine systematically demolishes Haidt’s claims by doing something revolutionary: actually asking experts who study this stuff what they think.

The result reads like an academic execution:

“When I read the book, I found it really hard to believe it was written by a fellow academic,” admits Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.

“What Jon is selling is fear,” argues Andrew Przybylski, professor of human behaviour and technology at the University of Oxford. “It’s not scientific.”

And this isn’t some fringe criticism. TES is the Times Educational Supplement, which has been around since 1910 and is basically the trade magazine for educators in the UK. At a time when many educators have been swallowing Haidt’s misleading claims, seeing a respected educational trade magazine systematically shred his arguments is remarkable.

But here’s the truly damning part: this expert demolition came out the exact same day that Politico published a breathless piece claiming Haidt’s crusade represents “the only true bipartisan issue left,” gushing about how governors from both parties are embracing policy reform based on his work.

The contrast couldn’t be starker: while actual experts are calling Haidt’s work unscientific garbage, politicians are treating it like gospel.

The TES piece doesn’t just criticize—it comprehensibly destroys Haidt’s core arguments with the precision of actual scientists who know what they’re talking about.

First, his claim that there’s a mental health “epidemic” among teenagers caused by social media. Ford points out the fundamental problems with Haidt’s use of data:

Ford argues that using self-report data for prevalence estimates is tricky owing to a “lack of methodological soundness and ‘noisy’ data”.

“A teenager with high scores on a mental health questionnaire at a single time point will include a mixture of those who have not fully understood the question or are mucking around, those who are having a one-off bad day or adjusting to a life stress and those with persistent difficulties that impair their function. The last are those with mental health conditions,” she explains.

When you look at the actual robust data from the UK’s NHS Mental Health survey, the picture is quite different from Haidt’s “tidal wave” narrative:

In terms of the best UK prevalence data, she says the NHS Mental Health of Children and Young People (MHCYP) survey (which includes input from parents, teachers and clinical assessors) found prevalence of mental disorders in those between 5 and 15 years old increased between 1999 and 2004 by 0.4 percentage points and again between 2004 and 2017 by 1.1 percentage points (data for older teens has only been collected once, in 2017, so there is no data over time).

It’s an increase, but Ford says the data does not support Haidt’s description of a “tidal wave” of mental health challenges, nor a “surge of suffering”.

“He is going beyond the data,” she argues.

The experts also systematically debunk Haidt’s claims about causation. Candice Odgers, professor of psychology and informatics at University of California Irvine and a former Techdirt podcast guest, concludes:

“It is perfectly reasonable to take a safety-first approach to kids and social media,” she argues. “But when these decisions are made, it should not be because someone tells you science has discovered social media is the cause of serious mental disorders or will harm our children’s brains. That is the story that is being told, but not what the science says.”

Meanwhile, Przybylski (another former podcast guest) points out a basic logical flaw in Haidt’s argument:

“By the logic of his argument, the correlation between the use of technology and the outcome should be stronger,” he says. “As the algorithms have got more pernicious, more sophisticated, things should be getting progressively worse. [That hasn’t happened.] There is no sense of mechanism here.”

The article also details how experts are particularly concerned about missing the real causes of mental health issues. Ford notes:

Ford says he has missed some other obvious contributing factors in the UK data, including closures of youth clubs and other safe spaces for young people, the world becoming more expensive and difficult to navigate, social changes with looser community bonds and more.

“One of the strongest and most consistent associations for poor mental health is poverty, and we’ve got more children living in poverty, and then we have this huge drop in accessibility to services…[so] there is no early intervention,” she says. “To pin this on phones doesn’t just go way beyond the evidence – it is actually dangerous, as it does not address these other critical factors.”

The experts are also scathing about Haidt’s proposed solutions, which include banning phones in schools and raising age limits for social media. David Ellis has been a leading critic of the addiction narrative:

“We did a satirical paper a couple of years ago and we followed the mathematical formulas that people had used [in this research],” he says. “We managed to create a friendship addiction scale that demonstrated that 80 per cent of our sample were addicted to their friends, which of course is nonsense.”

Even Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the US and one of the world’s leading experts on dopamine and addiction, disputes Haidt’s claims:

“there’s not a clear-cut definition of what addiction to a phone would be, [so] it is difficult to estimate the prevalence,” she says, adding she knows of no studies that would support Haidt’s 10 per cent addiction figure.

The piece also highlights how Haidt’s claims about educational decline don’t hold up to scrutiny. While he claims there’s been a global decline in learning since smartphones arrived, Christian Bokhove from the University of Southampton points out:

And although “average trajectories” in reading and science were downward, Christian Bokhove, professor in mathematics education at the University of Southampton, argues that beyond the general picture, “many countries were not declining” in that period in any of the three subjects.

Echoing many of the other academics when it comes to their criticisms of Haidt, he argues that even if the data did show a universal decline, “there can be numerous causes for this”.

This aligns perfectly with what I wrote in the Daily Beast piece last year, which was based on many experts as well:

Over the last decade, numerous studies on the impact of phones and social media on children, including a study of studies, conclude that social media is good for some kids, helping them find like-minded individuals. It’s mostly neutral for many kids, and problematic for only a very small group (studies suggest less than 10 percent).

I also highlighted how the country-by-country evidence doesn’t support Haidt’s claims either… unless you cherry-pick your countries, which anyone can do.

Looking at suicide rates (which are more indicative of actual depression rates, rather than self-reported data, given the decreasing stigma associated with admitting to dealing with mental health issues), the numbers show that in many countries it has remained flat or decreased over the past 20 years. Indeed, in countries like France, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, and New Zealand, you see a noticeable decline in youth suicide rates.

If social media were inherently causing an increase in depression, that would be an unlikely result.

But here’s where this gets truly maddening. While experts are thoroughly demolishing Haidt’s claims, politicians are doubling down. That same-day Politico piece reveals the scope of the damage:

39 states now have some sort of phone restrictions in schools, and 18 states and Washington, D.C. have bell-to-bell bans — which ban phones for the entire school day — according to Haidt. After the next legislative sessions, which in many state capitols begin after the new year, more states are sure to enact full bans. The issue has rallied conservatives and liberals, and its potency with parents has largely steamrolled libertarian objections and big tech lobbying.

I first realized a remarkable story was sitting in plain view when I witnessed two governors who are almost comically far apart on the political spectrum both embrace Haidt. Last year, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a copy of Haidt’s book to every other governor. She then hosted Haidt in her home state before joining him earlier this year on stage at Davos, not typically a lovefest forum for Arkansas governors and New York academics.

Shortly after that, at the winter meeting at the National Governors Association, I got to talking to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and one of his top aides, and they also were trumpeting Haidt’s work. A liberal, former Goldman Sachs executive turned northeastern governor, Murphy, 68, sounded a lot like his 43-year-old conservative counterpart from Little Rock.

Different regions, different politics and different generations.

But here’s the thing: bipartisan support doesn’t make something right. It just makes it bipartisanly wrong. As I noted in my original piece, every generation has its moral panic, and this appears to be ours.

The TES piece concludes with the most important point of all, from Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University:

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to say, ‘hang on, that’s not what the evidence says’, or ‘we don’t have evidence for that yet’, and I really, really worry about this,” he concludes. “There’s a road here where [people say], ‘well, we don’t need science and evidence because we can see it with our own eyes’.”

And that’s exactly what’s happening. Politicians across the spectrum are implementing policies based on Haidt’s work despite an overwhelming expert consensus that his claims are scientifically unfounded. We’re watching evidence-based policy get steamrolled by moral panic in real time.

Incredibly, even with all these quotes, there’s way more in the TES piece, which should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the actual experts in the field find Haidt’s book a horrific attack on science and evidence-based policy making.

When professors of child and adolescent psychiatry are saying they can’t believe a fellow academic wrote this book, when experts in human behavior and technology are calling it “fear” rather than science, when leading researchers are pointing out basic logical flaws in the arguments—maybe, just maybe, we should listen to them instead of the guy selling books and giving TED talks.

The verdict from people who actually study this stuff is clear: Haidt’s claims don’t hold up to scrutiny. The fact that politicians find his message appealing doesn’t make it true. It just makes it politically convenient.

And that’s a much scarier prospect than kids having phones.

Filed Under: andrew przybylski, candice odgers, christian bokhove, data, david ellis, evidence, jonathan haidt, moral panic, nora volkow, pete etchells, social media, tamsin ford, tes