I've done literature reviews after seeing posts from Haidt come up here and elsewhere. If you go to semanticscholar.org for instance, type in "social media wellbeing meta-analysis", you will get something like [0]. (found a free link by searching the study title)
This and most other meta-analysis I have read on the subject seem to indicate that the effect of social media is pretty neutral. This one in particular does look at the effect on adolescents and depression specifically, and finds that it effects adolescents the same way it effects adults.
That being said, there is a small but statistically significant effect on anxiety and depression. This is cancelled out in overall wellbeing by other positive effects. However, given Haidt is saying we should implement age gates on social media, I would want the evidence to indicate something a bit more catastrophic and not cancelled out by positive effects.
So if you read the research, you will find there is good reason to be skeptical.
I think I actually failed to respond properly in this comment. You were talking about smartphone use while the article was talking about social media use. I think Haidt and implicitly both of us were conflating the two, but they are separate topics.
I did a search for the effects of smartphones, trying to avoid meta-analysis describing only "overuse", and [0] came up. This seems to indicate somewhat larger effects of smartphones on anxiety. I can't access the article easily right now, but from the titles of other studies, it seems like sleep disruption might be a factor.
Comments
I've done literature reviews after seeing posts from Haidt come up here and elsewhere. If you go to semanticscholar.org for instance, type in "social media wellbeing meta-analysis", you will get something like [0]. (found a free link by searching the study title)
This and most other meta-analysis I have read on the subject seem to indicate that the effect of social media is pretty neutral. This one in particular does look at the effect on adolescents and depression specifically, and finds that it effects adolescents the same way it effects adults.
That being said, there is a small but statistically significant effect on anxiety and depression. This is cancelled out in overall wellbeing by other positive effects. However, given Haidt is saying we should implement age gates on social media, I would want the evidence to indicate something a bit more catastrophic and not cancelled out by positive effects.
So if you read the research, you will find there is good reason to be skeptical.
[0]: https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf
I think I actually failed to respond properly in this comment. You were talking about smartphone use while the article was talking about social media use. I think Haidt and implicitly both of us were conflating the two, but they are separate topics.
I did a search for the effects of smartphones, trying to avoid meta-analysis describing only "overuse", and [0] came up. This seems to indicate somewhat larger effects of smartphones on anxiety. I can't access the article easily right now, but from the titles of other studies, it seems like sleep disruption might be a factor.
[0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smi.2805