I’ve written before about the ongoing argument that cell phones are making teenagers, especially teen girls, miserable. In case you missed all of that, the brief version is that there’s pretty solid evidence that teens are experiencing a mental health crisis. The CDC released new research back in February which supports this conclusion but there is an ongoing argument over the cause. Academic and author Jonathan Haidt has been one of the leading voices arguing that phones (and social media) are likely responsible. The timeline of the crisis seems to support the idea. Here’s what Michelle Goldberg said about it in March:
As I looked closer at the data, I saw that the inflection point for liberal adolescent depression wasn’t 2016, but around 2012. That was the year of the devastating Sandy Hook mass shooting, but it was not otherwise a time of liberal political despair….
