Die große Neuverkabelung: Stecken soziale Medien wirklich hinter einer Epidemie psychischer Erkrankungen bei Teenagern? Es gibt keine eindeutigen Beweise dafür, ob die Zeit vor dem Bildschirm für die zunehmende Depression und Angst bei Teenagern verantwortlich ist – und die zunehmende Hysterie könnte uns davon abhalten, die wahren Ursachen anzugehen.

From the article:

>Haidt asserts that the great rewiring of children’s brains has taken place by “designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears”. And that “by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale”. Such serious claims require serious evidence.

[…]

>Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.

[…]

>There are, unfortunately, no simple answers. The onset and development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors. Suicide rates among people in most age groups have been increasing steadily for the past 20 years in the United States. **Researchers cite access to guns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation as leading contributors.**