Thread by @DrAndreaHoward

A THREAD. We've been seeing a lot of academic discussion about whether social media makes kids depressed, and I've joined others in criticizing the conclusion that they are related in a meaningful way. You may have seen a new piece by Jean Twenge out in @TIME magazine... /1

urging parents not to give this any further thought and to just limit screen time because we have enough evidence that an association exists. "If we waited for causal proof, we'd never accomplish anything!" Unfortunately this conclusion overinflates the scope of the problem. /2

One potent quote from the TIME article is: "electronic-device use explains only 0.5% to 2% of the variance in suicide attempts, but twice as many teens who use devices five or more hours a day have attempted suicide as those who do so for one hour"; sounds compelling, but... /3

let's digest the actual numbers a bit. The quote references a paper (Twenge & Campbell) that uses U.S. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey data, among others. In 2015 (and some other years), that survey asked about screen time and suicide... /4

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

I downloaded the 2015 data to work out some quick-and-dirty numbers myself. There were 12,222 people who answered questions about screen time and suicide attempts. Out of 1000 teens, about 95 said they attempted suicide, an unsettlingly high number. Now what about screens? /5

Suicide attempts were present at all levels of screen time. Out of those 95 teens, about 16 attempted suicide and reported NO screen time. Another 11 attempted suicide and reported <1 hour per day. The key comparison we are directed to is between 1-hr and 5+hr daily users .../6

About 8 of those 95 in 1000 teens who attempted suicide used screens 1 hour per day, and close to 29 of the 95 used screens 5 or more hours per day. There were also a lot more teens saying they used screens 5 or more hours per day, making up some of that difference. /7

What's important here is that of 95 kids attempting suicide per year, 35 of them had negligible screen use (1 hour per day or less; 16 + 11 + 8), and 29 of them had pretty heavy screen use (5 hours plus). The rest were in between. /8

We can do our statistical magic and adjust for various other factors and ultimately come out to a prediction about what might happen in the future (for which Twenge calls out as obscure the %variance explained), but... /9

...these much simpler numbers still tell us that the majority of countable suicide attempts occur among teens who are using their screens moderately or not at all. Drawing attention to screens/social media as a smoking gun under these conditions is tremendously misleading /10

and worse, draws attention away from more prominent factors in adolescents' lives that are more proximal to mental health crisis. We must keep in mind that depression and other mental illness are highly individual experiences that co-act with many elements of daily life. /11

YRBSS data is available for download here. I used the 2015 files in this thread.

cdc.gov/healthyyouth/d…