[slily]

I'm inclined to disagree based on my personal experience. I was never subjected to the kind of pressure you're talking about with regards to mental health and medication, but I spent too much time on social media and not enough in real life since I was a teenager and I am almost certain that it negatively impacted my mental health. The only thing is that I wasn't really aware of it and so I didn't dwell on it too much. I could see the fixation on mental health exacerbating the issue.

On the Internet it's easy to feel surrounded with people even though you're not really socializing. Low-res text-based interactions that characterize most social media today don't provide enough signal for people to develop their social skills adequately, and the asynchronicity doesn't help either. Most people won't just tell you how they feel about what you're saying, but in real life that's what body language and other indirect signals are for. We've all heard stories of zoomers being less socially capable than previous generations. Now consider that the social awkwardness is not only curious from an outside perspective, but is also a perpetual source of anxiety to the people affected with it and can lead to self-isolation and other unhealthy coping behaviors.

[kypro]

> I spent too much time on social media and not enough in real life since I was a teenager and I am almost certain that it negatively impacted my mental health

But was social media the issue here or was it that you didn't spend enough time interacting with the real world?

If your point is that social media makes it easier for us to not spend enough time interacting with people in the real world then I'd agree, but I think it's wrong to suggest social media is the primary problem here. The real issue is that kids are spending too much time on their own in doors.

A kid sat in their room watching TV all day and night is probably just as likely to feel depressed and is also likely to struggle socially.

I don't have kids and if I did I wouldn't give them smart phones, but I'd much rather them have smart phones and social media access so long as they had "normal" social lives and were taking part in after school activities where they were playing and interacting with other kids in the real world.

Just taking a kid's phone and replacing their addiction to Tiktok with Netflix probably isn't going to help them become socially well adjusted individuals. Where I agree strongly with Haidt is that kids today need to interact more with other children in the real world, and importantly they also need to learn how to deal with difficult social situations on their own.

For years now there's been an increasing number of children / teens that sit at home doing nothing but scrolling social media and playing video games. In the past it was the geeky guys that we mocked for never leaving their "mum's basement" who were dealing with these mental health issues, but now that we have smart phones and popular social apps a similar kind of thing seems to be impacting teen girls.

I don't think we really disagree though to be honest. I think you're just incorrectly attributing the blame primarily to social media, when I'd argue it's the lack of real world interaction which could be related to social media use, but we've seen other iterations of similar things in recent years such as dudes spending too much time in their mums basement or "Hikikomori" syndrome in Japan. What's always true is that kids need to get out the house and spend more time interacting with real people / children.