“If we only see teens’ phones when we look at them, we will miss seeing what they really need from us.” — Candice Odgers
Candice Odgers takes on the teen mental health panic with data
The headlines scream teenagers are in crisis. Professor Candice L. Odgers says a closer look at the data supports a resilient, not an anxious, generation.
A developmental psychologist at UC Irvine, Odgers has spent 25 years studying adolescent mental health and in a TED Talk released today, she pushed back against what she calls a dangerous gap between the scary stories adults tell about teens and what the research actually shows.
“The story we are all told about teens being lost, worse off than ever, and that their brains are rapidly rotting because of their phones and social media does not match what we see in the data or what teens tell us about their lives,” she tells the audience. “There is a massive gap.”
Odgers does not deny that American teens are struggling. Rates of sadness and anxiety have risen, and suicide risk has climbed since the Great Recession of 2008. But, she argues the causes run far deeper than smartphones.
“Caregiver mental health is by far the strongest predictor of children’s mental health and life chances,” she says.
Between 1999 and 2020, 1.2 million children lost a parent to drugs or firearms alone, and the rate of parental loss due to drug overdose doubled between 2011 and 2021.
At the same time, Odgers adds, teens have made remarkable gains on many fronts. Violence, alcohol use and teen pregnancies have all fallen to record lows. High school graduation rates are at historic highs.
“Young people are inventors, leaders, activists and Olympians,” she says. “They are amazing.”
The social media myth
Despite widespread calls for bans and restrictions, Odgers says the research simply does not support the idea that social media is a major driver of mental health problems for the majority of teenagers today.
“Social media use does not show up in our longitudinal studies as a major cause of mental health symptoms in teens. Almost everyone else who has studied this has found the same,” she says, noting that the National Academies of Sciences reached the same conclusion following its own expert review.
For most teens, particularly boys, Odgers points out, no meaningful link to mental health problems is found at all.
She also challenges the effectiveness of social media bans, pointing to early evidence from Australia suggesting that restrictions actually give social media companies a free pass versus fix the problems online and offline they are intended to solve.
They simply get better at working around adult-imposed rules, she says. “Teenagers are just too clever for bans.”
More troubling to Odgers is what bans fail to address.
“Instead of fixing the online world, we are punishing victims by taking away the places they go to spend time with friends, consume youth culture, and too often, escape adults who are harming them offline,” she says. “A social media ban may feel good to the adults in the room. But teens tell me, and I believe them, that banning social media is not going to work.”
So, what to do? Odgers offers concrete alternatives:
Invest in the adults surrounding young people. The current ratio of counselors to students in U.S. middle and high schools stands at 1 to 500. “Spending millions of dollars on Yondr pouches to lock up kids’ phones will not fix that,” she says. “We should spend that money to add more counselors and teachers to schools and actually pay them properly.”Create spaces, online and off, where teens feel they belong. Odgers highlighted the work of her colleague UC Irvine psychology Professor Stephen Schueller, who builds digital mental health services for families in rural areas while also opening in-person drop-in centers for teens across California. “We know that teens are more likely to go online when they are anxious or depressed,” she says, “and we need to be there with the services they need.”Stop shaming young people. “This is not a lost generation, it is a resilient one that has repeatedly shown they are capable of amazing things despite the struggles of adults around them,” she says.
As for the tech companies themselves, Odgers makes clear: “Big tech needs to be held more accountable, but bans don’t do this.”
Her proposed solution:
fund teachers, build parks and safe outdoor spaces anddeliver effective digital literacy and mental health programs, all paid for by a tax on big tech.
“If we only see teens’ phones when we look at them, we will miss seeing what they really need from us,” Odgers says.
Watch Odgers’ TED Talk on TED.com
Related
Nature: The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
Frontiers in Developmental Psychology: We don’t know how social media bans will affect youth but we’re doing it anyway!