According to recently released discovery materials, Meta directly targeted Jonathan Haidt by trying to stir up academics to oppose him. The odd thing is that many of us scholars who disagree with him knew nothing about this and weren’t involved in it. And so now scholars like the amazing Candice Odgers are being doubted about the sincerity of their critique. WTAF upside down world are we living it?
What’s super frustrating is that many scholars in the teens-tech-mental health space are repeatedly accused of fabricating research or being corporate shills when our research is politically inconvenient. I know that I have been. Repeatedly. And it sucks.
When I was still in graduate school, I was asked to serve on the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. One of my responsibilities was to oversee the research effort. I worked with other scholars to track down all studies that focused on content, contact, and conduct related harms involving the internet. The politicians were primarily interested in the question of pedophiles. When I provided the report to then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, he told me to go find different data. He did not like what I had found. I didn’t know what to say.
Predation is real. It’s devastating. But it’s a more complex dynamic than most people’s mental image allows for. And when it comes to internet-enabled predation, the biggest risk is not teenagers using the latest social media site. The biggest risk is single moms using online dating apps. Pedophiles seek out these women to get access to their children. It’s sick. But no one wants to hear that. They want to focus on the digital tools young people use.
After our report was published, I started getting calls from journalists. I earnestly and naively responded to all of them. One of the journalists was from PBS Frontline. She called me up repeatedly, drilling me on questions about arguments in the report. I responded by providing study after study to every inquiry, pointing her to different researchers who were experts on different parts of this puzzle. After a few weeks of this, I got what would be the last call from her. She started out by apologizing to me.
Unbeknownst to me, some of Richard Blumenthal’s ardent supporters for his Senatorial campaign were outraged that I dared to challenge the politician’s arguments about internet safety. They were determined to prove that I was falsifying data on behalf of the tech industry. The Frontline reporter told me she was assigned to uncover my duplicitousness. She had concluded I hadn’t done anything but report on the scientific insights of the field. She spiked the story, but she warned me that I had pissed off some very powerful people and I would probably have to deal with being demonized going forward for standing up for research. Ugh.
Ironically, I first started truly despising Facebook-the-company while I was working on that task force. I got to watch up close how the company built a coordinated campaign against MySpace, intentionally creating the impression that MySpace was dangerous while Facebook was safe. And I witnessed teenagers process this through the language of racism and classism, prompting me to write a very controversial essay that turned into my paper “White Flight in Networked Publics?” I was fascinated – and disgusted – by the executive who seemed to do the dirty work on behalf of the CEO and COO, unbeknownst to others in the company. I called him the bulldog. The bulldog continued to harass all sorts of different people.
These days, I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Meta-the-company despite knowing a few amazing people who work there. I think the company is unethical to the core. And the products have enshittified so badly that they’re unrecognizable compared to what teenagers used to use. Hence my argument that “Social Media is Now Parasocial Media.” But I still stand by my research on teens and the research of others who have done rigorous analyses putting teens’ lives into context. Teenagers live in the world we create for them – and they use what’s available to them, regardless of how they feel about it. In the past, teens turned to Facebook to socialize and make sense of public life. Today, Facebook is dead to teens and Instagram feels more like some sketchy version of MTV. Socialization is on group chats, some of which unfold on WhatsApp. But most teens have nothing nice to say about Facebook.
Many teenagers in our contemporary world are struggling. I’ve gotten to see that upfront through my work at Crisis Text Line, which I adore. And I’ve gotten to consistently witness how the problems that they face cannot be explained by their tech use. Because of this, removing tech from their lives will not solve the major problems. And for some, like many of the teens who text Crisis Text Line in their darkest moments, losing access to a cell phone will eradicate an essential lifeline.
I have no interest in defending tech companies, but I am deeply committed to defending teenagers’ agency and choices in the world that we have given them. I am determined to make sure that those teens who don’t have supportive parents have pathways to get help. And my research has repeatedly led me to conclude that when we fail to empower teenagers to transition into adult worlds, we do them more harm. And when we focus on the tech, we fail to help those who need the help the most.
Many of the problems that I have with tech use are actually about adult tech use. Too many adults treat their phones as a pacifier to help them self-regulate. They’ve taught this bad habit to their kids. Too many adults fail to role model healthy sociality digitally and in-person friendship. Too many adults use their phones to be distracted from their own children. And then we’re surprised by the mirrors that teens offer back at us. “I learned it from watching you, dad.”
What kills me in the contemporary teens-and-tech debate is that there’s no space for actual research or critical nuance. You’re either opposed to the tech companies or in their pockets. And this week’s absurd discovery reinforces this infuriating polarity, painting those of us who are critical of Jonathan Haidt as being corporate shills. I find this especially frustrating because I did work in tech for a lot of my career. I played the role of friction inside many companies (although never Meta). I repeatedly got threatened by tech executives for challenging corporate mantras or providing research that contradicted their interests – and yet I persisted. Cuz many tech companies are far more complicated than people realize.
Still, I’ve had to grit and bear as I am attacked by other scholars for taking money from tech (as if any money in late-stage capitalism is clean money). And I had to stomach calls from representatives of the National Academies that I can’t even talk with their committee members because Jonathan Haidt told them that I was a corporate shill. And I’ve had to not weigh in on numerous recent debates because my peers and news outlets tell me I am tainted. In this political climate, I am unable to convince people that my research stems from the lessons I learned from teens, not what I learned from tech. I’ve mostly shrugged. But when journalists started going after Candice, I lost my mind and felt the need to share my story. The idea that she is being painted as a corporate shill is ludicrous.
Cuz here’s the thing… It IS possible to despise the tech companies AND understand why teenagers use their products and find value from doing so. Listen to teenagers; they get these contradictions. Their hatred of the tech companies is growing exponentially even as they use the tools those companies provide. (You should see their attitudes towards AI companies. Oooh-whee…) It’s also possible to care about kids’ mental health AND think that the solution doesn’t start and stop with tech. And it’s possible to do rigorous research AND discover that tech isn’t the biggest monster in teens’ lives that anti-tech advocates think it is.
Truth be told, I’d have no problem if certain social media platforms would be banned for everyone. I think that many of the products in this space have devolved into garbage. My objection is a teen-specific ban. I oppose legal controls of teenagers because adults are trying to cope with the guilt about their own failings. We are living through an era of anxious parents. It’s heartbreaking the costs of this anxiety.
Of course, if politicians want to implement an age-specific ban to target those most harmed by social media platforms, I’d be totally fine with banning elders from social media. That would do society a lot of good. Just think of what it would mean in terms of identity theft and fraud, not to mention disinformation. But that’s the rub. We believe that adults’ freedom of choice needs to never be constrained, but that it’s perfectly OK to micromanage teenagers. THIS is what I object to. I believe that teenagers deserve rights and agency. I think it’s utterly asinine that the United States never ratified the UN Rights of the Child. This doesn’t make me a corporate shill. This makes me an advocate for teenagers.
As I wrote over a decade ago, we’ve made ridiculous decisions that have undermined teenagers’ ability to socialize and connect with friends. And it keeps getting worse. Teens have lost the right to roam. In many parts of the country, they’re overscheduled and have nowhere to go to hang out with friends besides each other’s homes. Teenagers don’t have sustained access to mental health services (and they often have to go through their parents’ insurance to get access). They’re living through a polycrisis. And what they’re seeing in the world of adults is depressing. There’s a lot that we can do to help young people. But much of it starts locally. Much of it starts with adults checking their own behaviors. Much of it starts with intentionally investing in the social lives of young people. Giving them options. Creating space for them. Ensuring that they have robust social fabrics. Tech is a relief valve, and an increasingly terrible one. But taking tech away won’t do squat to address the underlying issues. And, worse, banning social media is basically an advertisement for it. Cuz right now, social media is dying a slow death among teens cuz it sucks so much. But teens are still looking for spaces in which they can connect and socialize and make sense of the world around them. What will it take for us to actually invest in young people?
