The fixation with social media as the root of rising teen suicides blinds us to critical factors that you rarely hear anyone talking about in conversations about teen mental health.
As a teacher in Scotland, I can guarantee you that phones have a big impact on their school performance, and their well being. When kids are bullied now, it's almost always also through social media; some are starving themselves of day-dreaming and using their subconscious mind, and their attention spans (all our attention spans) are getting smaller and smaller.
Doomscrolling apps like reddit and specifically tiktok drain them of dopamine hits and make anything else seem boring by comparison.
Phones absolutely need to be banned in classrooms, otherwise we are doing a lot of these kids a disservice.
Far from wanting to wash our hands of any responsibility (like actually wtf are you even talking about), we want the best for our kids.
You have been reductive, not provided any counter points to your argument, and have built strawmen to attack. I guess this gets you more views on YouTube, and citing papers makes you feel better about things, but this is really hack journalism and you should know better.
Hi. Thanks for reading my article. It's funny that you mention banning in the classrooms because that's something I agree with! I had hoped it was clear that my piece was about banning adolescents off social media (period), but I obviously need to be clearer next time.
As always, I appreciate your feedback though I obviously disagree with your assessment.
I'm a medical doctor. I make roughly $30 off YouTube a month. I make no money from Substack. I also don't promote any products or services on my YouTube channel. I pay a video editor out of my own pocket, meaning I actually create these videos at a significant loss.
The reason I do this is because I really care about presenting science in an engaging and informative way. I chose this topic because, contrary to what you might think, I actually care about adolescent mental health. I spent most of my teen years and my early twenties struggling with my mental health. I don't believe I do this for the YouTube views, but obviously you know better. Perhaps the kids in your classroom are learning all about bullying and strawman arguments not from their peers online, but from their teacher?
I have been following the debate between Jon Haidt and his critics. IMO both stories are valid. We don't have evidence of causality yet but both social factors and social media seem like valid confounding factors.
As a teacher in Scotland, I can guarantee you that phones have a big impact on their school performance, and their well being. When kids are bullied now, it's almost always also through social media; some are starving themselves of day-dreaming and using their subconscious mind, and their attention spans (all our attention spans) are getting smaller and smaller.
Doomscrolling apps like reddit and specifically tiktok drain them of dopamine hits and make anything else seem boring by comparison.
Phones absolutely need to be banned in classrooms, otherwise we are doing a lot of these kids a disservice.
Far from wanting to wash our hands of any responsibility (like actually wtf are you even talking about), we want the best for our kids.
You have been reductive, not provided any counter points to your argument, and have built strawmen to attack. I guess this gets you more views on YouTube, and citing papers makes you feel better about things, but this is really hack journalism and you should know better.
Hi. Thanks for reading my article. It's funny that you mention banning in the classrooms because that's something I agree with! I had hoped it was clear that my piece was about banning adolescents off social media (period), but I obviously need to be clearer next time.
As always, I appreciate your feedback though I obviously disagree with your assessment.
I'm a medical doctor. I make roughly $30 off YouTube a month. I make no money from Substack. I also don't promote any products or services on my YouTube channel. I pay a video editor out of my own pocket, meaning I actually create these videos at a significant loss.
The reason I do this is because I really care about presenting science in an engaging and informative way. I chose this topic because, contrary to what you might think, I actually care about adolescent mental health. I spent most of my teen years and my early twenties struggling with my mental health. I don't believe I do this for the YouTube views, but obviously you know better. Perhaps the kids in your classroom are learning all about bullying and strawman arguments not from their peers online, but from their teacher?
I have been following the debate between Jon Haidt and his critics. IMO both stories are valid. We don't have evidence of causality yet but both social factors and social media seem like valid confounding factors.