What’s the connection between social media use and mental health, especially among young people? You’ve probably heard a lot about this recently, in the media, by politicians, and among friends chatting about their kids. Lots of assertions are made, but there is also a bit of research on this topic. As someone who frequently uses social media myself, as well as a parent of young children, and a teacher that works every week with young college students, I am particularly interested in this topic.

Jonathan Haidt and various co-authors have been trying to catalog all the research on the topic and figure out if there is a connection between the decline in teenage mental health and the rise of social media use. Haidt also has a new book on this topic, as well as the decline of “free play” among kids, which I have not yet read but I’ve looked through his documents that contain all of the underlying and summaries of the research he is citing. I’ll read the book soon, as I’m certainly part of the intended audience (see the last sentence of the above paragraph). And while this research is very much outside of my area of expertise, my training as an economist has taught me how to read academic papers and to be convinced by evidence, so once again I’m very much the intended audience on this score as well.

Please read this post as my attempt to understand the evidence and start to form conclusions and/or critique what Haidt is saying. It’s a work in progress, and I’ll write more as I read and think more about it.