The New Satanic Panic Is Here

+ Admin nights, Steal A Brainrot, GAP's AI orb, IG for fishing, influencer peptides, a16z's pro-AI creator class, and one man's journey from foreign correspondent to Uber driver in Trump’s America

Are smartphones and social media actually destroying teen mental health, or is this just another moral panic? In my latest episode of my Free Speech Friday YouTube series, I critically examine the pervasive false narrative that phones, apps, and screen time are responsible for rising anxiety, depression, and harm among teenagers.

These claims, popularized by politicians, MSM journalists, interest groups like the Heritage Foundation, and authors like Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation), are being used to justify mass surveillance laws, deplatforming marginalized people, and implementing policies that actually harm kids and reward big tech.

Haidt and others boosting this moral panic have continually pushed debunked claims about how social media can turn kids LGBTQ. Haidt has pushed false and misogynistic claims that young liberal women suffer from more "anxiety." He is on the board of Bari Weiss' unaccredited reactionary right wing University.

All of this comes just as two massive new studies were published just this week that, once again, debunk the harmful and dangerous claims made by Haidt and other right wing reactionary figures.

The first study was published in JAMA Pediatrics. It followed over 100,000 adolescents across three years. It found that the relationship between social media use and well-being is not remotely linear. Kids who use social media moderately actually have the best outcomes, while kids who don’t use social media at all have the worst outcomes.

The study found that, while very, very extreme amounts of social media use can be harmful, “moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, and for girls, moderate use became most favorable from middle adolescence onward.”

Mike Masnick reported on these studies in TechDirt writing:

Researchers at the University of Manchester just published a separate study in the Journal of Public Health that followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years. Their conclusion? Screen time spent on social media or gaming does not cause mental health problems in teenagers. At all.

From the Guardian’s coverage of the UK study:

The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year. Increases in girls’ and boys’ social media use from year 8 to year 9 and from year 9 to year 10 had zero detrimental impact on their mental health the following year.

Zero. Not “small.” Not “modest.” Zero.

The UK researchers also examined whether how kids use social media matters—active chatting versus passive scrolling. The answer? Neither appeared to drive mental health difficulties. As lead author Dr. Qiqi Cheng put it:

We know families are worried, but our results do not support the idea that simply spending time on social media or gaming leads to mental health problems – the story is far more complex than that.

As Mike writes, “while researchers urge caution, politicians have been happy to sprint ahead. Australia leapt into the fray, and the ban [on social media under 16s] has so far proven to be a complete mess.

The entire premise of Australia’s ban—and similar proposals floating around in various US states and across Europe—is that social media is inherently harmful to young people, and that removing access is protective. But both studies suggest the reality is far more complicated. The Australian researchers explicitly call this out:

Social media’s association with adolescent well-being is complex and nonlinear, suggesting that both abstinence and excessive use can be problematic depending on developmental stage and sex.:

In other words: Australia’s ban may be taking kids who would have been moderate users with good outcomes and forcing them into the “no use” category that the study associates with worse well-being. It’s potentially the worst of all possible policy outcomes.

The UK study’s co-author, Prof. Neil Humphrey, reinforced this point, “Our findings tell us that young people’s choices around social media and gaming may be shaped by how they’re feeling but not necessarily the other way around. Rather than blaming technology itself, we need to pay attention to what young people are doing online, who they’re connecting with and how supported they feel in their daily lives.”

That’s a crucial distinction that the moral panic crowd keeps glossing over: correlation running in the opposite direction than assumed. Kids who are already struggling, and who aren’t getting the support they need, might use social media differently—not the other way around.”

I highly suggest reading more of Mike’s amazing coverage in TechDirt. For instance, this story, this story, this story, this story, and this story.

I also dug deep into the data on all of this and made a video about how harmful this moral panic is, and how right wing reactionary figures like Haidt, want to scapegoat social media or smartphone use, instead of addressing the real harms in society, which we know are affecting kids negatively. [WATCH HERE]

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What I’m reading

My journey from foreign correspondent to Uber driver in Trump’s America

I once documented human displacement and desperation; now I am living it. - Steve Scherer

If You Read This You Are Gay

For the terminally online, politics à la carte. - The Baffler

America’s new gambling epidemic

If Vegas represented a prosocial form of betting, every technological trend seems hellbent on moving us in the opposite direction, largely by offering ever more warped, addictive, and isolating versions of the casino for our phones. - Harper’s

The AI Shopping Wars Are Here

Big tech has big plans for bots that will do all your buying for you. - NY Mag

Revisiting Brat Summer

Artists, politicians, and the summer of 2024. - Resonetics

News rundown

• BuzzBallz is selling a $35,000 diamond engagement ring shaped like its drinks.

• Google won’t stop replacing news headlines with terrible AI generated ones.

• ICE is making lists of anyone who films them and classifying them as domestic terrorists.

• Dozens of right wing influencers have descended on Minnesota.

• Elon Musk is starting to donate his billions to influence the midterm elections.

• Influencers are all pushing peptides these days.

• TikTik is officially under the control of a cadre of pro-Trump billionaires including Larry Ellison.

• Pick up artists are all obsessed with Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses and keep using them to film their attempts at picking up women.

• VC firm Andreeseen Horowitz, run by far right pro-Trump billionaires, is showering pro-AI content creators with money as part of its “new media fellows” program.

• MrBeast launched a clipping platform where viewers can earn money by posting about Beast Games.

• Court documents also reveal MrBeast’s plans to relaunch MrBeast Burger with help from McDonald’s.

• Twitch star iShowSpeed is getting his own Doritos flavor.

• GAP partnered with Sam Altman’s weird AI eye-scanning orb company for some reason:

  

• TikTokers are hosting “admin nights” where friends all get together, bring their laptops, and do all the annoying administrative type tasks they’ve been putting off forever.

• Vimeo has laid off most of its staff after being sold to private equity and is now calling itself as an “AI-powered video platform.”

• Steal A Brainrot, a Roblox game where users can collect creatures based on internet memes, has become one of the most popular games on the platform.

• Brands like Kate Spade, Alice + Olivia and more are using AI tools to create AI-generated clothing and accessories.

• Divorced people are continually served content about weddings right when they’re getting divorced. Mashable investigated why that is.

• Gen Zers are drinking less traditional soda and more zero sugar drinks.

• More young people are cutting off their parents, with 27% of Americans over the age of 18 estranged from a family member.

• Tech livestreaming show TBPN, which has become the Sports Center for news about Silicon Valley, has signed with CAA.

• The White House posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota, using AI to make it look like she was crying when she wasn’t.

• ChatGPT can embrace authoritarian ideas after just one prompt, researchers say.

  

• NASA is about to send people to the moon in a spacecraft not everyone thinks is safe to fly.

• Half the country is about to be hit by a major cold front.

• A persistent, low-frequency hum is terrorizing the residents of West Haven, Connecticut.

• Alex Honnold, the climber who starred in the documentary Free Solo, is going to try to climb a 1,667ft skyscraper without any ropes or safety mechanisms, for a live Netflix broadcast today, where he could die live on air.

• Young men who voted for Trump in 2024 do not support Vance as the Republican nominee in 2028.

• Unsealed court documents reveal that the Trump administration revoked Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk’s visa based on her op-ed in the student newspaper.

• The news website Forbes is launching its own prediction platform next to news articles, that will allow readers to make bets in exchange for tokens.

• Crocs is selling $150 clogs that are shaped like LEGOs.

  

• Siri might become an AI chatbot in iOS 27.

• A man has been using fake badges to pose as a pilot and get hundreds of free flights.

• Meet the first dog mayor of 37th Street in Austin, who pledges more fire hydrants and fetch.

• Bitchat is a cool new decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over bluetooth mesh networks. no internet required, no servers, no phone numbers. (I’m excited to try this out)

• Isometric.nyc is a giant isometric pixel art map of NYC.

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