#readwise # The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jonathan Haidt]] - Full Title: The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/facebooks-dangerous-experiment-teen-girls/620767/ ## Highlights - Much more than for boys, adolescence typically [heightens girls’ self-consciousness](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/puberty-girls-confidence/563804/) about their changing body and amplifies insecurities about where they fit in their social network. **Social media—particularly Instagram, which displaces other forms of interaction among teens, puts the size of their friend group on public display, and subjects their physical appearance to the hard metrics of likes and comment counts—takes the worst parts of middle school and glossy women’s magazines and intensifies them.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr5vnxh096d90hw5tazkeyeh)) ^npju2e - Something terrible has happened to Gen Z, the generation born after 1996. Rates of teen depression and anxiety have gone up and down over time, but it is rare to find an “elbow” in these data sets––a substantial and sustained change occurring within just two or three years. Yet when we look at what happened to American teens in the early 2010s, we see many such turning points, usually sharper for girls. The data for adolescent depression are noteworthy:  Some [have argued](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/opinion/sunday/teenager-anxiety-phones-social-media.html) that these increases reflect nothing more than Gen Z’s increased willingness to disclose their mental-health problems. But researchers have found corresponding increases in measurable behaviors such as [suicide](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2735809) (for both sexes), and emergency-department admissions for [self-harm](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2664031) (for girls only). From 2010 to 2014, rates of hospital admission for self-harm did not increase at all for women in their early 20s, or for boys or young men, but they [doubled for girls ages 10 to 14](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2664031). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr5vtz2d0ypcdnks5bpg0rav)) - ***The timing points to social media.*** National surveys of American high-school students show that only about [63 percent](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ppm-ppm0000203.pdf) reported using a “social networking site” on a daily basis back in 2010. But as smartphone ownership increased, access became easier and visits became more frequent. By 2014, [80 percent of high-school students](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ppm-ppm0000203.pdf) said they used a social-media platform on a daily basis, and [24 percent said](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/) that they were online “almost constantly.” Of course, teens had long been texting each other, but from 2010 to 2014, high-school students moved much more of their lives onto social-media platforms ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr5vx2ayy9d0gjd49zdp8vvp)) - **Boys are glued to their screens as well, but they [aren’t using social media](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/05/21/part-1-teens-and-social-media-use/) as much; they spend [far more time](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197119302453) playing video games.** When a boy steps away from the console, he does not spend the next few hours worrying about what other players are saying about him. **Instagram, in contrast, can loom in a girl’s mind even when the app is not open, driving hours of obsessive thought, worry, and shame.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr5vytxdn00a1yyns5sccx9n)) - In 2017, **[British researchers](https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/instagram-ranked-worst-for-young-people-s-mental-health.html) asked 1,500 teens to rate how each of the major social-media platforms affected them on certain well-being measures, including anxiety, loneliness, body image, and sleep. Instagram scored as the most harmful**, followed by Snapchat and then Facebook. [Facebook’s own research](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739), leaked by the whistleblower **Frances Haugen, has a similar finding: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression** … This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” The researchers also noted that “social comparison is worse” on Instagram than on rival apps. Snapchat’s filters “keep the focus on the face,” whereas Instagram “focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr5w0391gh6e3xxfnz1gn5f2)) - Social-media platforms were not initially designed for children, but children have nevertheless been the subject of a gigantic national experiment testing the effects of those platforms. Without a proper control group, we can’t be *certain* that the experiment has been a catastrophic failure, but it *probably* has been ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr6zwv2mmdpb5kea5ntst6q7))