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Comment by zeroonetwothree | Hacker News Reader

The causation could easily run the other way. In particular kids that have worse mental health use phones as a coping mechanism. What kind of kid can resist the lure of a phone until she 18? Only one with very strong mental fortitude.

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The question being used to derive this data is:

> “At what age did you get your own smartphone or tablet (e.g. iPad) with Internet access that you could carry with you?”

6 year olds can't acquire smartphones on their own. So there is definitely an element of parental agency here.

Yep, the population that receive a smartphone early have fundamentally different parents than the population that receive a smartphone late.

So the study is biased: they cannot conclude it's due to the smartphone and not the family environment, as both are different in the two samples.

But whatever is different about the parental groups surely existed before the introduction of smartphones, so even if the parental groups are different, you can still conclude that introducing smartphones caused worse mental health outcomes.

No, you cannot conclude that. You say "surely existed before the introduction of smartphones", but you are also saying that the smartphones have introduced something that did not existed. If it's the case, it means that "new things can be introduced". You still need to prove the real mechanism that really modify the mental health and that is really specific to smartphones. For all we know, plenty of other things were introduced amongst the same time. For example, maybe in a parallel universe where everything is identical but smartphones were not introduced, you would have exactly the same depression curve, because, I don't know, the real source is the social media and people without smartphone will access it on laptop, or because the real source is disillusion from prospects as that generation has noticed they will never have a life as easy as their parents (which was not the case in the past either).

To be clear, it is 100% possible that it is the smartphone, but you cannot "scientifically conclude" it's the smartphone, not with the data that we have. It's not even a question of p-value, the problem is that this conclusion is too much driven by "it feels logical to me" and confirmation bias, rather than honestly trying to drive a conclusion from observations.

Or disconnected parents give their kids ipads and iphones the earliest and with the least oversight.

And note the large spike in this graph from 17 to 18.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...

Disconnected parents existed before iPhones, though. Why has mental health deteriorated so much since 2010?

More access and easier access to the negative elements of society that prey on children with bad home lives.

Prior to the internet, they had to find you on the streets and recruit you. Now they just need good SEO.

Because of smartphones

Phones are a factor, but social media is the pits. The more I engage with it, the worse I feel in general. It's a combination of endless advertising (whether via traditional ads or "sponsored posts") and endless rage bait.

Different platforms seem to optimize for different "mixes". On Instagram, everyone seems to be selling something. While Twitter is rage-bait central. Don't have enough experience with TikTok or Facebook to comment on those.

> The causation could easily run the other way. In particular kids that have worse mental health use phones as a coping mechanism. What kind of kid can resist the lure of a phone until she 18? Only one with very strong mental fortitude.

No, because the kids aren't the agents here: their parents are.

It's not even plausible for a kid to be able to independently acquire their own phone until they are a teenager, and even then a parent can put up many roadblocks to cripple its use (e.g. refuse to get it a cell plan).

I think you misunderstand their idea. A child with worse coping can push their parents harder for a phone, and a child with better coping skills can hold out without a phone longer. This is the theory they're suggesting, I believe.

> I think you misunderstand their idea. A child with worse coping can push their parents harder for a phone, and a child with better coping skills can hold out without a phone longer. This is the theory they're suggesting, I believe.

I think you're reading that into their comment when it's not there. They didn't mention nagging at all, and even if the kid nags, the parent still has all the agency.

If there's some correlation-not-causation criticism here, it's probably some along the lines of parents with the fortitude to say no to their kids will raise more mentally-healthy adults, and successful phone restrictions are correlated with that.

It's a fair point. But what explains the uptick in depression and mental health issues starting around 2012, disproportionately impacting pre-teen girls and not contained to any geo. The author's entire point is that social media is the only explanation that that has been proposed. Moreover, it's not a far-fetched explanation. He very aware that correlation does not provide causation, and that it could be the other way around. However, no one (according to him) has offered up a theory which explains the data like the social media theory does.

> What kind of kid can resist the lure of a phone until she 18? Only one with very strong mental fortitude.

I think I know one and indeed they have a very strong mental fortitude. For starter she doesn't want a smartphone and is vocal about it. I am watching how the situation evolves.

Except the majority of kids have smart phones now and the rates of mental health issues have skyrocketed.

"What kind of kid can resist the lure of a phone until she 18? "

They don't need to resist it on their own. You just need decent parents that don't promote it at a young age. Yeah the kid may get out on their own and touch a few smart phones but if you don't addict them to it at a young age they'll be less interested in using it as a constant coping mechanism. Additionally, someone has to actually buy these devices for them. If they have to spend their own money on this stuff it's less likely they'll have them.

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