Plenty has already been written about how young people are caught in a Catch-22: being on social media sucks, but being off of social media has major social penalties. Given that this is already well known, this study seems intentionally, even maliciously, naive.
This is a really important point - we're stuck on social media, even if we hate. My career would suffer without it, and I like being able to support my family.
When you're that stuck with something, you kind of have to ignore the negative consequences. Does it matter how bad it is for my mental health? Or my kids mental health.
But this lets us go wild in our heads: "Maybe it's really bad, like tobacco bad! Or worse! Maybe we'll all be killed by apathy and a rouge AI trained on our social media feed!"
Yet you don't discuss the root cause of mental angst amongst today's children (of which I have three): rapacious capitalism. Our children know they're playing a game that was rigged for them to lose. But sure, blame social media. All social media did was hold up a mirror to reflect what we actually are.
