Filling In The Gaps

Casey Newton wrote about Australia's new social media ban for under-16s, touching on Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation":

The book has been criticized for its lack of empirical data on the central claim that social networks are largely responsible for the mental health crisis in young people. But it was also a runaway bestseller that spoke to parents' mounting anxieties over what they can see with their own eyes: a generation of children that seems more distracted, depressed, and homebound than any in recent memory.

I'm critical of social media, particularly the algorithmic kind. Wrote a whole post about this back when Haidt's book came out. There's real harm happening. Kids spending hours on platforms built to hack their attention. Parents can see it. The research is mounting.

But there's confirmation bias at play too. We know something's wrong, so it's easy to point at patterns that fit our perspective. Same reason people fall into conspiracy theories or why humanity invented thousands of gods to explain what we couldn't understand. Our brains hate open loops. They'll work overtime to fill in gaps, even if it means forcing square pegs into round holes.

I wrote before about how we all have this gut feeling that social media isn't good for us. Charlie Warzel nailed it when he said we know this connectivity is working on us, but it's hard to pin down exactly how. That difficulty doesn't mean we're imagining things. It just means the mechanisms are complex.

The truth sits somewhere uncomfortable. Yes, modern social platforms are fundamentally different from anything that came before. MTV didn't have an algorithm designed to keep you watching at the expense of everything else in your life. Your Super Nintendo wasn't constantly A/B testing ways to hijack your dopamine system.

But we're also pattern-seeking creatures desperate for simple explanations. Mental health issues in young people are real and rising. Social media usage is real and rising. The correlation is obvious. The causation? That's where things get messy. What bugs me is when people dismiss all concerns as moral panic, when they trot out the "kids these days" line as if nothing's changed. That's lazy thinking. The platforms themselves admit they're designed to maximise engagement. Meta's own research showed Instagram made teen girls feel worse about their bodies. This isn't speculation.

At the same time, treating social media as the singular cause lets everyone else off the hook. The underfunding of mental health services. The housing crisis making young people feel hopeless about their futures. The climate crisis hanging over everything. The pandemic that robbed them of crucial developmental years. All of these things matter too. Australia's ban feels like politicians doing something visible instead of something effective. It's the legislative equivalent of doom scrolling – responding to anxiety with action that makes you feel better but doesn't actually address the root problem.

The science is still developing. Our brains are filling in gaps with assumptions. And while we figure it out, kids are growing up in this weird digital landscape we've created for them.

I still think the algorithm is the problem, not social connection itself. I still think these platforms were built to exploit us. I still think most of the harm traces back to the attention economy and advertising revenue. But I'm trying to hold space for uncertainty too. Trying not to let my own biases fill in gaps the research hasn't actually filled yet. Trying to remember that when everyone's convinced they're right about something this complicated, that's usually when we're all missing something.