Social media companies try to fend off age limits by claiming they are a "lifeline" for kids from marginalized groups.
But as trans activist Lennon Torres shows, from her own experience and from Meta's own research, the opposite is closer to the truth: www.afterbabel.com/p/dont-let-b...
Grateful to TED for having me at this year's conference in Vancouver. I met with thought leaders from tech, education, and the arts. An intellectual paradise! I'll post the talk as soon as it's live.
If anyone tells you, "there is no proof that social media is harmful to kids," send them this article. The latest on our Substack, "After Babel," where all content is paywall-free: www.afterbabel.com/p/seven-line...
The 7 lines of evidence that social media harms kids and teens:
1️⃣ What the victims say
2️⃣ What the witnesses say
3️⃣ What company documents and insiders reveal
4️⃣ Cross-sectional studies
5️⃣ Longitudinal studies
6️⃣ Randomized controlled trials of time reduction
7️⃣ Natural experiments
From the great Cal Newport: "In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all."
He calls for a national wellness movement arounds screens, the same way as we popularized exercise in the 60s:
The latest social media trend: skincare for toddlers. How would they have that youthful glow if not for sheet masks and serums? www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...
We had a perception of reality before that this was just inevitable: "What are you going to do? Social media is here to stay.“
Now suddenly we’re all saying, "Wait, everybody agrees this is harmful for kids. So why are we giving it to kids?” Including my thoughts:
For the first time, the law aligns with common sense: social media companies no longer have a special exemption to harm children with impunity. Their shield is gone. They will be treated like any industry that knowingly harms children. History will judge them as harshly as the tobacco industry.
The 7 lines of evidence we cover in that chapter:
1️⃣ What the victims say
2️⃣ What the witnesses say
3️⃣ What company documents and insiders reveal
4️⃣ Cross-sectional studies
5️⃣ Longitudinal studies
6️⃣ Randomized controlled trials of time reduction
7️⃣ Natural experiments
Honored to have a chapter in this year's World Happiness Report about the population-scale harms of social media. If you want a full rundown of the evidence that social media is harming teen mental health, I lay out 7 lines of evidence here.
www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2026/soci...
Join us at Columbia University in NYC on 3/31 for a live podcast recording with Gen Z’er Ava Smithing and a showcase of groups on the front lines of digital rights and online safety.
Parents, bring your teenage kids, this one’s for them! Free registration:
Parents who've lost children to social media harms (sextortion, drugs sold on IG/Snap, eating disorders) are joining arms with parents who've lost children to AI chat bots. The saddest Venn diagram of compounding harms:
"A relationship rarely dies from one catastrophic betrayal, and most of the couples I see aren’t destroyed by a single event. They erode through tiny departures that are too frequent to ignore, in which one partner’s attention leaves the room while their body is still there."
Latest on our Substack:
Still more evidence that #edtech harmed American education: Across states, the year that the state imposed mandates requiring computers/tablets is the year that test scores stopped rising and in most cases started falling.
By Jared Cooney Hovarth:
Check out the index: chidlhoodindex.org
It's a big day for us at the Anxious Generation movement — we launched the Childhood Index, a ranking of US states on how well their technology laws and policies support healthy, flourishing childhoods, online and offline.
Where does your state rank?
Thank you @axios.com for the exclusive story!
Major new report on mental health (Sapien Labs). Data from 85 countries:
1) In ALL countries examined, young people have worse mental health than older generations.
2) A younger age of first smartphone ownership is associated with increased suicidal thoughts & other problems in adulthood.
"For those of us who study how change happens, this is a master class. An idea that seemed politically impossible in early 2024 has become politically inevitable by early 2026."
Thank you @fastcompany.com
“No evidence of harm” is a familiar argument, but it’s a false one — both in the context of social media and in educational technology. The latest on my Substack, After Babel, by Jared Cooney Hovarth www.afterbabel.com/p/edtech-bor...
Freya India is one of the best writers I know, and she's only 26 (Gen Z). I wrote about her in "The Anxious Generation." She now has a book of her own, out in the UK today and in the US in May. I would tag her, but like many Gen Z'ers now, she doesn't have social media.
We live in a world where wealthy industries can buy influence and continue to harm kids. But that is changing. Thanks for having Catherine Price and me, @thedailyshow.com!
"The Amazing Generation" is on sale wherever books are sold, aimed at 9-12yo's.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7SC...
Swiping for new content is one of many addictive gestures social media borrowed from gambling.
A wide-ranging conversation with Manoush Zomorodi for TED Radio Hour, a co-production with NPR (40 min).
www.npr.org/programs/ted...
Bravo to the NPTA for deciding not to pursue further funding from Meta.
Big tech knows their products are harming children, and they have spent vast sums of money confusing the public and trying to fund organizations that are supposed to defend children.
Yes, social media apps are intentionally designed to addict — Roger McNamee, early advisor to Zuckerberg and early investor in Facebook confirms: www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4yp...
When Zuckerberg says there is no causation, only correlation, between social media and mental health harms to kids, that is patently false.
Thanks for having me @cbsnews.com (7-min video)
www.cbsnews.com/video/anxiou...
In 2024, Zuckerberg said to Congress, “We are on the side of parents everywhere working hard to raise their kids.”
That wasn't, and isn't, true.
Tomorrow we hear from Zuckerberg in the LA social media trial. He has a lot to account for.
