The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Began Around 2012

This is not just “Kids these days”

From the first time I wrote about Gen Z in 2015 (with Greg Lukianoff, in our Coddling essay) through my most recent discussion in a December interview with Tunku Varadarajan in the Wall Street Journal, the main criticism I have heard is that I’m just another old man (I’m 59) shaking his fist and complaining about “kids these days,” when in fact “the kids are alright.” If that’s true, then the first half of the Babel project—on what social media did to childhood and to teen mental health—is fatally flawed. Is the criticism valid? Two responses to that WSJ essay do us the favor of collecting…

related reading

• Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illnessafterbabel.com
• The Zoomer Question - American Affairs Journalamericanaffairsjournal.org
• We're Not The Anxious Generationjoanganzcooneycenter.org
• The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood - The Atlantictheatlantic.com
• Book Review: The Anxious Generationsubstack.com
• Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s The Evidence.jonathanhaidt.substack.com
• Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media (Ep. 209) | Conversations with Tylerconversationswithtyler.com
• Honestly, it's probably the phonesnoahpinion.substack.com
• Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s The Evidence.afterbabel.com
• The Anxious Generation — from a book to a movementanxiousgeneration.com
• The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood - The Atlanticweb.archive.org
• Why American Teens Are So Sad - The Atlantictheatlantic.com