Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers has emerged as a prominent skeptic of the global movement toward restricting teenage social media use, presenting a starkly different perspective from that of Jonathan Haidt, whose bestselling book “The Anxious Generation” has influenced policy decisions worldwide.
Odgers, a developmental psychology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years, contends that politicians and parents are directing focus toward the wrong targets. She argues that bans on social media are likely to backfire rather than improve youth wellbeing. In contrast to Haidt’s approach of keeping his teenage daughter off social media entirely, Odgers gave her own children access to platforms like Snapchat at age 11. Her analysis of existing research leads her to conclude that children’s brains have not been fundamentally rewired by mobile devices and that evidence linking social media to declining adolescent mental health is limited.
Odgers attributes the growing mental health crisis among young people to a range of causes including economic recession, rising adult mental health issues, the Covid pandemic, and opioid addiction in the United States. She criticizes the identification of social media as “the culprit” as misleading, stating that this narrative “doesn’t show up that way in the vast majority of studies” and diverts attention from other solutions. While acknowledging that adolescent mental health has deteriorated, she emphasizes that correlation between social media use and mental health problems should not be confused with causation.
Regarding enforcement concerns, Odgers points to recent research from Australia showing that more than 85% of under-16s continued using social media three months after a ban was implemented. She worries that pushing teenagers away from these platforms will drive them into less regulated spaces and discourage them from reporting harms. She advocates instead for stronger regulation of tech companies, improved community infrastructure for youth, and resources directed toward teachers and school counselors rather than enforcement mechanisms.
Odgers remains critical of tech companies’ accountability and notes that social media has both positive and negative effects depending on how users engage with it, challenging the binary framing that dominates current policy debates.
Originally reported by The Guardian. Read the full story →