There are plenty of reasons to hate the social media companies. They erode our privacy, manipulate us through algorithms, and have fundamentally altered the norms governing human social interaction.
Yet, one thing social media is probably not doing is making children and teenagers more anxious, depressed, or suicidal. Despite all the recent saber-rattling and attempts by legislators to age-gate large portions of the internet, and whatever you may have heard from Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation and anointed figurehead of this crusade, the evidence for claims regarding what social media is doing to the mental health of children increasingly seems based on flawed studies that have yielded mixed results.
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If you’re old enough to remember the late ’90s and early ’00s, some of this may seem vaguely familiar. Recently, while reading a serviceable enough book on Goth subculture, I was reminded of this period as the book recounted how, following the Columbine High School massacre, a moral panic erupted over violent movies and video games, specifically The Matrix and Doom; spooky-looking Marilyn Manson; and the sometimes black-clad teenagers who enjoyed these things.
Back then, the movement had its advocacy groups, experts, and politicians insisting something had to be done. If policymakers failed to act, they warned, even more children would surely be hypnotized into shooting up their schools after spending too much time listening to “Coma White” while playing first-person shooter games.
Today, though, as those who were teenagers and adolescents in that moment find themselves well into adulthood, the period seems laughable. The purported link between violent video games, of which everyone was so certain, is now widely dismissed by serious researchers. Moreover, on a highly practical level, very few teenagers from the ’90s ever went on to become school shooters because they thought they were the living embodiment of Neo.
However, it is important not to forget that the now-laughable events of yesteryear fomented who knows how many conflicts between parents and their children over otherwise benign entertainment while simultaneously threatening free expression on a national level.
Amusingly, but not surprisingly, that wasn’t even America’s first moral panic over what the kids were into. In the ’80s, concerned parents led by Al Gore’s wife sounded the alarm that Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, and MTV would lead children to drug abuse, suicide, and Satan. In the ’50s, concerned parents and a childhood expert with a bestselling book pushed Congress to go after the publishers of crime and horror comics and pressure them to self-censor due to concerns they were causing juvenile delinquency. In the 1920s, the threat was jazz, although that particular moral panic concerned slightly older youths and may have been fueled by more than a touch of racism and sexism. Even if generally skeptical of such claims in modern contexts, there are only so many antique references to “wriggling savages” and what jazz might do to a woman’s marrigability that one can dismiss.
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Compared to the post-Columbine panic, these older ones seem even more quaint today, as very few Vault of Horror readers went on to become ax murderers, and most flappers probably went on to cook completely adequate roasts for their husbands.
Similarly, it seems likely that most underage social media users will not die by suicide or experience more anxiety or depression than any other child, including those with parents who listened to Jonathan Haidt. Subsequently, even if the social media companies are far from benign and good reasons to hate them remain, it might be best to refocus on those reasons and pull the plug on our screen-time mental health panic.
Daniel Nuccio is an independent journalist and a spring 2026 College Fix fellow. He is a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute. He earned his doctorate in biology in 2025.
