Nearly five years ago, the documentary “The Social Dilemma” (available on Netflix) took direct aim at social media, charging that companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter (now X), Snapchat, and others intentionally designed their products to addict users, especially children, and knowingly wreaked emotional harm on them.
Depression was through the roof.
Evidence of the addiction and emotional harm was everywhere. In addition, producers of the documentary had testimony by tech insiders who reported on the intent behind the design of the algorithms as well as the effect the algorithms had on users. I wrote about this last year.
The facts were damning.
Five years later the problem has become even worse and very little is being done about it. Here is a chart that shows the level of depression for 8th, 10th and 12th grade students from 1991 to 2022:
Source: Monitoring the Future surveys of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders
Psychologist Jean M. Twenge attributes the dramatic rise in teen depression to social media use. Anyone with eyes can see the correlation. The naysayers, though, say correctly that correlation does not prove causation. Twenge counters that in the absence of other logical explanations, we should go with the obvious explanation.
Certainly, social media is a major stressor for children and teens.
It is unbelievable that we are allowing this to happen to our children. It is not social media alone, though, causing the problem. While social media plays a central role, there are a host of issues that contribute to the explosion of childhood depression.
One of the more significant stressors that contributes to childhood anxiety and depression is the evaporation of security.
Today, families easily disintegrate, truth is relative, things once thought to be good are now considered evil, whether you are a male or female is determined by your state of mind rather than your biology, love is a feeling that is sometimes fleeting, sometimes enduring. There is no certainty. Everything is up for grabs.
Children require security.
Ivan Pavlov is well known for his famous study using a dog that would salivate at the ringing of a bell. Pavlov sounded the bell whenever he fed the dog. The food caused the dog to salivate. After repeatedly ringing the bell and feeding the dog, merely ringing the bell caused the dog to salivate without the presence of food.
This is an example of classical conditioning. The salivation at the ringing of the bell was the conditioned response.
However, Pavlov conducted a lesser-known study as well.
According to the book “Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science” by Daniel P. Todes, Pavlov and his researchers learned that the dogs used in the experiments had distinct personalities. Not all dogs were alike, and they developed conditioned responses to various stimuli at different rates.
The personalities of the dogs contributed to the varied results of the experiments.
In one study, the dogs were trained to distinguish between a circle and an ellipse. During the experiment the researcher converted the ellipse to appear closer and closer to a circle. At one point, two of the dogs refused to choose.
One of the dogs, usually a calm and compliant animal, became excited, “yelped, spun in circles, tore off the rubber [experimental] apparatus, and barked when standing in the courtyard and when led to the chamber for experiments.”
The dog became “overstressed” from the confusion and acted out as a result.
Confusion is a stressor that affects children in varying ways. Some become anxious and agitated, some withdraw and turn inward, and some seem not to be bothered. This is not healthy for any child or teen.
Our job as parents and adults is to protect children from becoming overstressed to the point of distress. While stress helps us grow, distress is counterproductive. Every child has a different personality, meaning some can handle more stress than others.
Parents, teachers, and coaches must avoid placing children in situations where the stress becomes too great for them to handle. We need to shield their innocence and protect them from situations and ideas they are not yet equipped to handle.
We are not doing that.
Under the guise of sex education, our children are being exposed to hardcore pornography. They are being taught to engage in sexual experimentation to discover themselves.
They are being told that rich white men are oppressors and that everyone else is a victim to a greater or lesser degree. They are being indoctrinated to believe the United States is a nation that was created through the enslavement of one race and the extermination of another.
Starting at three or four years old children are being taught that they will not know whether they are a boy or a girl until they discover it themselves. In many states, including Illinois, children as young as 13 are allowed to decide on their own, without parental notification or permission, to get an abortion or to get transgender hormone therapy, even surgery.
And, of course, children are being taught that mankind is on the verge of annihilation caused by our alleged environmental negligence. To add to the stress, children are recruited to become environmental activists to save our planet from that neglect.
In addition to the “social” part of social media—the quest for likes and shares—all of these and other issues are part of the narratives children are exposed to daily on social media platforms.
Ultimately, the distress children are subjected to today is the result of our generation, the baby boomers, abandoning God. Our generation no longer fears God, looks to Him for security, or accepts His truth as revealed through scripture.
Long ago, we stopped modeling our faith through our words and actions.
How could we expect our children to experience the peace of God when we no longer reflect it ourselves?
Why wouldn’t they be depressed?
“Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” (NIV) -Lamentations 3:40
