Teen distress eased from 1990 to 2010, then Gray argues it tracked school testing changes
Youth suicide declined in the European Union from 2010 to 2020 while rising steeply in the United States, despite similar smartphone and social media use.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles · Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826Evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray was asked about the claim associated with Jonathan Haidt, who wrote a book arguing that social media drives the youth mental health crisis. Gray, who studies how children learn through free play, pushed back with history rather than screens.
His line was blunt. “In other words, changes in young people’s mental health tracks changes in how we do schooling. It does not track changes in the availability of technology to young people.”
What Gray meant, he argued, starts with a forgotten improvement. The share of American teenagers facing anxiety, depression, and suicide matched the 2018 peak all the way back in 1990, he said, and then they fell through about 2010, moving about 40 percent of the way back toward 1950s levels. That happened before smartphones and social media were widespread, so he does not believe phones started the crisis.
His other evidence, he argued, is geographic. Across large studies and reviews of many studies, he said, time spent on smartphones, social media, or screens in general showed essentially no overall link to measures of teen mental health. Young people in Europe use the same phones and platforms as American kids, he said, yet youth suicide declined in the European Union from 2010 to 2020 while rising steeply in the United States.
Gray said the two other countries he found with a clear American-style rise were Britain, especially England, and Sweden, while allowing there may be others. All three, he argued, imposed nationally mandated changes in schooling similar to Common Core, the American approach in which most states, beginning in 2010, required the same curriculum and the same tests, and judged teachers, principals, and schools by scores. Sweden moved at about the same time as the United States, he said, while England changed three or four years later, and Gray noted England’s increase “began three or four years later” than in Sweden or the United States.
Gray said he could not respond to Marty Seligman, whose work on learned helplessness and new book on agency were raised in support of Haidt, because Seligman’s conclusion rested on artificial intelligence analysis of historical data sets during the previous six to nine months that Gray did not know and had not examined. But Gray argued the timing tracks schooling changes, not technology.
Questions people ask
What changed in American schools around 2010?
Common Core was a set of shared academic standards adopted by most states beginning in 2010, with students tested on the same material. Gray argues its key effect was that teachers had to teach the same curriculum, and teachers, principals, and schools were evaluated by test scores.
What did England and Sweden do that was similar?
Gray says both adopted nationally mandated schooling changes very similar to Common Core. He emphasizes timing: Sweden acted around the same time as the United States, England acted three or four years later, and England's rise in youth distress also started three or four years later.
Does that mean social media has no effect on any teenager?
Not in Gray's telling. He says small studies point both ways, but large, better designed studies and reviews that combine many studies find no meaningful overall link between screen or social media time and teen mental health. He thinks phones became a scapegoat for pressure coming from school.