NC Family Staff | July 27, 2024 | SHARE: 
This summer, the U.S. Surgeon General called for social media to have warning labels, much like those on cigarette boxes. It has been a long established fact that social media can be damaging to mental health, especially for teens, but now the question is what do we do about it?
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Dr. Leonard Sax – a practicing physician, a PhD in psychology, and a New York Times bestselling author – to discuss how social media is impacting kids and how parents can mitigate its effects.
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Do you sometimes wonder if you or your children are addicted to social media? Well, you’re not alone. Just this summer, the US Surgeon General called for warning labels on social media, similar to those found on cigarettes. Dr. Leonard Sax joins us today to discuss the relationship between social media and mental health. He is a prolific author, having written four books and numerous articles about children and adolescent development. He’s a practicing physician in Pennsylvania, but also has a doctorate in psychology. His most recent book, The Collapse of Parenting, became a New York Times bestseller. Welcome to Family Policy Matters, Dr Sax.
LEONARD SAX: Thanks for inviting me.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: First of all, why did you feel the need to write your latest book, The Collapse of Parenting?
LEONARD SAX: So, as you mentioned, I’m a family doctor, and I’ve observed something kind of remarkable in my own practice in recent years. So, mom brings her 10-year-old son in, he’s got a tummy ache, and he’s playing his video game in the exam room while mom is describing his symptoms and her concerns, and he finally looks up from his iPad and he says, “Shut up, mom. You don’t know what the ___ you’re talking about.” Okay, that didn’t really happen 20 years ago. This is something new. Mom gives me this wan smile like, you know, what can you do?
Kids who disrespect their parents were really quite rare as recently as 20 years ago. I have been a family doctor for 35 years, and I’ve witnessed firsthand what I’ve come to call the collapse of American parenting. Now, a lot of people look at the title and think I’m blaming the parents, but I’m actually not if you take the time to read the book. I’m blaming the culture. American popular culture has transformed over the last 20-30 years. It used to be a culture that taught kids to respect their parents and to respect their elders. It is now a culture that deliberately, mindfully, and intentionally teaches kids that it’s cute and funny to disrespect, not only their parents, but also one another, their same age peers. And this is true whether we’re talking about the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, the most popular TV shows, the most popular songs on the Billboard Top 100, the most popular TikTok videos, or YouTube videos.
The culture of disrespect is the title chapter one of my book, The Collapse of Parenting. When you ask the question, which American singer has the most top 10 hit songs on the Billboard Top 100 or the most number one songs on the Billboard Top 100 it’s Drake. D R A K E and I find a lot of parents over 30 don’t even know who Drake is, and his songs are filled with the F word, the N word, the A word. I’m not going to repeat those words. If you just Google my name, Leonard Sax, and Drake, you can find articles I’ve written about Drake and quoting from his songs, which really do epitomize this culture of disrespect, that he disrespects women, that he disrespects you. His signature greeting to his fans is the raised middle finger. That’s how he greets his fans at his concerts. That’s how he greets his friends. That’s how he opens some of his songs. Middle finger pointing at you. Drake is unambiguously toxic.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: You were mentioning music, but we’re talking today about social media. So, talk about the link. Why are all these tied together?
LEONARD SAX: Well, we now have very good research showing that for kids in English speaking countries, the United States first and foremost, the more time kids in in the United States spend on social media, the more likely they are to become anxious and or depressed. The evidence there is now very compelling. In longitudinal cohort studies, you follow kids over time, and after controlling for race, ethnicity, household income, family composition, you find that the more time kids, I mean, kids in the United States, spend on social media, the more likely they are to become anxious and or depressed.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, so why specifically English speaking? Why is this not a worldwide phenomenon?
LEONARD SAX: Yeah, well, this is something that’s really only recently come to light. So, in March of this year, Jon Haidt published a book called The Anxious Generation, hugely successful, very influential, in which he presents this this evidence that social media is really harmful for kids, and we should get kids off social media. Almost all of his evidence comes from the United States and from other English-speaking countries. And in recent weeks, literally, scholars have pushed back and have said, “Look, this is very likely true for the United States and appears to be true for Canada and the United Kingdom and Australia, but it’s not at all true for Germany. It’s not at all true for Eastern Europe.” Those kids are just as likely to have phones and social media as American kids are, but we’re not seeing the rise in depression. We’re actually seeing a decline in suicide rates in those countries over the past 10 years, where we’ve seen rises in anxiety and depression for American kids and rise in in suicide rates for American kids.
So, as you know, I’m a medical doctor. Medical doctors use the term vector to refer to something that spreads infection. So, for example, with regard to malaria, the anopheline mosquito is the vector of malaria. It spreads malaria. The mosquito itself is not the disease. Malaria, caused by a microscopic parasite, is the disease, but the anopheline mosquito, as the vector, spreads that microbe that actually causes the disease. And I think there’s growing evidence that social media is the vector, but the disease is American popular culture, the culture of disrespect that breaks bonds across generations, that promotes fame and wealth as the most important things you could have in this life, and that is the culture of the English-speaking world, beginning with American culture, but not confined to American culture. Drake himself is Canadian. It is that American culture that’s actually driving the toxicity. Social media is the vector of that culture. It’s spreading that culture. But the root cause of the anxiety, the depression, the suicide, is not social media. It’s the toxicity of American English speaking, popular culture.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right, right. Okay, so what recommendations then do you have for parents who may be listening and be somewhat panicking as they watch their children on their mobile phones and iPads.
LEONARD SAX: Well, one of the big points I make in my book, The Collapse of Parenting, is you have to say no, but you also have to say yes. You have to say no to social media for kids who speak English at home. You have to say no to the culture of disrespect, the culture of Drake, Bruno, Mars, TikTok and Instagram. But you also have to offer a positive alternative. You have to say yes to a culture that you must offer your child. You must offer your child a healthier culture in which it’s cool to be a gentleman and a scholar. You have to connect your kids to other families that share your culture.
You know, in these articles, pushing back on Jon Haidt and his thesis, we’ve learned a lot about variations among European cultures, and we’re learning that the cultures with the greatest religious affiliation are the cultures that are doing best. And we also have research from this country, from the United States, showing that kids who score high on religiosity, meaning kids who are devout, who attend church, who believe in the faith, those kids are protected from many of these harmful aspects of American popular culture.
So, a very concrete recommendation, go to church with your kids. Talk about Scripture, study Scripture together. Find some of these great podcasts now that are available that dig into some of the tough questions of Scripture. Watch them together with your teenagers and discuss them. You know, I just drove my daughter seven hours to Virginia Tech, and that’s what we did. We were listening to Christian podcasts and debating the role of women leaders in the church and had a wonderful time. You can’t just say no to the bad stuff. You also have to say yes to the good stuff.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So, what about the parents and grandparents that are listening? Because we don’t get a pass, right? I mean, once we get to a certain age, we don’t we can’t just do whatever we want on social media. It’s a problem for us as well. Can you talk to us about the differences in the generations and what might be different for us?
LEONARD SAX: Well, sure. Two comments. First of all, the younger the child, the greater the toxicity. You know, for old people, meaning people over 40, our personalities are pretty well formed, and in most cases, and so we are less susceptible to the toxicity promoted by this vector of toxic culture. But 13-year-olds are not. 17-year-olds are not. They haven’t formed their personality. They’re still trying to figure out who am I and what really matters. So, the younger the kid, the greater the risk associated with social media. And certainly no child under 16 should be on social media. We now have very compelling evidence. Scholars are debating whether the cutoff should be 16 or 18, but certainly no child under 16 should be on Instagram or TikTok. I would say there’s pretty strong consensus now among American scholars that kids under 16 should not be on social media. But the second point is that you cannot teach a virtue which you do not possess. If you’re spending your free time scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, you can’t teach your 13-year-old not to scroll through Instagram and TikTok. To be a better parent, you have to become a better person. You have to be the person you want your child to become. You have to demonstrate the virtues that you want your child to learn.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Wow. I’m going to repeat that. To be a better parent, you have to become a better person. We need to emphasize that that speaks right to me. All right. Well, let’s talk about the Surgeon General’s recommendation to put warning labels on social media. What’s your response to that, and what has been this response in general to that?
LEONARD SAX: Dr. Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, last month, I think, made some very good recommendations. He pointed out that right now, any kid who says that they’re 13 or older can go on any social media site and get their own account. They don’t need their parents’ knowledge or consent. And he noted that 40% of American kids eight to twelve years of age now have social media accounts because all they have to do is say that they’re 13. There’s no age verification. And he notes that this goes back to an ancient law, the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act, passed in 1998. You know, Facebook launched in 2004, so this law that set age 13 as the limit was enacted in an era before any modern social media even existed. It was not based in any evidence.
And so, he is calling first and foremost, that we need to update the law. That no child under 16 should be on social media, and there needs to be enforcement, there needs to be age verification, which we now know how to do, we’re just not doing it. And then, as you said, he recommended that there be a surgeon general’s warning. When you click on social media, a warning would pop up saying the Surgeon General has determined that social media is hazardous to your mental health, or something like that, he didn’t offer the exact words. And on that point, there’s been substantial pushback from scholars who have pointed out that, look, the evidence simply doesn’t support the broad claims made by Dr Murthy.
Again, looking at countries where people don’t speak English, we’re not seeing this effect. This seems to be something about American popular culture, what exactly would the warnings say? Is that warning really based in evidence, or is this a more cultural issue? So, there has been remarkable pushback from scholars who actually work in this field, who have said that the Surgeon General’s recommendation regarding warning labels are not really valid. Derek Thompson, writing in The Atlantic magazine said that anxiety may be America’s greatest export, and that it’s the anxiety promoting character of American culture, and not social media, per se, that is the real toxin here. Another columnist for The Atlantic wrote an article titled, “Instagram is Not a Cigarette.” Warning labels on cigarettes appear to have had some influence over the last 60 years, but we really don’t have any good evidence that a warning label popping up when you click on social media, that a 13-year-old is going to say, oh, because a Surgeon General doesn’t approve, I guess I won’t go any further. There’s really no evidence. We have no evidence suggesting that warning labels would be efficacious.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. But clearly we don’t know exactly what to do, but we do know this is a huge issue, and it’s nice to see that so many people are trying to figure out how to create some kind of solution. So, we’re just about out of time before we go, Dr. Leonard Sax, where can our listeners go if they want to learn more about this? Obviously, get your book, but also follow the other work that you’ve done.
LEONARD SAX: My website, leonardsax.com, L E O N A R D S A X.com, where you can read the articles I’ve written on this topic. There’s no charge for anything. And you can also email me through the website. And I try to respond to every email I get. Sometimes it takes a couple days, but I do try to respond to everyone
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, and of course, your newest book, The Collapse of Parenting, I would imagine is just wherever books are sold.
LEONARD SAX: Indeed.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, Dr. Leonard Sax, thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
LEONARD SAX: Thank you.
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