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Scrutinizing the Effects of Digital Technology on Mental Health

Jan 2020 🌐 Nature PAYWALLED — LINKED, NOT HOSTED

In this 2020 comment published in Nature, Jonathan Haidt and psychologist Nick Allen argue that existing research on digital technology and adolescent mental health leans too heavily on correlational surveys and imprecise self-reported screen-time estimates. They call on researchers, technology companies, and funders to invest in more rigorous methods — including device-logged usage data, experimental designs, and pre-registered analyses — to better establish whether, and how strongly, social-media and smartphone use are associated with adolescent anxiety and depression. The piece presents no new data of its own; it is an argument, from two researchers active in the field, about the limits of the existing evidence base and a call to raise its quality. It appeared amid a broader debate in the scientific literature over how confidently researchers can characterize digital technology's relationship to youth mental-health trends, and is notable as Haidt publicly acknowledging methodological limitations in research he otherwise cites.

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CITATION

Haidt, Jonathan, and Nick Allen. "Scrutinizing the Effects of Digital Technology on Mental Health." Nature 578, no. 7794 (2020): 226–227. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00296-x

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