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The Many Lines of Evidence That Social Media is Not Safe For Teens

Jon Haidt · 23 Sept 2026

Read the piece on afterbabel.com ↗

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Short-form video is a growing worry for its risks to cognition, attention, reading comprehension, education and executive function.

    Their wordsAnd while we did not discuss the advent of short-form video, we are increasingly worried about the risks it poses to cognition, attention, reading comprehension, education, and executive function.

  2. Our reading

    Apparently small effects can be quite significant when applied to large populations.

    Their wordsWhile these are only rough estimates, they nonetheless go to show that apparently "small" effects can in fact be quite significant when applied to large populations.

  3. Our reading

    The balance of experimental evidence strongly favors a causal link between social media use and worsening mental health.

    Their wordsWhile Burnell et al., Lopes et al., and Liu et al. do not amount to an exhaustive list of all social media reduction RCTs, they do show that the balance of experimental evidence strongly favors the existence of a causal link between social media and worsening mental health.

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