Strong Opinions, Weakly Held
A TED Talk that challenges the social media narrative. Can we demonstrate the critical thinking skills we demand of our students?
Like a lot of people, I watched developmental psychologist Dr. Candice Odgers’ TED Talk recently. If you haven’t seen it and you’re a teacher or parent with certain (I’m gonna go with negative) opinions about kids and social media, you should watch it.
I’m not going to do a full rundown of what she said here (the TED site for the talk has a transcript), but I will say that watching it made me uncomfortable. It’s serious evidence from a serious researcher that complicates something I thought I understood: namely, that social media is bad for kids, that it’s doing horrible things to their brains, and that we must save and protect them—big Tech evil.
Okay, that last one is still true, but you get my larger point.
Dr. Odgers’ claims made me uncomfortable because they didn’t agree with the story I’d largely accepted. Full disclosure — I already agreed with a few of these points, even though they went against the narrative we see every day.
Some of Dr. Odgers’ research-backed claims:
Teenagers are not, by most measures, a “generation in collapse.”
Social media does not emerge as a major predictor of mental health in her longitudinal research.
For girls, depression may predict increased social media use more than social media use predicts later depression.
There is not yet direct evidence that banning social media for under-16s improves mental health.
Phone and social media bans most likely won’t produce the outcomes advocates are saying they will, and may actually result in worse outcomes.
Adult and caregiver mental health may be a much larger part of the story than we want to admit.
We may be blaming phones partly because they give adults a simple villain—and a solution that requires taking something away from kids rather than investing in them.
The last two hit me hardest. I’ve been critical of phones. Still am. They’re distractors; they impede learning and take away from kids’ real-life experiences, and putting them up front in my classroom will remain a non-negotiable this coming school year. I’ve watched students struggle with distraction, compulsion, and behaviors that are easy to describe as addiction. They can’t tolerate boredom. Their social dynamics (as much as they still exist) are weird.
All of that’s still true, and none of my observations disappear because of a single TED Talk. But the thing that makes me uncomfortable is that, in some ways, I fell for a critical thinking trap that is standard operating procedure in education:
“I have observed a problem; therefore, I know what is causing it.”
Getting called on my own bullshit is annoying.
Don’t get me wrong here. Dr. Odgers explicitly does not say that “phones are fine” or imply that Big Tech is a bunch of cool, rich white dudes who want the best for humanity. Not at all. Big tech still needs regulation, and the harms of living some of our lives online are real. Her larger claim, though, is that social media may not be the main culprit behind the teen mental-health crisis that we, the adults, have decided it is.
Yeah. We might be wrong about that.
I’m not here to debate that. Dr. Odgers’ research is real, peer-reviewed, and longitudinal. It’s strong. Muy macho.
I’m here to debate myself.
We spend an enormous amount of time complaining that students lack critical thinking. They believe the first thing they hear. They seek confirming evidence. They reject information that threatens what they already believe.
Okay.
What happens when we get evidence we don’t like?
While he wasn’t the originator of the phrase “strong opinions weakly held” (that was Paul Saffo), the idea embodied a philosophy that Steve Jobs demonstrated throughout his career. He would fight passionately for a specific way of doing things until he saw it wasn’t the right way, and then he’d drop it like it was hot.
That’s where I thought I’d landed. It’s easy to admire critical thinking when it changes someone else’s mind.
But me? No. No. No. No. I’m correct in my thinking and my opinions.
In his book Think Again, Adam Grant discusses re-evaluating our opinions and examining our biases. That book really changed how I approach teaching. When my school was going through the motions to find a new principal, I smugly said the faculty portion of the search committee should ask candidates one of Grant’s questions: “What was the last thing you changed your mind about, and why?”
You could hear the eyes roll.
I’m not saying Dr. Odgers’ TED Talk has completely changed my mind — phones still do more harm than good — but the social media side of things? My certainty about that is… well, currently unavailable. Please call again later.
I still think social media can be cruel, addictive, distracting, and corrosive. I think it takes more than it gives. I have seen too much to pretend otherwise.
But I may have been too quick to turn those observations into a complete explanation for what is happening to young people.
Dr. Odgers hasn’t convinced me to stop worrying. Her talk has made me realize I need to worry more carefully.
My certainty about social media being the big bad (or at least one of the big bads) was comfortable. That’s the thing about certainty: it’s emotionally useful. Disrupt that certainty, and I’ve got two choices: reject what she says because it disagrees with what I already believe, or (fuuuuuck) admit that I may have been wrong about the larger picture and try to understand what’s going on with the new information.
Odgers points out that some districts are spending millions on Yondr pouches (something I recommended my district do), while that money might be better spent hiring teachers and counselors and supporting the adults around kids. That’s the kryptonite of Dr. Odgers’ talk for me: social media may not be the big bad we thought, while our own mental health, as teachers, parents, and adult caregivers, may be more connected to the state of teens’ mental health than we want to admit. Following Odgers’ research and findings would make our accepted story messy. And uncomfortable.
We keep saying we want our students to think critically, examine evidence, question assumptions, and change their minds when the facts demand it.
Fine.
We should probably show them what that looks like.
It can be tough.
Addendum: Adam Grant offers his own take on the changing landscape of smartphones/social media and teen mental health on his Substack here. If you’re looking to keep a broad view of things, his piece is well worth reading. It complements Dr. Odgers’ extremely well.
We've dealt with the teen mental health crisis in our own home, over multiple kids. It's so much better now (honestly, so much of it is just keeping them safe and supported until their brains are better formed for metacognition and self-understanding), but it was a tough road for years.
I would never extrapolate our experience to the world as a whole, but I've been continually frustrated by Haidt and others peddling a single dominant culprit. That's too easy. It's a lot of things. (The If Books Could Kill podcast had a pretty in-depth takedown of Haidt's book, if people are interested.)
When my kid was too anxious or depressed to get out of bed, when their mind was too distressed to read a book or even watch TV, they could view stupid cat videos and connect at least minimally with friends via their phone. I say this as someone who deplores social media, has gotten off most platforms, and wants to see these companies heavily regulated.
I wrote about this some time ago, using the metaphor of non-point source pollution. There's a lot contributing to the mental health crisis. Link is below.
That said, if someone forced me to identify one predominant cause, I'd say it's poor sleep. Phone use in general, and social media in particular, foster negative mental health outcomes to the extent that they impinge on people's sleep quality. You know what else does? Hours of homework each night after sitting in school all day. A cultural expectation that kids need to be involved in a ton of extracurriculars in order to get into a good college and have a "good life."
To say nothing of adults' sleep that's been degraded by their own screen time, worrying over the state of the world, working long hours, etc.
Thanks for sharing this!
https://maryannmckibbendana.substack.com/p/on-depression-and-pollution
with phone related behaviors but the critical thinking piece has seemed to have gotten worse. Maybe the social media and mental health connection don’t necessarily equate but something is happening with the functional illiteracy.