Transcript: Jean Twenge There are really so many causal mechanisms. It’s why I came to realize that that explanation about smartphones and social media leading to the adolescent mental health crisis had some meat to it because there’s so many possible Mechanisms. So one is just displacement. If you’re spending hours and hours and hours on social media, then you’re probably not sleeping enough. You’re probably not seeing friends and family in person as much. You’re probably not getting outside. You’re not having time to just sit and think. And then in Alexis’s case, it was that social comparison of these often photoshopped bodies, airbrushed bodies on Instagram. And who can compare to that? No one. And so many teen girls and young women are looking at those perfect images, those perfect bodies on Instagram and thinking they can never live up to that. I mean, that’s what Meta’s internal research found too. And they had focus groups and surveys and so on. They found that over and over, especially for girls and young women. Yeah. (Time 0:04:03)
Transcript: Jean Twenge So that thing that happened to the Utah boy, sextortion of you’re going to send a nude picture and then the blackmailer asks for money. Snapchat gets, I think it’s 10,000 reports a month of this. And they, and they, and the company themselves acknowledges that that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. They don’t think you, they, all these are even reported. So these, these things are scary. (Time 0:06:31)