Moral Panic and Social Media

Banning child access to social media has been in the news lately.  The issue certainly raises a variety of difficult questions, e.g. what age group defines a child, verification of age, enforcement, what constitutes harm, does it work, etc.

Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, has raised multiple eyebrows and been adopted as the basis for a push from parents and educators, who, unable to control their own children, seek to have social media platforms do it for them.  Haidt has come under attack for not being able to supply evidence for his assertions.  A review in Nature says flatly:

“Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are  rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness  is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media  is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real  causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.”

I read Haidt’s The Righteous Mind ** and was impressed, but I also understand how tenuous “evidence” can be in the world of psychology. Any profession that decides whether a condition is treatable or not by vote of the members should be treated with some skepticism. [1] I also remember other moral panics, most notably the terrible fear among parents (my mother included) of comic books during the fifties when I was growing up. Another panic was over the harm done to children by television.  Every new technology (see my post about AI) creates fear.

The review of Haidt’s book in Nature by Candice Odgers complains that he confuses causation with correlation.  Haidt has numerous graphs showing the rise of mental illness (here again a problem in that problems often arise in direct proportion to the amount of money available to treat them) with the rise of social media use by adolescents. Odgers argues that Jonathan Haidt’s central claim—that social media is rewiring children’s brains and fueling a teenage mental health epidemic—doesn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny. She says Haidt tells a compelling story, but one that leans heavily on dramatic trends and correlations rather than convincing evidence of cause and effect.

Odgers points out that years of research, including large meta-analyses and international studies, have found little to no consistent evidence that social media directly causes depression, anxiety, or widespread mental illness. In many cases, the relationship runs the other way: teens who are already struggling tend to use social media differently or more often. She also notes that major brain-development studies have found no signs of the sweeping neurological "rewiring" Haidt describes.

A bigger problem, she argues, is that Haidt’s theory oversimplifies a much messier reality. Rising youth mental health problems are linked to a web of factors—including poverty, economic insecurity, discrimination, violence, the opioid crisis, and limited access to mental health care. Focusing too narrowly on smartphones risks distracting attention from these deeper causes and from evidence-based solutions.

Odgers isn’t defending social media as harmless. She agrees platforms need stronger safeguards, better content moderation, and age-appropriate design. But she questions proposals like phone bans and strict age restrictions, arguing they may be ineffective or even backfire.

Her bottom line is that Haidt is a gifted storyteller, but his narrative outruns the evidence. Young people are facing a genuine mental health crisis, she argues, and they deserve policies grounded in robust science—not a simple explanation that current research doesn’t support.

Professor Peter Etchells, another psychologist who studies digital technology, also provides an antidote to Haidt’s fear mongering. If Haidt's The Anxious Generation is the blockbuster disaster movie of the smartphone age, Pete Etchells' Unlocked is the scientist walking into the theater afterward saying, "Interesting story—but let's check the evidence."

Etchells argues that we've become addicted not just to our phones but to dramatic explanations for complicated problems. He patiently dismantles familiar claims about screen time wrecking attention spans, rewiring brains, or causing a youth mental health epidemic, showing that the research is far more nuanced than many headlines suggest. Screens can certainly create problems, he says, but they're only one piece of a much larger puzzle involving family life, schools, economics, personality, and mental health.

The result isn't a defense of Big Tech or an argument that people should stare at their phones all day. It's a plea to replace fear with evidence—and guilt with smarter habits. Instead of asking, "How many hours are you on your phone?" Etchells wants us to ask, "What are you actually doing there, and how is it affecting your life?" It's a calmer, more scientifically grounded conversation about technology, and reviewers say that's exactly what makes the book so refreshing.

In late 2025, Australia banned anyone under sixteen from having a social media account. Those adolescents who had become so-called “influencers” (a scary concept in itself) are already avoiding the ban by registering their accounts with a parent — parents are often complicit in their children’s use of social media — so as to avoid losing income and their platform. Australia's much-watched ban on social media for under-16s has turned into a reminder that passing a law is easier than making the internet obey it. Early evaluations found that most major platforms still let test users create accounts simply by entering a birth date—without asking for meaningful proof of age—and only one platform consistently verified users. The government has responded by threatening tougher enforcement and bigger fines, while researchers say the real test will come once platforms deploy more sophisticated age-estimation systems. So far, the verdict is mixed: the law has certainly grabbed the world's attention, but it hasn't yet delivered the airtight digital bouncer its supporters envisioned. From my experience teens are masters of the Internet and have a work-around to any age requirement.  I can think of several myself and I’m 79.

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**My review at:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/407216266

[1] See Drescher, J. (2015). Out of DSM: Depathologizing homosexuality. Behavioral Sciences, 5(4), 565-575. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs5040565  and Winterhalter, E. (2025, December 3). How LGBTQ+ activists got “Homosexuality” out of the DSM. JSTOR Daily.

Resources and additional reading:

A brief history of moral panics about kids and media. (2025, January 20). Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-to-learn/202501/a-brief-history-of-moral-panics-about-kids-and-media

Comic Book Censorship, 1948-1955. (n.d.). Just a moment... https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/comic-book-censorship-1948-1955/

Etchells, P. (2024). Unlocked: The real science of screen time (and how to spend it better). Piatkus. (Review to follow eventually)

Ferguson, C. J., & Faye, C. (2018, January 1). A history of panic over entertainment technology. Behavioral Scientist. https://behavioralscientist.org/history-panic-entertainment-technology/

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin.

Levy, S. (2024, May 10). There's no undoing tech's great rewiring of childhood. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-theres-no-undoing-techs-great-rewiring-of-childhood/

Locke, C. (2025, December 10). Kids and teen influencers in Australia say ‘bye-bye’ to social media. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/kids-and-teen-influencers-in-australia-say-goodbye-to-social-media/

Odgers, Candice. The great rewiring: Is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? (2024, March 29). Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Reynolds, M. (2024, March 29). Screen time for kids is fine! Unless it's not. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/pete-etchells-jonathan-haidt-smartphones/

Why Won't You Just Read It? Comic Books and Community in the 1950s. (n.d.). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED387852. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED387852

Review: The Carnival Campaign: How the Rollicking 1840 Campaign of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" Changed Presidential Elections Forever by Ronald Shafer

 This is an intriguing book.  I listened to it while driving which meant about every 5 miles, I had to pull over and take notes. (I really need a better system.) 1840 was the election that propelled William Henry Harrison to the presidency.  He is best known for having the shortest term of office, dying a month after taking office. I was intrigued and dug up some academic articles on Harrison’s relationship to the Indians, one that was fraught with dishonor, but was handy in developing an image for Harrison’s campaign and also provided background for one of the best political slogans, ever: “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”

The 1840 Whig presidential campaign permanently altered American politics by transforming the brutal reality of the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe into a sanitized, highly commercialized founding myth. In reality, the battle was a chaotic, high-casualty frontier skirmish where William Henry Harrison’s forces were caught off guard by a pre-dawn surprise attack, resulting in a Pyrrhic victory that ultimately drove Tecumseh’s confederacy into an alliance with the British. Three decades later, mired in an economic depression, the Whigs completely buried Harrison's aristocratic Virginia upbringing and tactical missteps, successfully rebranding him as a humble, log-cabin-dwelling savior of the West. By ditching a formal policy platform in favor of catchy slogans ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"), free hard cider, and mass-marketed merchandise, the campaign pioneered modern political showmanship, proving that a carefully manufactured legend could comfortably eclipse historical truth at the ballot box.

In 1800, the American "experiment" in republicanism was seen as the pinnacle of political progress. It was also seen as a moral high point that, ironically, needed a steady diet of cheap ancestral soil to stay upright. Thomas Jefferson, who planned this enlightened growth, thought that Republican virtue—which means being thrifty and moral—could only be maintained through individual Independence, which could only be reached by having a lot of people own land. A simple desire for land was turned into a high moral necessity by this intellectual juggling.  Jefferson spoke to native delegations about "justice and humanity" and the "blessings of civilization" through a "roseate mist" of rhetoric. In secret, these layers were taken off of his orders to William Henry Harrison, who was governor of the Indiana Territory. In letters written in 1803 that he specifically asked to be "kept a secret from the Indians," Jefferson laid out a plan for cold, economic foreclosure. He thought that Trading Houses could be used to create a state-backed monopoly that would undercut private competition and force "important Indians" to leave because they owed so much money that they could only "lop off" by giving up land. This wasn't a mission of society; it was a machine for taking away people's rights, meant to turn the "American dream" of freedom into a nightmare of native dependence. Harrison used treaties to acquire some 60,000,000 acres from natives, infuriating Tecumseh.

The American treaty system was the "cheapest and least upsetting way" to get rid of native people, whom George Washington had compared to wolves because they were both "beasts of prey, though they differ in shape." In the 1780s, the United States claimed land by right of conquest through "dictated treaties" like Fort Stanwix, Fort McIntosh, and Fort Finney. This legalistic theater then moved on to a more complex "bribery and purchase" model. In 1795, the Treaty of Greenville set up a "meaningless formula" of permanent borders that only served as a short-term problem for the next group of settlers. The Annuities system, which William Henry Harrison saw as a must-have for peace, was a key part of this process. The "salt annuity" from the 1803 Treaty of Fort Wayne was one of these yearly payments. It turned native leaders into government pensioners who could no longer fight the American state without starving their people. The "roughshod" diplomacy reached its peak with the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. This is when William Henry Harrison bought 2.5 million acres for less than two cents each. He did this by taking advantage of the Potawatomi's "poverty and wretchedness" and telling the Miami they would lose their existing annuities if they didn't sign. This was economic castration that looked like diplomacy. It made sure that the fighting on the frontier stayed a calculated side effect of the Governor's ledger.
  
  For a governor like William Henry Harrison, whose support in the area was falling, making a "demonic" villain was a brilliant political move that helped him stay in power.  Harrisonians used the threat of a radical Prophetstown to call people who were against slavery traitors.  Harrison said the settlement was full of "militant banditti," but John Badollet and Nathaniel Ewing, who were not involved in the settlement, said it was full of "peaceful farmers" who didn't drink and grew corn on hundreds of acres. This fact about peace was unpleasant, and Harrison tried to hide it. To clear up the Governor's legal lies, Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee people, came to Vincennes in 1810 and correctly said, "those that did sell, did not own it." You can see that Tecumseh forced people to sign the treaties and warned Harrison about the "cynical brilliance" of the faraway federal architect. He said that while the President "sits still in his town and drinks his wine," Harrison and the Indians would have to "fight it out." For fear of being watched by the government and losing his job, Harrison started an "ill-conceived" march to Tippecanoe in 1811. He did this in a last-ditch effort to protect his job and prove the "terror and corruption" of his government by starting a military conflict.

Harrison's years of frontier diplomacy were a huge win for "sordid land-grabbing" and a huge loss for "national honor." The most important thing that comes from this time is that "wholesale land acquisition" and "friendship" are fundamentally incompatible. It was possible for Jefferson and Harrison to fool themselves into thinking they were "acting for the greatest good" while planning the destruction of a people. They believed in the "invariable operation" of causes, which was a theory put forward by Philip Schuyler and Henry Knox. It said that as white settlements got closer, the game would end, the "savages" would "dwindle to nothing," and the land would be given to the US for free. The "success" of buying the land was the very thing that made sure the "failure" of the national honor. The two were morally and mathematically incompatible. In the end, this time period's history is written in what Henry Knox evocatively termed "sable colors"—the dark record of a people group being slowly erased by colonizers who were able to keep their consciences open enough to help the raw machinery of dispossession.

Women may not have been able to cast ballots in 1840, but they increasingly refused to sit quietly on the political sidelines. The Harrison campaign marked a turning point, drawing women into public politics in ways that startled supporters and horrified critics.

The most striking example was Lucy Kenney, the first woman to write campaign pamphlets for a presidential candidate. After Martin Van Buren insulted her with a token payment for her political writing, she switched sides and became a prolific advocate for William Henry Harrison, boldly distributing her own signed pamphlets in public—behavior so unusual that one astonished British traveler initially assumed she must be insane.

Kenney was hardly alone. Across the country, women organized political meetings, delivered speeches, wrote campaign songs, marched in parades, attended rallies by the thousands, and even traveled long distances to campaign events. Indiana's Elizabeth Clarkson led hundreds of women on horseback to Whig gatherings and addressed enormous crowds while holding her infant son. In Illinois, Jane Field gave fiery speeches celebrating Harrison's military reputation. Women in Ohio raised Harrison poles and publicly toasted the candidate, while groups in Michigan, Massachusetts, and New York turned out in unprecedented numbers to rallies and demonstrations.

Their growing visibility was impossible to ignore—and impossible to avoid criticizing. Democratic newspapers insisted that respectable women belonged at home, not at political meetings. Women marching in parades were pelted with eggs, heckled, and accused of abandoning their proper role. Yet the criticism only underscored how much had changed. Instead of retreating, women embraced increasingly public roles in campaigning, making themselves indispensable to the Whigs' energetic grassroots operation.

For many participants, the 1840 campaign became a political awakening. Young activists like Amelia Bloomer found their first taste of public life through Harrison's campaign before going on to champion women's rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would later identify the election as the moment when women first began participating in politics in a meaningful way. Although women would wait another eighty years before winning the vote, the campaign of 1840 demonstrated that they could shape elections long before they could cast ballots, transforming presidential politics from an exclusively male affair into one in which women's voices, organizing, and enthusiasm became an increasingly powerful force.

The 1840 Whig presidential campaign revolutionized American politics by successfully replacing William Henry Harrison's true identity as a highly educated, wine-drinking Virginia aristocrat with the manufactured image of a humble, log-cabin-dwelling common man. To distract from the high casualties and aggressive land-grab strategies of his frontier military record, strategists used heavily romanticized nostalgia surrounding the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, burying policy substance beneath catchy slogans, songs, and mass entertainment. This pioneering effort introduced a series of political "firsts"—including massive multi-day rallies, the active integration of women into campaigning, and extensive mass merchandising—proving for the first time that a carefully engineered spectacle could triumph over reality at the ballot box.

 Fun Fact: All of the presidents who had run as Whigs died shortly after taking office. Lincoln, nominally a Republican which was comprised of anti-slavery Whigs, also died in office.  William Henry Harrison, the 9th president , lasted barely a month;  Zachary Taylor, the 12th president last 16 months; and Lincoln was president the longest of the three. Remind me never to run as a Whig.

Additional Resources:

American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783-1812 Author(s): Reginald Horsman Source: The William and Mary Quarterly , Jan., 1961, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1961), pp. 35- 53 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1922806

Creating a Frontier War: Harrison, Prophetstown, and the War of 1812. Patrick Bottiger, Ph.D. https://www.usi.edu/media/zjxk1m2m/bottiger-creating-a-frontier-war.pdf

Kentucky at the Thames, 1813: A Rediscovered Narrative by William Greathouse. Edited by John C. Fredriksen The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (Vol. 83, No. 2)https://static1.squarespace.com/static/590be125ff7c502a07752a5b/t/63b18901e88c8c550defa954/1672579341609/Young%2C+Bennett+Henderson%2C+The+Battle+of+the+Thames.pdf