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There’s something about online commentary in particular that really brings that forward and then you have the other problem I would say too, which is that in some sense ever the online world and this is the world that the iGen kids are immersed in is a It’s a faux celebrity world Right because everyone online in some sense is a celebrity of different proportions They have their followers. They have their fans. Let’s say and then the whole enterprise seems to Facilitate image management. I know on I think it’s tik tok. There are real-time Facial feature adjustment filters so that you can make this girls use them more than boys for obvious reasons You can make your lips plumper you and redder. You can make your eyes bigger. You can anim yourself You can you can cutify yourself to coin of a terrible term and you can do that in real time and All of the or much of the reinforcement pressure seems to be Directed towards attention seeking and then that combined with the fact that there are almost no consequences for misbehavior Seemed to produce a pretty first of all a toxic social environment But also one that doesn’t follow the same rules as actual face-to-face contact, which I think is the bigger danger Yeah, and you know, I think the online world has followed interesting trajectory, you know when it comes To attention seeking and narcissism and so on so the one constant You’re right the trolls the ones who are the worst offenders. Yeah Sociopaths narcissists clearly they’ve shown that in research but for everybody else I think early on Social media was something that pulled for that attention seeking and you got that narcissism there of you know Look at me. I’m on myspace and I have this many followers and here’s all of all of my pictures and so on but then When social media became more mandatory, which is really what it became for iGen around the early 2000 to 2010s. I mean When you know almost 80 percent 85 percent or so of high school students are doing that every single day on social media Then and everybody’s participating. Well, not everybody can get attention So then it becomes this competition So it I think at that point became Less about narcissism for most people and more about not measuring up And that’s right and that’s where so that’s when you start to get I I have to use these enhancement filters because I don’t look as good as everybody else online And I must be you know unattractive because I don’t have as many likes and followers as I want to have Um, and then all of the other things of i’m not interacting with someone face to face. I’m not getting The same emotional connection and that people are automatically more negative and hostile I mean, there’s just there’s so many things going on in that online interaction Once especially once it became mandatory that Pulled not even really for narcissism, but more for anxiety and depression, right? Right, so maybe that’s part of the reason that you’ve been picking up these and and uh indicating these Increases in mental health symptoms among young people. Well, the other thing i’m wondering about too i’ve thought about this to a great degree is that I studied anti-social behavior in boys and girls and boys They’re pretty much straightforward juvenile delinquents when they’re anti-social they they kick and and and fight and and steal And break rules and it’s a lot of externalizing behavior right a lot of acting out But girls who are anti-social they use reputation destruction and innuendo and gossip and backbiting and they can be unbelievably good at it And everyone knows that I mean mean girls that famous movie was about precisely that And the thing about social media that’s one of the things about it that’s quite interesting and disturbing is that female type anti-social behavior scales brilliantly on online Because it can be done behind the scenes. It can be done anonymously. It can be done with that derisive contempt Let’s say and the consequences are vanishingly small and so I can imagine that Teenage girls who are often subject to bullying by other girls Are now subject to bullying in a way that’s much more subtle and much more devious and much more continuous because that’s the other thing That happens to young people now is can you imagine being a teenager where nothing you ever did would be forgotten? right Right, and it’s it’s 24 7. It’s always with you because that’s the way they communicate with their friends That is their lifeline to the world and so it used to be Maybe you got bullied at school. You could come home and get away from it and now there’s no now there’s no escape Um, and it is particularly toxic for girls when you think about instagram instagram at base is a platform where Primarily girls and young women post pictures of themselves and ask other people to comment Jesus brutal Right. It absolutely is brutal and popularity becomes a number likes and followers Uh and cyberbullying all the things that we’re talking about just it is a toxic suit Well, I remember, you know, we we did psychometric analysis and and looked at the psychometric analysis of thought patterns that loaded on trait neuroticism And so as you know, well, but i’ll explain to everyone else trait neuroticism is something like your baseline level of the proclivity to experience negative emotion like depression and anxiety and One of the things that’s quite striking is that self-conscious thoughts Load so heavily on neuroticism. They’re almost indistinguishable from emotions and so it looks like If you’re self-conscious if you’re thinking about yourself, you are instantly miserable and then if you’re a teenage then it gets worse for teenage girls, I think because we also know that Teenage girls experience a spike in neuroticism. That’s a tenant on puberty and that their self-conscious concerns tend to be particularly body focused And that’s probably a consequence of the fact that females are evaluated more Stringently as a consequence of their appearance, particularly when they’re young I mean men are evaluated on the basis of their performance, let’s say but Women tend to be evaluated more on the basis of their appearance and so You can see that’s a perfect storm for young girls because they hit a negative emotion peak at 13 now They’re susceptible to bullying. They’re extremely self-conscious about their bodies and then the entire online world is a place to Display for public it’s like the old nightmare that people have about public speaking is being naked on a stage That’s really in some real sense what the social media world has done to teenage girls It’s it’s it’s got to be damn near unbearable Yeah, and the consequences have have been severe um, so teen depression Has doubled and that was true even before the pandemic the rise started About 2011 or 2012 right as social media moved from optional to mandatory and right when smartphones were owned by the majority of people Um loneliness went up anxiety went up Um, and it’s not just symptoms self-harm behavior, so the cdc Keeps track of this emergency room visits for self-harm. So that’s an objectively measured behavior not something subject to any kind of self-report bias and self-harm Among 10 to 14 year old girls has quadrupled in the last 12 years