[samrmay]

The article mentions a myriad of factors that correlate with mental health issues going into adolescence. It’s interesting that the headline targets social media, as the body of the article doesn’t seem to highlight it as an especially strong correlation.

As a side note, the differing trends of boys and girls after adolescence is really interesting.

> However, it recognised that girls' self-esteem and wellbeing stabilises as they move into their late teens, whereas it continues to drop for boys

Will have to read the source material to see if they propose any causes for that

[learnstats2]

The article also quotes the researcher explicitly denying the BBC’s headline suggesting causation.

I downvoted all the popular comments here which were ready to agree with the causation despite the research making no comment on that at all: the complete lack of critical thinking is why this gets to be the chosen headline. Pure clickbait.

[samrmay]

"Social media bad" is much more palpable than grappling with the fact that mental illness is a complicated problem with many contributing factors. Very frustrating because the researchers suggest increasing mental health resources and exercise, whereas the headline suggests social media as the much easier scapegoat.