Unreliable Narrator (Nature's Review of The Anxious Generation)
Studies cited by Odgers to support her arguments outright undermine her assertions, raising the possibility that Nature intended her 'review' of Haidt's book as an early April Fools prank.
We have seen that, in her review in Nature of Jon Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, Candice Odgers ignored the vast majority of evidence supplied by Haidt in order to accuse him of extreme incompetence; misrepresented the entire field of research on digital tech as completely void of any substantial links to adolescent mental health; and specifically misrepresented the field of longitudinal research on social media as producing only studies that undermine Haidt.
Let us now look at some of the theories that Odgers proposes as alternative explanations of adolescent mental health declines.
This post is part of a series concerned with the review in Nature of Haidt’s book:
Note: the intent of this series is not to defend Haidt — he is capable of doing so on his own. The intent is to show how the debate about his new book is dominated by ideologies instead of criticism. That does not mean that there is no legitimate criticism of Haidt — I myself hope to have provided such criticism in the past and hope to provide more of it in the future.
No Simple Explanations?
Odgers addresses the issue of causation in the following passage:
There are, unfortunately, no simple answers. The onset and development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors.
The assertion by Odgers that there are ‘no simple answers’ is declared without valid justification. She implies this must be so because anxiety and depression are ‘driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors’ but that is also true of, say, mortality — and yet a steep rise of death rates in some age group may have a simple explanation such as war, famine, or a pandemic.
Adolescents and Adults
Odgers then implies that the adolescent suicide rise must have the same major explanations as the adult suicide rise, arguing that suicide rates of “people in most age groups have been increasing steadily for the past 20 years” — a classic half-truth that severely misleads those who presume Odgers would tell the whole truth.
The reality is that adolescent suicide rapidly doubled within mere ten years — and quadrupled for girls aged 10-14; on the other hand adult suicide increased by roughly 20% during this period (see The Rise and Adult Suicide for details).
It is only by withholding information about these massive disparities that Odgers can seem persuasive to readers unaware of recent suicide trend developments.
Access to Guns
Odgers then promotes ‘access to guns’ as one of the ‘leading contributors’ to the suicide rise. Odgers provides no evidence except for a sole citation:
The Recent Rise of Suicide Mortality in the United States (2022)
So what does this study say about access to firearms?
The findings of the study are as follows :
Data from large surveys in the United States indicate that the firearm ownership rate remained roughly stable or slightly decreased between 1999 and 2018 (41), while firearm suicide increased across age groups, especially after 2007, in a pattern indicating a clear period effect. Moreover, recent studies indicate that (a) most of the increase in suicide among very recently born cohorts was driven mostly by nonfirearm means (75) and (b) firearm ownership rates were not associated with increases in firearm suicide among these specific birth cohorts (74).
The authors conclude that “changes in firearm ownership did not play a major role in the most recent increases in suicide rates, including firearm suicide” — the precise opposite of Odgers promoting ‘access to guns’ as a leading contributor.
The Great Recession
Odgers also promotes ‘economic hardship’ and specifically the great recession of 2008 as leading contributors to the suicide rise.
Here is what the study that Odgers cites says about the role the recession:
Initial assessments reported a clear association between the 2008 economic recession and increases in suicide in the United States (100). However, later analyses accounting for pre-existing trends, seasonal patterning, and cross-gender heterogeneity in suicide rates indicated little evidence of an association between the Great Recession and suicide mortality (48), highlighting that the lack of an overall effect may hide considerable heterogeneity across socioeconomic status, age group, and gender.
In other words the authors that Odgers cites actually conclude that available results undermine the notion that the recession was a ‘leading contributor’ to the rise of suicide rates.
Odgers and Citations
Did Odgers actually bother to read the sole study she cited to support her ‘leading contributors’ argument or did she just quickly scan some of the text, noticed the section headings, and jumped to conclusions?
Did Odgers ‘review’ Haidt’s book with the same minuscule attention to its actual contents as she did with the very study she cited to counter Haidt’s explanations?
Odgers contra Haidt
Odgers also criticizes Haidt because he “suggests that the resulting deprivation [due to the great recession of 2008] cannot be a factor, because unemployment has gone down.”
Haidt says that the adolescent mental health ‘epidemic’ started around 2012 and is still ongoing as adolescent depression continues to rise; and Haidt as well as Jean Twenge have indeed argued that key indicators do not support the theory that the economy has been a major factor in the continual rise of adolescent depression since 2012.
To counter Haidt regarding long-term effects of the great recession of 2008 on adolescent mental health trends circa 2012-2022, Odgers declares:
But analyses of the differential impacts of economic shocks have shown that families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution continue to experience harm.9
Now poor people continuing to experience financial hardship in no way explains the rise in suicide, since it provides no evidence that their condition is worsening.
Elementary logic aside, though, the amusing part of the argument involves the citation that Odgers added to the end of her assertion.
The study cited by Odgers specifically to support her assertion that the 2008 recession has continued to cause differential impacts up to the present is this:
Danziger, S. Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 650, 6–24 (2013).
The year of publication is 2013!
And no, that is not a typo — it really was published in 2013 (and has no data past 2012).
Since this is turning into a comedy, is it any surprise that the study also does not seem to support the contention of Odgers even in the immediate aftermath of the recession?
You see the only relevant passage that I found in the study is this:
Moffitt concludes that the safety net as a whole was relatively successful cushioning income shocks for low-income families during the Great Recession.
In other words, this 2013 study seems to undermine the presumption by Odgers that the economic impact of the recession was especially disproportionate to low-income families.
Now it is true that Moffitt added a warning:
But he cautions that many of the stimulus expansions have expired or will expire before the economy fully recovers.
So the only ‘support’ for Odgers that I found in the study is the speculation (in 2013!) that the successfully protective factors may not last.
Conclusion
In view of all the flaws listed here and in my previous critiques, one must wonder if perhaps the editors of Nature meant the publication of the review by Odgers as an early April Fools prank.
This is deeply distressing, but thank you for doing this valuable work. We see and value it.