Teens and young adults are showing
sharp increases in anxiety and depression. Jean Twenge, author of iGen, has drawn a great deal of attention
to these trends. Here, I describe her argument and then build on it to suggest
that social cuelessness may be contributing to the problems.
The Trends
Anxiety and depression have increased substantially among teens
in the U.S. over the past 5 years or so[i],
trends also seen in other advanced economies.[ii]
Twenge (@jean_twenge) wrote about this phenomenon in an article in The Atlantic as well as in her book.
While such problems have been increasing for decades (see another media story on this featuring Twenge in 2009), there does seem to be
particularly sharp uptick of late. Twenge suggests that wide adoption of smart
phones is the primary culprit. In the Atlantic
piece, she writes:
It’s
not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst
mental-health crisis in decades.
Twenge believes that the dominant driver of these effects is
social comparison. Social comparison speaks to the fact that we are happy or not based
both on how our lives are going as well as on how we think the lives of others
are going. With humans, it’s never just about me, it’s always about me among
them. Smart phones, combined with social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram,
and Snapchat, provide endless opportunities for social comparison. Again, quoting
Twenge from her article in the Atlantic:
For
all their power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the
age-old teen concern about being left out.
While she may or may not be correct, it’s a good hypothesis.
Consider Melissa, a 16-year-old from New Jersey who is tuned
in and locked on. On some days, she’s out with her friends doing what friends
do—talking, laughing, sharing videos and pictures from their lives and also the
internet. When not out with friends, Melissa is at home, by herself. Sort of. She’s
never really by herself because her phone is always with her. Like so many
others, and maybe especially other teens and young adults, she spends a lot of
time monitoring what’s happening “out there,” with special attention to the
lives of those in her social network—as well as the Kardashians.
What does Melissa see as she stares through her phone out
into the world? She sees people having fun, doing exciting things, touting
accomplishments and, worst of all, she sees evidence of people being together,
without her.
Do people normally post their boring moments, failures, and comments
on their isolation on social media? Okay, yes, some do that. There are plenty
of YouTube sensations featuring people sharing their misery. Schadenfreude is
even more common. Of course, there is the mundane stuff that plenty of people
share on social media. It’s fascinating to know what someone got to eat for
lunch. Actually, not so much—at least not to me.
More often, what we see are indicators of success,
connection, and prime-time “in-group” experiences. In addition to feeling left
out, anyone with a smart phone or other device now can watch endless documentation
of how successful or gorgeous their peers are—and feel worse about themselves
by the moment. Instant dis-gratification. (I just made that word up. So, no,
you cannot go look it up on your phone right now. Keep reading. Focus.) If you
were a little fragile already about your self-esteem and development as a
younger human, you’d be primed only to notice the stuff that makes you feel bad
about yourself.
Making the situation worse is the fact that app and device
designers are perfecting ways to keep you from looking away. The whole system
is literally addiction by design (though, I can accept arguments either way
about whether this fits a true addiction model). The power of devices to
capture our attentions has led to mounting concerns about how seriously distracted we are if our phones are anywhere
nearby, with evidence
that just having phone nearby while having a meal with friends or family
reduces how much we enjoy doing so.[iii]
Everything about phones and apps is designed to say, “notice me.” Your mind wants
to check that you are not missing something important. (Give me a moment while
I check my Twitter account. Wow. Just since I started proofing this draft, I
got liked several times. That’s so nice. I matter. Noticefication. Follow me: @DecideOrSlide)
I think Twenge is correct that these dynamics are part of
the mix in the rise in teen anxiety and depression. She also notes other
factors that doubtless play significant roles, including loss of sleep,
lack of interest in going out beyond the home, and reduced face-to-face contact
with friends. There may be so many other factors in play. Maybe the trends in
anxiety and depression will start to move downward, soon. Who knows, but it’s
not difficult to believe that we are living through one of the most
extraordinary changes in how humans interact in history.
My Hypothesis
I think increases in anxiety and depression for teens and
young adults may be exacerbated by cuelessness.
Cue, not clue. I think the rise in cuelessness is consequential.
In the Age of Ambiguity, Cuelessness
abounds in Dating and Mating
I (along with colleagues like Galena Rhoades) have argued
that one of the most profound changes in dating and mating over the past 40
years is the rise of ambiguity.[iv]
There used to be much more structure—more steps and stages and publicly
understood markers—to indicate where people were at or headed in their romantic
relationships.
I think this trend toward ambiguity is motivated. One aspect
of this argument is that ambiguity feels safer than clarity in an age where
people are uncertain of relationships lasting. That means romantic (and sexual)
relationships form in an environment with a paucity of cues about who is really
interested in who, who is committed, and to what degree. Sure, there are still
cues (engagement remains a big signal of commitment), but not like there used
to be. In plays and movies, scripts specify cues for specific actions, scenes,
transitions, and lines. Dating and mating have become relatively scriptless,
and scriptlessness feeds cuelessness.
My colleagues and I have written a lot about ambiguity in romantic
relationships. If you want to read more: here,
here, or here,
or way back here.
In addition to the specific cuelessness of modern dating and
mating, it would not surprise me if the increasingly, generally ambiguous
pathway into adulthood on many dimensions contributes to the mental health of
emerging adults. However, those domains, along with dating and
mating, have been going through large changes for some time. Twenge may be onto
something to suggest that the recent sharp rise in anxiety and depression could
be linked to the appearance of smart phones in our lives. Now, I will double
down on that idea.
Devices and Social Media are
Optimized for Fostering Experimental Neurosis
There is a classic series of studies in the history of behaviorism
(classical
conditioning, specifically) that focused on inducement of experimental
neurosis in animals. The physiologist Pavlov is believed to be the first to
observe and widely discuss this phenomenon. He noticed how discomforted his
laboratory dogs were when initially learning to discriminate between stimuli that
meant food was coming versus not. Pavlov was famous for getting a neutral
stimulus to produce salivation by pairing it with the original stimulus (food).
You can make a name for yourself by studying spit if you can generalize your
argument.
Pavlov, and many others, started testing what would happen to
dogs (or other animals) as they made it increasingly difficult to discriminate between
stimuli. In the most famous paradigm, he would have pictures of circles indicating
food was coming while pictures of various forms of ellipses would mean no food
was coming—and then he made the ellipses increasingly like the circles so that
it was hard for the dogs to discern the difference. The dogs would break down.
They would get agitated and howl or curl up and get passive, or otherwise freak
out.
Think a moment about how stressed you might get if, all of a
sudden, you could no longer discern whether a stop light was telling you to
stop, or to go, or to floor it. (That’s the true meaning of yellow, right?)
A pretty good definition of experimental neurosis is given
in the TheFreeDictionry:
“a behavior disorder produced experimentally, as when an organism is required
to make a discrimination of extreme difficulty and "breaks down" in
the process.”
That’s cuelessness. It’s not simply the complete absence of
cues. The dogs received cues but they had trouble getting them. Cuelessness also
comes about when there is an inability to reliably discern the meaning of cues
you can plainly see. Apply that thought to how intently a teen or young adult
might be trying to decode stimuli about their social situation as reflected in
the soft glow of their phone.
“Is he really
interested in me?”
“Did she mean to cut me out of this
invitation?”
“Why won’t he follow me?”
“Why didn’t she ‘like’ my post?”
“How did all my friends end up getting
together tonight without me knowing about it?”
“What does that winking smiley face
really mean?”
Back in the heyday of research on experimental neurosis,
another method for inducing it was by simply increasing the delay in time
between the signal and getting the food. This had a similar negative effect on
the dogs. How often have you heard about people becoming fraught over waiting
for someone they are interested in to get back to them, especially by text,
about what was happening next? “Is he going to get back to me about getting
together?” “Why hasn’t she responded to my text message, yet? It’s been hours.”
The agony of such delays in the dating world are well described in Aziz Ansari
and Eric Klinenberg’s book, Modern Romance. It’s a thing, and it’s all stimulus and delayed response or
non-response. Some of this comes from fears that a quick response would be too unambiguous,
and could mean one had caught feelings or was desperate or was, you know, actually
interested in the other. Clarity is so uncool.
I think something like experimental neurosis could be contributing
to the rise in anxiety and depression among teens and young adults. Everyone
functions best when there are reliable cues about things that they care about
the most. At work. At home. At play. In love.
Can You Hear Me Now? Not
Really.
Quiz: What’s the number one thing that teens and young
adults do not do on their phones? Calling
people. It is no accident that messaging systems on our devices now have a
proliferation of emojis and special effects. Why’s that stuff there? First, per
my earlier point: emojis are part of the nuclear arms race of features designed
to make sure you cannot look away from your phone. Second, typed words can be
misunderstood, particularly in cryptic messages. Perhaps you have experienced a
time when you realized some friend, loved one, or colleague got the wrong idea
from what you wrote in email or text, when that would not have happened had you
made a phone call. Emojis are supposed to add some emotional information to the
message, but do they? Maybe a little, but hold that thought. I won’t make you
wait too long. J
The author of a new series of studies, psychologist Michael
Kraus, concludes that there is much more information about emotion in voices
than in facial expressions.[v]
Kraus is particularly interested in empathic accuracy, which he argues is a
foundational element in healthy social connection. In fact, he noted that, “a
dearth of empathic accuracy is a common symptom
of many psychological disorders.” Kraus further notes that speech
is a “particularly powerful channel for perceiving the emotions of others.” In
fact, cues in speech convey a lot of information about emotion even when the
receiver cannot understand the words.
Sure, there is plenty of information in someone’s face, but Kraus
argues that there is more in the voice. Contrast that with how little emotional
information can be in a text message. Sure, texts can convey 100% of the
relevant information when the point is merely to say, “I’ll meet you at 3:15 at
the coffee shop at 1st and Elm.” But a text is going to be pretty
thin on information about the true emotion the other is feeling. Since texting conveys
relatively limited information about emotion, it may be pretty limited in fostering
empathy and understanding when something more is at stake. (That does not mean
that texts are not useful, including for teens at higher risk.[vi])
Teens and young adults are particularly tuned to their
social networks, including whether or not they matter to others. We all are,
but it seems reasonable to posit that this is an intense dynamic when younger. The
paradox here is that, while masses of information move across electronic devices,
there often is not a lot of there, there, when it matters most—such as when
trying to decode if someone is interested as a partner or actually cares if you
have been left out.
In the specific domain of love and attraction, we live in
the age of ambiguity, and devices and social media are not optimally designed
to clear things up.
Back to smiley faces and winking emojis. You might ask, why
aren’t emojis as useful for conveying emotions as hearing someone’s voice? Obviously,
one point is that it’s a simpler system. If a voice conveys more information
about emotion than a real face, how much less information is contained in an
emoji?
But I have a better answer than that. It’s easy to send a
little smiling face no matter what you are feeling. Complex systems of lie detection
may yet be based on voice-tone but they are not ever going be based on emojis. When
you send an emoji, you could be happy or placating and send the very same text
with a smile. The emoji one sends is the emoji one intends to send. If there is
a reason to mask true feelings or to mislead, it’s so easy to do that in text—in
voice, not so easy.
If you get on the phone with someone you know who is having
a bad day or feeling something else strongly, you are vastly more likely to detect
it. It’s hard to hide what’s real in the voice because voice is cueful not cueless. In fact, if you are
a teenager and something is wrong, and you want your parent to help (and, if
you have a parent you trust), you should call. Your parent will hear something
in your voice that you can hardly hide, and I think it will change the nature
of what happens next, usually for the better.
While I’d like to suggest that we all people up and talk
more, I know that idea is quaint. It seems entirely possible that texting has
become preferred, in part, because it allows everyone to be doing two or more
things at once, without having to give away the fact that we can be reading
something on the web or watching TV all while sending some texts back and forth
with another person. Last week, there was a few minutes where I was texting
with my wife, one of my sons, and a colleague—all at the same time. A
conference call would not have worked.
There is a lot in favor of text, emails, and social media
posts because they are asynchronous. Those on the receiving end do not have to
respond in the same moment as when the message is sent. But the cost of the
convenience is a thinning out of the information available, especially about
emotion. And emotion is the good stuff of social connection, as Kraus notes.
I should note that a clear message does not have to be the
one you wanted to receive. William and Sonya are college juniors who were
“dating” for a couple of months when William broke it off by text. Sonya was
not pleased to get the text but at least he didn’t ghost
her. Even though breaking up by text may seem immature, not to mention
heartless, at least the message Sonya received was clear. Pavlov’s dog would rather
know for sure that no food is coming than be in distress trying to get the
signal straight.
* * *
My hypothesis is that the current, substantial increases in
anxiety and depression among teens and young adults may be exacerbated by decreases
in the reliability of information about relationships that can be found in
devices, messaging, and social media.
It’s just a hypothesis. I wanted to write it up because all
these themes happened to be colliding in my head within the same week, and they
seemed to revolve around something. More broadly, the trends could be nothing
and these ideas may be off track. Also, I didn’t set out to pose solutions. I
leave you cueless. It’s the age we live in, I guess.
[iii]
Dwyer, R., Kushlev, K., & Dunn, E. (2017). Smartphone
use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Advance online publication.
[iv] I
link to various accessible pieces later in this section. Some of the scholarly
references for this point include: Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., &
Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding
vs. Deciding: Inertia and the premarital cohabitation effect. Family
Relations, 55, 499-509.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Whitton, S. W.
(2010). Commitment:
Functions, formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of
Family Theory and Review, 2, 243-257.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., &
Fincham, F. D. (2011). Understanding romantic relationships among emerging
adults: The significant roles of cohabitation and ambiguity. In F. D. Fincham
& M. Cui (Eds.), Romantic relationships in emerging adulthood (pp.
234-251). New York: Cambridge University Press.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G.
K., Scott, S. B., Kelmer, G., Markman, H. J., & Fincham, F. D. (2016). Asymmetrically
committed relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1177/0265407516672013
[v]
The author, Michael Kraus, showed that there is more information that enhances
empathy in the voice than in the face. He theorizes that people often
intentionally communicate their feelings through voice. I am not as sure about
that point as much as the idea that it may be hard to hide one’s feelings from
being expressed in tones of the voice. Regardless of that point, Kraus suggests
that there is a lot of emotional information in voice and less in the face.
And, I’d argue that there is vastly less in text and email. In an age of
ambiguity in relationships, that may be exactly what is preferred. Kraus, M. W. (2017). Voice-only communication
enhances empathic accuracy. American Psychologist,
72(7), 644-654.
[vi] A
study on a convenience sample of high risk teens suggested that they were less
anxious and depressed on the days that they texted more, not less. However, the
same study found that, on days they texted more, they also had more attention
and conduct problems. There is a lot of complexity in all this and much to be
sorted out. Citation: George, M. J., Russell, M. A., Piontak, J. R., &
Odgers, C. L. (2017). Concurrent
and subsequent associations between daily digital technology use and high-risk
adolescents’ mental health symptoms. Child
Development. Advance online version.
