There’s a new moral panic brewing about Instagram. It began with the testimony of Facebook whistleblower and a leaked internal Facebook study about the supposed harmful effects of Instagram on teenage girls, including suicidal ideation and eating disorders. This led to a national freak-out over social media and its corrupting influence over the youth, an argument made best by psychologist Jonathan Haidt in the Atlantic.
But I disagree that the evidence points in this direction. First, although it’s true that we’ve seen a rise in suicides among teen girls in recent years, that’s also true for almost every age demographic. In fact, according to Centers for Disease Control data, suicides are most common among middle aged white men and young Native American men, both of whom have far high suicide rates than teen girls. And the raw increase in suicides among middle aged adults is also much…
