What the Internet Is Doing to Our Minds – Part 1: The Horror Story
Part 1: The Horror Story—What’s Happening to the Younger Generation
I happened to watch an interview recently between Tom Power (Q with Tom) and Laura Ramoso, a highly successful TikTok creator, where she shares about her content creation process and relationship with TikTok. She says she doesn't open the app unless she's posting because it's highly intimidating and makes her question whether she's doing good enough.
She explains:
"I find scrolling through TikTok and seeing the content that people are doing highly intimidating. It makes me question what I'm doing. It makes me question, Am I doing good enough? Am I trying hard enough? And I don't like that."
Laura goes on to say:
"I like to keep grounded by staying off it because then I'm not influenced by what others are doing. For example, I've had issues with this—where I get in my head about the amount of times I'm posting—because TikTok is like, lots of people post every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. And by nature of what my videos are, it just takes me, like, 20 hours to edit one video, and I can't do that. So if I spend time on TikTok, I start to feel bad about how much I'm posting. I'll do about once a week. But I like to stay off because it messes with my process."
Hearing that, I thought—this girl is smart. She knows how to use "The Shimmer" (aka the internet) correctly. And by correctly, I mean using it for what it’s meant for and not getting messed up by it.
It also made me realize that I’d fallen back into the shimmer crip—again! It’s like I have amnesia sometimes. I forget.
(I highly recommend listening to Erick Godsey’s podcast episode, Have You Noticed the New World: An Intro to the Shimmer. It’s eye-opening—once you understand it, you can’t unsee it. This is a real problem, and one that more people need to wake up to. You can listen to it here).
And so, I noticed that I’d fallen back into the shimmer crip and just how much it messes with me. It wrecks my mental health. I start comparing myself to others, questioning my worth, feeling like I’ll never catch up or get anywhere in life. It makes me feel small. It distorts everything, convincing me that none of it matters anyway—so why even try? It takes away my hope. Yes, that dramatic 🙄
And now, this is me—a 39-year-old woman—being affected by it like this. Remember:
My brain is fully developed by now (allegedly 😜), and
I’ve been around for a while. I understand emotional intelligence, self-worth, confidence issues, mental health, depression. I know how the brain works, where our thoughts come from, how childhood and environment shape us. I’ve read countless self-help books, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts on all of this. I even know about the Shimmer Effect—how the internet and social media affect us, what they’re doing to our minds. And yet, I still—STILL—fall into it. It still messes with me.
Now, let’s think about what it’s doing to our kids:
Their brains aren’t even fully developed yet. (Apparently, our brains don’t fully develop until we’re 28! That’s crazy).
They have no life experience yet. They don’t know that their thoughts lie. They don’t know that their parents, siblings, or their environment might not be right about everything. They don’t yet understand that the things they’re told and taught aren’t always true. They’re just learning. And they learn from their environment.
And then they go online, they scroll, with their little brains that are so fragile—and they are absorbing all of it. Their little brains are literally getting fried. That is not ok.
In his lecture, How to Surf The Shimmer Like a Focused Artist, Erick Godsey discusses the devastating effects of social media and the Shimmer Effect on younger generations. His insights are largely based on the research of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose book, The Anxious Generation, presents shocking statistics on rising mental health issues.
Honestly, it’s a horror story, but you need to know this.
Below are excerpts and summary of some of the key points from Erick’s lecture, along with data from Haidt’s research.
Erick explains:
“Jonathan Haidt is one of the leading social psychologists in the world, and he has noticed something—something big has happened in the Western world between 2010 and 2015.
Its effect size is huge, and all of the following graphs are from his book, The Anxious Generation.
Number one: teenage depression has skyrocketed. It has increased in intensity within this five-year period more rapidly than at any other measurable five-year period on record.
If you look at the data, boys’ depression has increased 161% since 2010, and girls’ depression has increased 145% since 2010. Depending on how you interpret the data, some figures are as high as a 250% increase in teenage depression since 2010.
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
Next, mental illness among college students:
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
Anxiety has increased 134%
Depression has increased 106%
ADHD, bipolar disorder, anorexia, abuse and addiction, and schizophrenia have all increased by more than 50% since 2010.
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
Anxiety has increased 139% for people between the ages of 18 and 25. Among those aged 26 to 34, it has risen 103%. For those between 35 and 49, it's up 52%, and for people over 50, there's been an 8% increase.
This is an important trend. The data suggests that whatever is happening is disproportionately harming younger generations. That’s a major clue.
One of the main critiques Haidt receives when discussing this issue is that rising mental illness rates aren't a mystery. Critics argue that Gen Z is simply more open about their emotions and that decreased stigma around mental health explains the rise in reported cases.
However, the next two sets of data challenge that argument.
All the graphs presented earlier were based on self-reports—people writing down how they feel. But these next two datasets are not self-reported. They are behavioral, observable, and factual.
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
The first is emergency room visits for self-harm and suicide attempts.
Among girls, these visits have increased 188%—a staggering and unprecedented spike in social psychological research.
Among boys, the increase is nearly 50%.
Next, suicide rates:
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
Boys: Up 91%
Girls: Up 167%
Psychologically, it’s known that girls attempt suicide more often than boys, but boys are more likely to die by suicide when they do attempt it. This data reflects that grim reality.
And so Haidt asks the critical question: What the fuck happened in 2011?
What has happened is social media meeting the power of smartphones, meeting the power of increased Wi-Fi speed.
Here’s the timeline:
2010: The first front-facing smartphone camera is introduced.
2010: Instagram is created.
2011: Instagram introduces filters. (Beauty filters, in particular, are among the most psychologically harmful technologies for teenage girls.)
2012: Facebook buys Instagram.
2013: Instagram’s user base jumps from 10 million to 90 million.
Image Source: The Anxious Generation (2024), Jonathan Haidt.
Jonathan Haidt is one of the first researchers to track what he calls "The Shimmer Effect"—what happens when young people are exposed to the shimmer of social media without being taught how to use it responsibly.
Haidt's key recommendations are:
No smartphones before high school.
No social media before age 16.
More phone-free school zones.
More unsupervised play
He emphasizes that unsupervised play is the healthiest and most beneficial way for children to develop.
He says that if parents understood the data, these recommendations would not feel extreme at all. They would feel obvious.”
Just to make this point even more clear, Erick goes on to discuss Haidt’s comparison between lead exposure in children and social media exposure—and how social media might be even more harmful than lead poisoning.
For decades, scientists have studied the harmful effects of lead poisoning, which can cause cognitive impairments, learning disabilities, and behavioral issues. Lead exposure used to be widespread due to lead-based paint, gasoline, and contaminated water. When researchers discovered its negative effects on child development, governments took action to ban lead in household products—because the scientific data was strong enough to prove it was dangerous.
Haidt is arguing that social media exposure for young children is just as harmful—if not more harmful—than lead exposure, based on the correlation strength in the data. He wants people to view social media as a serious public health risk, just like lead poisoning was once considered.
For example, the correlation between a child being exposed to lead in their early childhood environment and later developing learning disabilities is about 0.6.
Now, think about how obvious it is that you would want to keep your children from being exposed to lead. The correlation between social media use among 9- to 12-year-olds and increased rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm is double that.
The correlation coefficient between lead exposure and developmental disabilities is 0.6—but for social media use and mental health issues, it is even stronger.
Haidt argues that most people don’t fully understand what these correlation coefficients mean, but if they did, they wouldn’t dismiss the impact of social media so easily.
To be continued…
👉 Read Part 2: The Shimmer Effect—Why We Can’t Focus Anymore
(The excerpts and summary above are based on Erick’s lecture, How to Surf The Shimmer Like a Focused Artist, and Jonathan Haidt’s research from The Anxious Generation. To watch Erick’s full lecture, visit it on YouTube here).
Sources:
Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation. Book Website
Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation. Author’s Website
Erick Godsey’s lecture, How to Surf The Shimmer Like a Focused Artist. YouTube
Power, T. (Host). (2023). Laura Ramoso on going viral for doing impressions of her parents. Q with Tom Power. YouTube
Resources: