Candice Odgers

And so we had just lived through the Columbine school shootings.

School shootings were increasing.

All the panic in that moment was around violence and video games.

So they were commissioning panels to try and understand, you know, is it that

Time online or time with these first shooter games is leading to increases in violence.

And so the focus was really on video games at that time.

And then it shifted, right?

And then it was screens in general.

So what are screens and screen time doing to our children?

And there was this Atlantic article by a psychologist named Gene Twenge that asked this question, have smartphones destroyed a generation?

And everybody quickly said, yes.

right?

Yes, they have.

And that set off a whole debate about whether screen time was associated with poor outcomes.

And we had all of these debates in the literature, you know, data that essentially showed there's this tiny correlation we find is less than 1% of the variation.

And it's the same correlation you find if you look in these same data sets and look at whether you wear glasses or you eat potato chips or you are left-handed, right?

And so that was really where we were stuck in the screen time debate for a while.

Well, it's not just screen time, it's social media and it's

oh, well, it's not just social media, it's social media among girls and it's depression.

And so the conversation really narrowed and we became laser focused on young girls and social media as the primary culprit.