Stephen Neely

So I think that what really stands out is that this is the third in a series of survey projects we've done on this topic.

And some of them have focused more on political stress.

Some of them have focused more on clinical conditions such as anxiety and depression.

But what we continue to see over and over...

is that the highest rates of anxiety, regardless of the context, be it political, be it financial, be it life in general, the highest rates are coming from Gen Z, and not just from Gen Z, but specifically from young women in Gen Z. They are exhibiting substantially higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, and we do see very strong correlations within that data to their actual use of social media, and not just their time on social media,

but how and why they use social media.

So there's absolutely an issue there that young people are more willing to acknowledge and discuss mental health concerns.

And that's a really good thing.

It's a really positive thing for society that we're reducing the stigma around mental health.

But there are some ways to get around that question of whether what we're seeing is actually an increase in mental health concerns or just a greater willingness to talk about it.

If you read The Anxious Generation, very popular book that's been out recently,

You'll see that there's one of the ways around that is to look at the rates of self-harm.

Really, really dark topic, but rates of self-harm among young people.

Are they tracking up along with these perceived increases in anxiety and depression?

And the answer it's shown in that book alarmingly is absolutely yes.

Got it.

In our data, we didn't measure that, but what we tried to measure was the correlation between the dose and the dose-response relationship with social media usage.

So if Gen Z is just more willing to talk about mental health concerns, anxiety, depression, so forth,

then that would be blanket across Gen Z. It wouldn't be correlated or wouldn't step up with increased uses of social media, and it wouldn't step up with different perceptions of social media.

And we see both.