The mental health crisis among young people. Too much talk?

For years now, policymakers have sought an explanation for the mental health crisis among young people. Suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalizations were rising even before the pandemic. Then the rates of anxiety and depression doubled worldwide.

Why is this happening? The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points to smartphones, and the algorithms that draw kids away from healthy play and into dangerous, addictive thought loops. No, his critics say. The real problem is a grim social landscape of school shootings, poverty and global warming. Or academic pressure. Or insufficient health care.

A group of researchers in Britain now propose another, at least partial, explanation.

By Ellen Barry