There’s no evidence that social media is killing teens
Kemi Badenoch would have you believe we are in the midst of a terrifying epidemic of teen suicide to which the answer is a social media ban. But the data tells a different story, says Tom Harwood
Politics needs more weirdos and misfits. When former Downing Street chief advisor Dominic Cummings put out the call to bring “super-talented weirdos” with “genuine cognitive diversity” into government, much of the media class laughed.
But this week we have seen yet another shining example of why political parties should embrace the help of the “unusual mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, data scientists” that government (briefly) sought.
In short, our politics is severely lacking people who are willing to put logic and data above emotion and sentimentality.
This week Kemi Badenoch appeared alongside the grieving parents of children who had tragically taken their own lives after online interactions to call for a ban on social media for under-16s. It was a powerful press conference. Photographs of children whose lives had ended far too soon adorned the table.
As individual case studies they are heart wrenching. The distinct impression of the whole event was that we are in the midst of a terrifying epidemic of teenage suidice. That children are dying at a rate we have not seen before. And that technology is to blame.
It was surprising, therefore, that I found myself struggling – really struggling – to find data to back this assertion up.
In Scotland, where we have consistent measurement, recorded deaths in the 10-24 category are significantly lower today than they were a decade ago, before the invention of Tiktok, and the widespread adoption of doomscrolling.
And as for England and Wales, while Badenoch pointed to a series of tragic cases of teenage boys having committed suicide, the ONS tells us a different story. “For males, those aged 10 to 24 years have had the lowest rate of all broad age groups since 1981”, says the official statistics body.
And for females? In the last two years the rate has been falling from its peak of 3.6 deaths per 100,000. Though very marginally higher than a decade ago, “those aged 10 to 24 years also had the lowest rate of all groups at 3.1 deaths per 100,000”.
In England and Wales, the standard of proof used by coroners for concluding suicide was lowered in July 2018, meaning it is very hard to determine if a rise has taken place or not. Again, while every case is of course a tragedy, we are talking about exceptionally low numbers.
What is abundantly clear is that the official data simply doesn’t show a simple, robust, or statistically clear upward trend for suicide in teenagers across Britain since the 2010s. There is even reason to suggest we are seeing less teen suicide than in decades past.
Emotion over evidence
When I spoke to Badenoch this week, I asked whether she thinks that there is data that shows that more teenagers are killing themselves now than in decades past. I expected that she might cite some figures. But instead, there came a defiant rhetorical flourish: “It’s not just children killing themselves because of social media. It’s children killing other children.”
For a politician who insists she has not watched the Netflix miniseries “Adolescence”, it sounded a lot like she was basing her policy on it.
For a politician who insists she has not watched the Netflix miniseries “Adolescence”, it sounded a lot like Badenoch was basing her policy on it
The Shadow Education Secretary, Laura Trott, seemed to reject any evidence-based argument at all, saying “If any other product on the market had killed one child, we would remove it immediately.”
Which is obviously not true. We do not ban swimming pools, rugby, skiing, nuts or travelling in cars. We take precautions of course, but we rightly view outright bans as absurd.
The Conservative Party is sadly diving down the same rabbit hole that led us to the well meaning but ruinous ‘Martyn’s Law’, a regulation to mandate so-called ‘terrorism training’ for all event venue staff that the government’s own assessment deemed would cost Britain a net negative £2.1bn. Flower shows, fireworks displays, and pride events have all been hit as a result of being unable to keep up with regulatory costs.
Now, just as with the dodgy data behind Martyn’s Law, there is a move to ban access to any ‘user to user’ digital service for under 16s. That’s not just Tiktok and Instagram. It’s Whatsapp, Youtube, and even Wikipedia too. In both cases, emotionally compelling anecdotes are outrunning a realistic cost-benefit analysis.
British politics has empathy and compassion in spades. What we severely lack is the pool of super-talented weirdos willing to tell us when the numbers don’t add up.
Tom Harwood is deputy political editor of GBNews