Three years ago, Exposure Labs created and released the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” exposing the dangerously manipulative technology that drives the wildly popular social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (now X), Instagram, and all the others. Between 2011 and 2013, researchers began to see a disturbing trend emerging. Depression and anxiety among young people began to increase.
By 2019, hospital admissions due to self-harm increased among 15 to 19 year old girls by 62% compared to the first decade of the 21st century. For 10-14 year old girls, the increase was a shocking 189%. There was a dramatic increase in suicides among these girls as well. For older girls, 15-19 years old, suicides increased 70% over the first ten years of the 2000s. For girls 10-14, the increase was 151%.
This increase is directly linked to increased use of social media, and every indication is that these numbers will keep growing.
Globally, more than half of the world’s population, 4.48 billion people, have social media accounts. In North America, the figure is 75%, but if you consider only those 13 years old
and older, the number increases to 82%. Of those, the average number of social media accounts they have, as of 2020, is 8.4 per person.
