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dot com slash description terms.

1:04

Mark Zuckerberg was my college classmate, And

1:07

so I think I'm the one thousand one

1:09

hundredth person on Facebook. That's

1:11

doctor Nina Vassen.

1:12

So I've been on since two thousand and four and

1:15

looking at this research Actually, I'm realizing that

1:17

my classmates and I were in that user group.

1:19

Nina is now a psychiatrist and professor

1:22

at Stanford. Long ago though,

1:24

she was a very early Facebook user,

1:26

which made her an inadvertent participant

1:29

in a recent study published by my

1:31

other guest today. My name

1:32

is Alexey McCarran. I'm an assistant professor

1:35

in Applied Economics at MIT Sloan

1:37

School of Management. Some

1:38

of Alexey's research focused is

1:40

on the economics of media, specifically

1:43

social media. In twenty twenty,

1:46

he published study that looked at whether

1:48

the Russian social media platform, VK,

1:51

fomented anti government protests

1:54

around the country in twenty eleven.

1:57

Participation

1:57

in persons was associated strongly

1:59

with your

1:59

social media use, but the cause of impact

2:02

was unclear, and that's where we

2:04

came in. In that, study, Alexey

2:06

and his coauthors, relied on the

2:08

introduction of VK at its

2:10

founders university as a randomizing

2:13

device. What we noticed

2:15

is that VK was created in two thousand

2:18

six by a student of

2:20

Saint Petersburg State University, and

2:22

the first users of VK War,

2:24

students of that university at that particular time.

2:27

Saint Petersburg State University attracts

2:29

students from all over Russia. more

2:31

from some cities than others. And

2:34

that suggested a natural experiment to

2:36

Alexei and his colleagues. So

2:39

I'm from a very small town in Russia. If

2:41

I go from that particular hometown

2:44

to study at that particular university in my hometown,

2:46

the penetration that social media platform is gonna

2:48

be higher. Why? potentially, I

2:51

can send the link to my friends

2:53

and family who remained in

2:55

my hometown and they will be the second

2:57

layer of adoption across Russia.

3:03

If

3:03

you want figure out the impact that social

3:05

media has on political activity, you

3:08

can't just compare protest rates

3:10

in areas with high versus low

3:12

social media because that

3:14

isn't random. But

3:16

you could compare protests, rates, and

3:18

cities that just happened to

3:20

be exposed to more social media

3:23

by chance. Because people

3:25

there were connected to students who

3:27

knew the founder of VK. In

3:30

that case, uptake could

3:32

actually be random. Alexey

3:34

and his colleagues were right. The

3:36

more people in a given city used

3:38

VK, the more likely it

3:40

was there would be protests in the city,

3:43

and the larger those protests

3:45

were. Social media

3:47

was fueling political behavior.

3:50

That study got alexey thinking. else

3:53

could social media change human

3:55

behavior.

3:58

From

3:58

the Freakonomics Radio Network,

3:59

this is FreakonomicsMD. I'm

4:02

Bob Bujena. Today on the show,

4:05

since its inception, people

4:07

have speculated that social media

4:09

could have psychological effects

4:11

on its users. But

4:13

does it cause mental health problems?

4:15

Immediately after Facebook comes

4:18

to a particular college, a terrific

4:20

bump, in the medical health problems

4:22

among students at that college. And

4:24

if Facebook and other social media

4:26

platforms are causing mental health

4:28

problems, Can we do anything

4:30

about it? In medicine, we take

4:32

this oath to do no harm, and that

4:34

was really the idea that we had around

4:36

how do we change the user experience?

4:56

When

4:56

I was in medical school, I myself experienced

4:58

depression and I think that that

5:01

personal experience is the very

5:03

first thing that drew me to mental health.

5:05

That's the psychiatrist doctor Nina

5:07

Dawson again from Stanford. She

5:09

runs the brainstorm lab for mental

5:12

health innovation, and she's also

5:14

chief medical officer of a mental

5:16

health startup called Real.

5:18

She says the COVID nineteen pandemic

5:21

has been a challenge, but

5:23

has also made people pay more

5:25

attention to mental health.

5:27

Where mental health is today is

5:29

actually what I thought it would look like maybe

5:31

a decade from now. A lot of my

5:33

colleagues in the field talk about this silver

5:35

lining that we've experienced because

5:37

of how so many people

5:40

struggled with their mental health during the pandemic,

5:42

people who never had before. it really

5:44

brought to the forefront the importance of

5:47

addressing mental health as a society.

5:49

During the first year of the pandemic, Rates

5:51

of anxiety and depression around the

5:53

world grew by twenty

5:55

five percent according to the World

5:57

Health Organization. One

5:59

major reason for this massive increase

6:01

was stress from social isolation. The

6:05

pandemic shown a spotlight on

6:07

mental health, but it also

6:09

made it harder for people to get

6:11

help. Data from the centers for

6:13

Medicare and Medicaid services indicated

6:15

that on average, Adults and

6:17

children with public insurance experienced

6:20

around a twenty five percent decline

6:22

in mental health care utilization

6:25

between March and October of

6:27

twenty twenty compared to that

6:29

same period in twenty nineteen. And

6:32

even as medical care normalized during

6:34

the pandemic, use of mental

6:36

health services rebounded more

6:39

slowly than other specialties.

6:45

When

6:45

people first start experiencing the symptoms of

6:47

mental illness to when they actually

6:50

start officially seeking help

6:52

within that healthcare system, that

6:54

amount of time is

6:56

eleven years. That's

6:58

a huge delay. And what it shows is that

7:00

people are really only seeking help when they're in

7:02

crisis. Nina

7:03

has thought a lot about how to intervene

7:06

long before someone is

7:08

in crisis. Telehealth services

7:10

are part of the answer, but

7:13

it's also about meeting people

7:15

where they are. which

7:17

these days tends to be on

7:19

social media. We

7:20

have this idealistic sense of like the

7:22

old school doctor who would go knocking on

7:24

doors with their bag and treating people

7:26

in the community, and then we think where are

7:28

people living their lives? Literally

7:31

billions of people are living their

7:33

lives online. Right now,

7:35

worldwide, the average

7:37

number of hours that we are spending

7:40

on social media is

7:42

two point five hours a day.

7:44

What do

7:45

we know about how these platforms can

7:47

affect psychological health?

7:50

time

7:50

spent on social media has

7:52

been shown to really have, I would

7:54

say, dire impact on mental

7:56

health correlations to

7:58

increases in depression, anxiety,

8:02

substance use, suicidal

8:04

thoughts, self harm thoughts,

8:07

and even body image issues and

8:09

body image pathology. What we're

8:11

also seeing is that the

8:13

more time people spend on social

8:15

media the more likely these different

8:17

things are to increase. We don't yet have

8:19

the exact relationship.

8:23

I started my economics

8:25

journey back in the day when I was in

8:27

Russia. I started working on this

8:29

project on the impact of social media on

8:31

anti authority in projects. So

8:34

ever since I started working on, that

8:36

project I was very curious about

8:38

social media, how can

8:40

we study the cause of impact of social media

8:42

and various aspects of our lives? And

8:45

it's very difficult and that's why only

8:47

wrote two papers and not more. That,

8:51

again, is the economist Alexei

8:53

Materin. from MIT. We

8:55

already

8:55

talked about his first paper on social

8:58

media and protests in Russia in

9:00

twenty eleven. It was

9:02

a fascinating study with a clever

9:04

design and a clear

9:06

predecessor to his second bit of work.

9:09

Facebook or the Facebook as it was

9:11

initially called was launched

9:12

in two thousand four for Harvard

9:15

students, by Harvard students. Among

9:17

them, Mark Zuckerberg. About

9:19

a month later, they opened the

9:22

platform up to students at Gail,

9:24

Columbia, and Stanford. As

9:26

we all know, it didn't stop

9:28

there. Now nearly two decades

9:30

later, Facebook has around

9:32

three billion active monthly

9:34

users.

9:36

There are

9:39

other platforms of course, but

9:41

Facebook changed the game.

9:43

Some of its effects have been very

9:45

visible. Facebook is

9:47

widely credited as being one force

9:49

behind the Arab spring uprisings

9:51

Indonesia and Egypt in twenty

9:54

eleven. A few years later in

9:56

twenty seventeen, around

9:58

seventy percent of people who attended the

9:59

women's march in Washington

10:02

DC told researchers

10:04

they heard about it on Facebook.

10:06

What it's

10:06

been doing to our health, however, has

10:09

been a little less clear.

10:10

There are a lot of papers

10:13

that document a significant

10:15

association between mental

10:17

health problems and social media

10:19

use. most of the results

10:21

show that people who use

10:23

Facebook a lot or other social media

10:25

platforms, they seem to be experienced

10:27

in worse mental health. But of course, we know

10:29

that this is correlation and there are some

10:31

issues with that. Maybe when I'm

10:33

depressed, I use social media

10:35

more, or it could be that, for

10:37

instance, if I break up with my

10:39

girlfriend, then maybe the next day I'm gonna be

10:41

depressed and at the same time I'm gonna have

10:43

more free time to use to spend on

10:45

social media

10:49

These

10:49

correlation issues make it hard

10:51

to prove that Facebook or any

10:53

social media platform is

10:55

causing poor mental health.

10:57

What we do know is that nearly

10:59

one in five adults in the

11:01

US and half of all adolescents

11:04

live with mental illness. These

11:07

conditions range in severity, but

11:09

most often include major

11:11

depressive episodes and anxiety

11:13

disorders. A lot of factors can

11:15

contribute to someone developing a

11:17

mental health problem, things like

11:19

family history, living with chronic

11:21

illness, or coping

11:23

with traumatic experience. Often,

11:26

it can be hard to prevent or

11:28

mitigate these conditions.

11:30

but But what

11:31

if for some people, it was as

11:33

simple as deactivating Facebook.

11:36

A few years ago, Some researchers at

11:38

Stanford and NYU conducted

11:41

an experiment where they paid a

11:43

group of people randomly to

11:45

do just that.

11:48

And what

11:51

they show is that if you pay

11:53

people to deactivate their Facebook accounts one

11:55

week or four weeks after those

11:58

people, they

11:59

report

11:59

that they feel better. about

12:02

themselves, their general will be in is

12:04

better so they report less

12:06

anxiety, they report less depression. Alexey

12:08

and his coauthors wanted to take

12:10

a different approach, but

12:12

they weren't sure how to tackle this

12:14

thorny question surrounding social

12:16

media and mental health.

12:18

They debated a few different strategies

12:21

until one of them suggested an

12:23

approach that was familiar to

12:25

Alexey. So

12:26

we followed a very similar logic

12:28

to the paper that I just described

12:30

before. We looked at the staggered

12:32

adoption of Facebook across college

12:34

campuses. from two thousand four

12:36

to two thousand six. So when

12:38

Facebook was just created, Facebook did not

12:40

immediately become available

12:42

to all students across

12:44

the US. they slowly

12:46

started being available at Harvard,

12:48

Stanford, and so forth, and then slowly

12:50

they became available to other colleges.

12:52

And that process took about one and a half

12:54

years, up to two years. So

12:57

we compare students at colleges

12:59

that just receive Facebook versus

13:01

students that were at

13:03

colleges at the same time, but

13:05

without Facebook. How

13:06

are you measuring mental health

13:08

in these universities?

13:10

We got access to this

13:12

survey, it's called the National College Health

13:14

Assessment, and it is one of

13:16

the most comprehensive surveys and

13:18

one US car issuance related to their

13:20

health and behavior, and they

13:22

have a lot of variables related to

13:24

mental health. You have questions

13:26

about depression. You have questions about the take up

13:28

of anti depression therapy. You have

13:30

questions about anxiety, you believe me,

13:32

eating disorders. That survey is collected

13:34

every semester across

13:36

many, many colleges. And moreover, it

13:38

exists from two thousand to two

13:40

thousand eight, so that allows us to

13:42

get a sense of student mental health

13:44

at different colleges before and after

13:47

Facebook was created. immediately

13:49

after Facebook comes to a

13:51

particular college, a geographic bump

13:53

in the medical health problems amongst

13:55

students at that college. So you look at

13:57

universities that have similar trends of

13:59

mental health issues

14:00

prior to the introduction of Facebook

14:02

and show that in those sets of

14:04

colleges in which Facebook is introduced.

14:07

There's an increase in mental health issues

14:09

compared to universities that looked very

14:11

similar before in

14:13

terms of mental health issues. they don't

14:15

experience that increase.

14:17

Yes,

14:17

we observed that after the

14:20

introduction of Facebook, the

14:22

student mental health ecorages with Facebook

14:24

persons relative to students

14:26

at colleges that did not get Facebook.

14:28

When you

14:29

say that mental health worsened

14:31

What specifically did you

14:33

see? The most

14:34

effective conditions are depression and

14:36

anxiety. Most students report that

14:38

they were depressed severely actually,

14:40

the question was stated the following way.

14:43

Have you felt so severely that this

14:45

was difficult for you to function? And how many

14:47

times you felt so in the past year?

14:49

that question, we observed the biggest

14:51

effects, but we also observed some other effects

14:53

for other conditions.

14:57

After the break, What

14:59

else was in the data? I

15:00

didn't actually realize how bad the

15:03

situation is in the United States in terms

15:05

of mental health. We'll also

15:07

look at how social media platforms

15:09

are trying not only to

15:11

mitigate harm, but to

15:13

actually improve users' mental

15:15

health. We created a whole platform

15:18

of little mini tools,

15:20

little activities that people can

15:22

do on the platform in

15:24

real time. I'm Bob Pujena, and this

15:26

is FreakonomicsMD.

15:40

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18:00

Alexey Macarin's new study is

18:03

called simply social media, and

18:05

mental health, and it was published

18:07

in November of this year in the

18:09

American Economic Review.

18:11

Before the break, he told us

18:12

that their findings suggest a

18:14

bump in mental health problems

18:16

among students at a college

18:18

after Facebook is introduced

18:21

there. What that bump translates

18:23

to is a worsening

18:23

of what Alexey and his coauthors

18:26

called their index of poor mental

18:28

health by about eight

18:30

percent. Facebook access also

18:32

led to a nine percent increase

18:34

in depression among students

18:36

on college campuses. and a twelve

18:39

percent increase in generalized

18:41

anxiety disorders. Alexey

18:43

says the mental health effect of using

18:46

Facebook is about one fifth the size

18:48

of how it feels when you lose

18:50

your job. So

18:52

how does this new work which

18:54

suggests Facebook causes mental

18:56

health problems compared

18:57

to prior work, which only showed an

18:59

association between the two. Is

19:01

actually strikingly similar?

19:03

Why

19:06

is it that

19:07

social media has

19:10

this causal effect on mental health

19:12

issues? What's the mechanism?

19:13

we believe that Facebook users

19:16

engage in unfavorable social comparisons, and

19:18

that's what's driving the negative impact of

19:20

Facebook and mental health. And the

19:22

fact that we started Facebook at

19:24

its inception, it automatically rules out

19:26

a lot of stories that you might have about,

19:28

for instance, the like button, the news feeds,

19:30

the political news on social media.

19:33

All of that is nonexistent. Right?

19:35

So the fact that we observed that

19:37

Facebook had a negative impact all the

19:39

way in two thousand four, two thousand five, two thousand

19:41

six that suggests that sudden

19:43

in the nature of social media

19:46

leads to worse mental health

19:48

outcomes. And in our case, we believe that

19:50

it's due to unfavorable social

19:52

comparison? I mean, that's an interesting point to me because

19:54

you're looking at a period when Facebook was

19:56

really in its early stages. So

19:58

some of the features

19:59

are different now. It was really all

20:02

about

20:02

peer networks and social

20:05

comparisons back then. If you find

20:07

that on average, there's an x percent increase in

20:09

mental health problems in a

20:11

university that adopted Facebook.

20:13

Do you then scale that up by the fact that it

20:15

could be only two percent of people?

20:17

that

20:17

use Facebook or

20:19

not. Because that would tell us something about what

20:21

is the effect of a single

20:23

individual using Facebook who otherwise

20:25

wouldn't have used it. Yeah. That's

20:26

a great question. We don't scale up. We

20:28

believe that actually the use of

20:31

Facebook and college campus at the time was

20:33

almost universal and the adoption was

20:35

very fast. the common estimate that we

20:37

found is that about eighty five

20:39

percent of college

20:41

students had a Facebook account and we're using

20:43

it on a database. Wow.

20:45

Okay. So it's quite high. When

20:47

you set out to do the study, were

20:49

you expecting to find

20:51

an

20:51

adverse impact of Facebook introduction

20:54

on mental health. So what definitely surprised

20:55

me is how clean in the end this natural

20:58

experiment was. I did not expect it to

21:00

be as clean. because

21:02

when you work with the substation of

21:04

status, it's not like you're operating in the

21:06

control environment. When I started writing

21:08

the background, Section four or

21:10

paper, I didn't actually realize how bad

21:12

the situation is in the United States in

21:14

terms of mental health trends among

21:16

the the pictures that

21:18

you see in the data are

21:20

stark. So for instance, the percentage

21:22

of individuals from eighteen to twenty

21:24

three for report of experience in

21:26

a major Depressive episode in the

21:28

past year increased by eighty three percent

21:30

so almost doubled between twenty

21:32

eighteen and the fact

21:34

that this trend is sort of

21:36

coinciding with the spread of social media

21:38

is really begging the question whether

21:40

social media is to blame. It strikes me that

21:42

what you're doing, it does fit

21:44

into a broader important economic

21:46

question. Is this societal question of

21:48

what is

21:48

it that drives people's happiness or

21:51

economics we talk about utility? in

21:53

very standard economic

21:55

models of utility. We

21:57

don't typically factor in the

22:00

idea that our well-being may be a

22:02

function of what we perceive

22:04

the well-being or accomplishments of

22:07

others to be. And there is economic

22:09

literature out there, which would suggest that

22:11

in some cases, our own utility

22:13

is lower when the utility of others

22:16

is higher. one of the things that's coming out of social comparison is

22:18

that you're comparing accomplishments

22:21

relative to that of what you observe from

22:23

your peers. And

22:25

if you benchmark yourself in

22:27

that way, it's maybe not a surprise that

22:29

something like Facebook could actually lead

22:32

to declines in well-being. But what's even

22:34

more striking is that we're talking about

22:37

a situation where these individuals might actually

22:39

experience a clinical manifestation that

22:41

we call depression. So that's much more severe just

22:43

saying, okay, I'm unhappy because

22:45

Alex say just, you know, put on Twitter

22:47

that he published a paper in the American economic

22:50

review. one of the ways in which we

22:52

document that indeed

22:53

social comparison seems to be a channel

22:55

is that after the introduction of Facebook,

22:58

students suddenly believe

23:00

that the other students consume

23:02

much more alcohol than they did before.

23:04

But the actual usage of alcohol did

23:06

not increase at all. So students have

23:08

some needed there about how to

23:11

interpret the Facebook posts of

23:13

others, and they believe that everybody is having a

23:15

fantastic time, while in fact,

23:17

nothing changed. the sphere of these

23:19

alternatives to be a big component.

23:21

We also find that in the short to medium

23:23

run, the negative effects of Facebook

23:25

on mental health increase with the length

23:27

of exposure to the platform. And

23:30

actually, students reported

23:32

that their academic performance worsened

23:34

as a result of their mental health

23:36

issues. So

23:36

it's not just a time allocation issue. It's

23:38

that the time you spend on Facebook means

23:40

you're not spending a time studying, but it

23:42

also creates mental health problems

23:45

that make it harder to

23:47

perform academically as well as you were prior

23:49

to the introduction. We got

23:51

very lucky because in the survey

23:54

that we have, there is a specific

23:56

question that asks whether

23:58

your academic performance worsened as a

24:00

result of mental health such as

24:02

anxiety, depression. so far, when we analyzed

24:04

that question, we found that indeed

24:06

Facebook had this downstream impact

24:08

on Acadian

24:09

performance. If

24:11

you

24:12

were to say, you know,

24:15

here's why this study is important.

24:17

Here's what you should make of

24:19

it. and here's what you should with this information.

24:21

How would you articulate

24:22

that? This study is important because

24:24

we think that it's the most comprehensive

24:27

causal evidence on the impact of Facebook on mental

24:30

health. It's also important because we are able

24:32

to zero in on a

24:34

subset of people

24:36

who are particularly vulnerable and who

24:38

experience the most significant deterioration

24:40

of mental health in the past.

24:42

Fifteen years for college students

24:44

and young adults, and what can people do with this information

24:46

is that, first of all, they can be aware of it. So

24:48

they could potentially alter their

24:51

own usage of social

24:53

media and the usage of

24:55

social media by their kids or

24:57

friends. And second, we hope that social

24:59

media platforms sort of figure out a way find

25:01

a balance between maximizing their

25:03

ad revenue and potentially mitigating

25:05

the harms that social

25:07

media does.

25:10

We talk

25:12

about

25:12

why social media has made

25:14

mental health worse. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT

25:16

WE'RE ACTIVELY WORKING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

25:19

COMPANIES AROUND HOW TO ADDRESS

25:21

THAT. THAT'S

25:21

THE SCIENTISTS DR. NINA

25:24

VASSON AGAIN. In

25:24

twenty eighteen, her lab at

25:27

Stanford called Brainstorm

25:28

started working with the social

25:31

media platform Pinterest.

25:32

they were

25:33

looking to understand different

25:35

patterns and what was driving people to their

25:38

platform. And what they actually saw was

25:40

that the fourth most common

25:43

category of search terms was

25:45

related to mental health, and it was things

25:47

like depression, stress,

25:49

anxiety. When people think of

25:51

Pinterest, they think about things like wedding

25:53

planning or interior

25:55

design or recipes. Pinterest

25:57

has not been a place that historically

25:59

people really

25:59

talked about I wanna go address my mental

26:02

health on this platform. What Pinterest

26:04

realized was, this is

26:06

something that people are coming to

26:08

us for. how can we

26:10

create a space for people to

26:12

be able to feel safe

26:14

and understood?

26:15

Around that same time, a fourteen year old girl

26:17

in England named Molly Russell

26:20

died

26:20

by suicide. Afterward,

26:22

it was discovered viewed more

26:24

than two thousand posts related

26:26

to suicide and self harm

26:29

on social media platforms, one

26:31

of which was Pinterest. This

26:33

was alarming and led to a lot

26:35

of questions around what are

26:37

kids engaging in, how do we keep them

26:40

safe, what are the interventions that can then be done? And

26:42

also, what is the role of social media

26:44

companies to keep users safe when things

26:46

like this happen? There are three big

26:48

things that we did.

26:50

The first

26:53

was what we call micro therapeutics.

26:56

We created a whole platform

26:58

of little mini tools little

27:00

activities that people can do anywhere from

27:02

one to five minutes that

27:04

take the same types of therapies

27:07

that we might do with our patients in

27:09

clinic. but instead that they can

27:11

do on the platform in real

27:13

time, not only things like mindfulness

27:15

and gratitude, but even leveraging

27:18

cognitive behavioral therapy and helping

27:20

people understand their thoughts and

27:22

thought patterns where they

27:24

can start thinking in a more positive

27:27

way. Now, when people go on the

27:29

Pinterest platform and they type in

27:31

depression or stress or anxiety,

27:33

they get an entire pop up

27:35

box. that's separate from their Pinterest

27:37

page, and it's very private.

27:40

The second thing that we did is

27:42

called compassionate search. if you

27:44

go into Pinterest and you start to type

27:46

in something related to suicide,

27:48

you're not now gonna get pushed

27:50

additional content into your inbox like

27:52

you did before. Some things will auto

27:55

fill, but things that we have been able

27:57

to flag as potentially

27:59

dangerous will not auto

28:01

fill So we're not further making things potentially

28:03

harmful for people. And then the third

28:05

thing was working with the algorithm

28:08

engineers specifically around

28:10

how to decrease the amount of self harm

28:12

content on the platform and

28:14

by educating the engineers around

28:17

what is self harm, what is self harm

28:20

content. After six months or so, there

28:22

was a

28:22

significant decrease in self

28:25

harm on

28:27

the platform.

28:33

in

28:33

medicine, we take this oath to do no harm.

28:35

And

28:35

that was really the idea that we

28:37

had around how do we change the user

28:40

experience everything from the way people

28:42

searched, the way that results get popped up

28:44

to them so that

28:45

the platforms are doing no harm to their

28:47

users.

28:50

Not long after Pinterest implemented

28:53

these changes, they noted

28:55

an eighty eight percent drop in

28:57

reports of self harm content by

28:59

users users. The company

29:00

said it was able to remove

29:02

this kind of content three

29:04

times faster than before. But

29:06

is it actually improving users

29:09

mental health? We don't know.

29:12

other

29:12

platforms have also tried to be proactive

29:14

about mental health. Meta,

29:16

the company that owns both Instagram

29:19

and Facebook, allows

29:21

users to flag worrisome posts

29:23

they've seen from friends.

29:25

In twenty seventeen,

29:28

Facebook develop its own algorithms to

29:30

identify users at risk of self

29:32

harm. And they have an

29:34

emotional health page containing

29:36

resources on conditions like

29:39

anxiety and depression. And

29:41

yet just last year, The

29:43

Wall Street Journal published

29:45

a series in which they claim

29:47

that Facebook has long studied and

29:49

known about the harm it

29:51

causes, particularly to mental

29:53

health. And that it has

29:55

continued to publicly deny and downplay

29:57

this information. In twenty

29:59

twenty

29:59

one, more than four billion

30:02

people people around the world

30:04

used some form of social

30:06

media. That's half of the entire population

30:08

of the planet. We've had

30:10

clues about its effects on our

30:12

mental health, but now we're starting

30:14

to get some definitive answers. What

30:16

we do

30:17

with that information is a

30:19

looming question. Nina Vassen thinks a

30:22

good place to start is with

30:23

data. When we look at

30:25

an area like mental health,

30:27

We have enormous data that we

30:29

use in order to do everything

30:31

from assessing someone's symptoms,

30:34

how depressed are they? How anxious are

30:36

they? But we don't really share this

30:38

information with patients. And I always

30:40

try to give an analogy to

30:42

something like diabetes. Where someone

30:44

with diabetes they are very aware

30:46

most often of their blood sugar. They're

30:48

measuring that regularly. They're

30:50

making food choices based on what their blood

30:52

sugar levels are. In mental health, we have

30:54

similar metrics around things like

30:56

depression anxiety scores, sleep

30:58

scores, but patients aren't actively

31:00

using these numbers. And metrics

31:02

What has not historically been a part of the conversation

31:04

with patients is for them

31:06

to understand what these

31:08

numbers are and to engage in

31:10

these numbers themselves. That's

31:12

it for today's

31:14

show. If you or

31:16

someone you know is struggling with

31:18

a mental health problem, It's

31:20

really important to seek help.

31:22

Talk to your primary care doctor

31:24

about finding appropriate services

31:27

or you can call the national suicide and

31:29

crisis lifeline. The number

31:31

to dial is 988

31:33

Trained workers are available

31:36

talk twenty four hours a day,

31:38

seven days a week, and all calls

31:40

are toll free and confidential.

31:42

I want to thank my guests, Alexia

31:45

Macquarie, and doctor Nina Boston. And thanks to

31:47

you, of course, for listening. Let

31:49

us know what you

31:49

thought about today's episode. How does

31:52

social media make you feel

31:54

good? bad or a little of both. Have

31:57

you ever tried to cut back on it to

31:59

improve how you feel? feel Send us

32:01

an email or a voice memo

32:03

We are at babu at freakonomix dot

32:06

com. That's

32:06

BAPU at

32:08

freakonomix dot com. Here's

32:10

an idea to leave you with about a

32:13

different way social platforms can affect our

32:15

health. Sexual

32:16

transmitted diseases or STD's are

32:20

a huge public health problem, particularly

32:22

among adolescents and young adults.

32:25

Over the last decade, a number

32:27

of new apps have

32:29

made it easier for people to

32:31

meet other people.

32:32

Could the staggered uptake of these apps

32:35

across cities tell us something

32:37

about their effect on STD rates?

32:39

Think about

32:39

it. And in the meantime, coming up

32:42

next week, they say

32:43

what's passed is prologue.

32:46

So what can the past tell us about

32:48

the present and maybe even the

32:50

future of our healthcare system?

32:52

It really shows

32:53

us how a significant

32:55

shock can play out even decades later.

32:58

And what

32:58

could the lasting effects be

33:00

of another more recent

33:03

shock. We've

33:03

seen a lot more people applying

33:05

and matriculating into healthcare programs.

33:07

More people applying to medical school, nursing

33:10

school. that's coming up next week

33:12

on FreakonomicsMD. Thanks again

33:14

for

33:15

listening.

33:16

FreakonomicsMD is part

33:18

of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which

33:21

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people I mostly admire.

33:27

All our shows are produced by Stitcher

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33:36

was produced by Julie Canfor and

33:38

mixed by Eleanor Osbourne with

33:40

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33:42

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33:44

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33:46

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