Part 1: Is the Debate Around Social Media Another Tech Panic?

Could concerns that social media has a negative impact on minors’ mental health be another tech panic?

Over the next two weeks, we will publish a four-part series by Aubrey Kirchhoff, former CGO Research Manager and now Law and Economics Program Research Fellow at the International Center for Law & Economics, and Jessica Parkinson, a CGO Student Fellow, comparing the differences and similarities between the violent video game and social media impacts on policy, the law, and mental health. Enjoy!

Edit: Check out Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

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In 2005, California proposed legislation to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. This law was a culmination of growing concerns that violent video games were causing children to become more aggressive. Commentators noted that perpetrators of mass shootings, as in the case of Columbine, Heath High School, and Sandy Hook, often played video games considered to be violent such as Doom, Grand Theft Auto, and Call of Duty.¹ Studies on the connection between video games and aggression came pouring out. In response, policymakers began to introduce laws banning or otherwise regulating the sale of violent video games to minors.

This would seem to be the ideal result. Lawmakers were able to come together and pass a law that addressed the issue at hand. The only problem is that there is little to no evidence that video games, even violent ones, lead to increases in aggressive behavior let alone that they are a driving factor behind school shootings.

Today, the concern around violent video games is largely considered to have been a tech panic. A tech panic, a fairly new term among researchers, is best described as a type of moral panic which centers around technology.² As noted by Amy Orben in “The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics,” tech panics tend to occur when a new technology is introduced, such as the radio or the television. Following its introduction, widespread concern often arises about its potential impact on society, especially on children. Research soon follows and, despite a failure to produce high-quality evidence, policymakers begin introducing legislation to address the issue. 

In the case of violent video games, the lack of quality evidence was quickly made clear. Having been challenged on First Amendment grounds, California ended up defending its law in front of the Supreme Court in 2011. Six years after the law’s initial passage. In the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the First Amendment. In the opinion of the Court, written by Justice Scalia, the evidence used by the state receives intense criticism:

These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, “[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.” [Video Software Dealers Assn. 556 F. 3d, at 964.] They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children’s feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game.

With society’s tendency to fall into tech panics in mind, we should view claims about the harms of new technologies with a skeptical eye. Given that tech panics tend to center around the impact on children, we may need to exercise extra caution when children are invoked as a reason for quick action despite a lack of evidence. As one mother noted during the panic surrounding comic books in the 1950s in a letter to a Senator serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency,

…as Dr. says we have laws that prohibit selling poison, why can’t we prohibit these people from selling poison to our children’s minds?

I do not think that it is necessary or just to conduct an investigation that will cause the long suffering, over taxed Americans a great deal of money when the evidence is right in front of our eyes and the way to stop it is so very simple.

We should not, though many often have, use children as an excuse to lower the standards of evidence required to pass a policy that infringes upon the rights of Americans. This is not to say that these claims should be dismissed, but we must hold the evidence to a high standard just as the Supreme Court did in 2011. Otherwise, we may be taking drastic action against what turns out to be a momentary panic.

Today, concerns about violent video games have faded, but concern surrounding the impact of social media on minors has surged. As in the case of violent video games, policymakers have begun introducing bills to address the alleged harms of social media. Many of these proposed laws have significant speech and privacy tradeoffs, as they would ultimately require social media platforms to confirm the ages of their users. A requirement that is best fulfilled through the presentation and documentation of a government ID. 

In this series, we consider whether the concern that social media has a negative impact on minors’ mental health may be another tech panic. To do so, we compare the evidence from the debate around violent video games with the evidence that social media harms the mental health of minors. In the second part (to be released on Thursday), we will dive into the body of evidence used in the violent video games debate. In the third part, we will explore the evidence in the case of social media. Finally, we will compare the two and ask ourselves: is the evidence used in the debate around social media any better than that used in the violent video games debate?

1. In the case of the Sandy Hook shooting it was later found that, though the perpetrator had copies of games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, it was Dance Dance Revolution that he played obsessively.

2. We will try to stick to the term tech panic throughout this series, however you may see the term moral panic occasionally as we reference sources since it is more widely used.