Many academics and pundits contend that social media use is the primary cause of an international youth mental health crisis. However, these claims often rely on correlational evidence, ignoring the confounding effects of developmental, environmental, social, and psychological factors that influence mental health. This oversimplifies the complex etiology of mental health problems. We call for a more nuanced understanding of the role of social media in youth mental health that avoids oversimplification. Additionally, we urge researchers to move beyond vague, narrative-driven verbal theories and encode them into precise, testable causal models. Using simulation techniques and specification curve analyses, we show how misspecified models that ignore these confounding factors can lead to biased conclusions about social media's adverse effects. This simplistic focus on social media use diverts attention from the broader factors contributing to youth mental health problems, hindering the development of effective interventions and support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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社交媒体和青少年心理健康：简单的叙述会产生有偏见的解释。


许多学者和专家认为，社交媒体的使用是国际青少年心理健康危机的主要原因。然而，这些说法往往依赖于相关证据，忽略了影响心理健康的发育、环境、社会和心理因素的混杂影响。这过于简单化了心理健康问题的复杂病因。我们呼吁更细致地了解社交媒体在青少年心理健康中的作用，避免过于简单化。此外，我们敦促研究人员超越模糊的、叙事驱动的言语理论，并将它们编码成精确的、可测试的因果模型。使用模拟技术和规格曲线分析，我们展示了忽略这些混杂因素的错误指定模型如何导致关于社交媒体不利影响的有偏见的结论。这种对社交媒体使用的简单化关注转移了对导致青少年心理健康问题的更广泛因素的注意力，阻碍了有效干预措施和支持的发展。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。