The Free Press: 'Haidt was right'

Also, has anyone heard these terms -- "Tavistock" and "Cass Review" -- in U.S. news coverage?

Under normal circumstances, American progressives look to Europe for mass-media enlightenment about how the world is supposed to change.

Yes, America has Hollywood. But I’ve always had the impression that European filmmakers create the edgy movies that American artists wish they could make — if they didn't have to worry so much about selling tickets to plebes in flyover country.

But there are limits to the European obsessions of our elites.

For example, something important is happening in England connected to one of the Western world’s hottest debates — the wisdom of so-called gender affirming care for children. For example, run a Google News search for this term — “Tavistock” and “gender.” You may want to add “lawsuits” to the search.

You will not find much coverage of this from major American newsrooms, but here is a headline from The Guardian: “Why the Tavistock gender identity clinic was forced to shut ... and what happens next.”

Why did Tavistock close? Reporter Hannah Barnes noted: “The details were scarce, but a senior member of staff had claimed that the service was ‘failing to examine fully the psychological and social reasons behind young people’s desire to change gender’.”

That leads to this:

What if [National Health Service] England had acted when it saw a report of those concerns? It didn’t, and the service remained open for another six years. A service which referred children for puberty-blocking drugs, without robust data to support that this was beneficial, and that shut down the concerns of a growing number of its own staff.

Those professionals never questioned the identity of the young people they saw, nor the intensity of their distress. What they questioned was whether the NHS service they worked in was providing safe, evidence-based care for thousands of vulnerable children, or whether they might, in fact, be witnessing a medical scandal unfold.

England isn’t the only European nation in which the experts are starting to ask hard questions about the many complex health-care issues linked to gender dysphoria — a topic that appears to be out of bounds in America’s most powerful newsrooms. I’ll add another recent BBC headline: “NHS England to stop prescribing puberty blockers.”

Yes, you read that right.

Have you seen coverage of this major story on our side of the Atlantic? How about hard-news reporting about the Cass Review of scientific publications about key elements of gender-affirming care theory and practice?

Now, what does this news “signal,” or lack thereof, have to do with Rational Sheep?

At the top of this post is a YouTube byte from a Megyn Kelly interview with Luka Hein — a young woman who describes her efforts to detransition after her surgical and chemical attempts to solve her many mental-health issues by becoming a boy.

This is, of course, an example of alternative “conservative” media coverage of the detrans world, a topic that Kelly has covered quite often.

In this specific Kelly interview, jump to the four-minute mark and listen to Hein’s description of how she veered into the trans world — during a time of chaos in her family and mental health.

What was the crucial hook for her demands to transition?

No, it was not a doctor. Not at first. It is very clear that Hein had one crucial link to the information, opinions and personal encouragement (Hein says “predators”) that led to her transition — she was completely addicted to social media, via her smartphone and other digital screens.

Hein describes how she spent the vast majority of her time online, once she arrived at home from school day after day.

Life was hard. Hein said it was much easier to “get in bed and scroll on my phone rather than, you know, get up.”

Yes, there is that fact of modern life — again.

As I have said several times here at Rational Sheep, I could run an entire Substack project focusing on smartphone issues and, at the moment, the waves of press coverage of Jonathan Haidt and his book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” I urge readers to follow the After Babel Substack, which features essays by Haidt and other authors working on mental-health issues linked to screens culture.

But I will keep posting information for the parents, pastors, teachers and counselors who need to get plugged into these sources.

Thus, here is a solid, but strategic, round-up of URLs and information from The Free Press, under this blunt headline: “Haidt was right.” This focuses on Haidt’s responses to his many critics:

The debate that followed the publication of Anxious Generation has been fierce. 

As one Wall Street Journal headline put it: “Jonathan Haidt Blamed Tech for Teen Anxiety. Managing the Blowback Has Become a Full-Time Job.” Some accused him of fearmongering. A review in Nature questioned whether Haidt had the evidence to back up his claims. The most common objection goes something like this: declining mental health and increased smartphone use have certainly coincided, but correlation isn’t causation. Another was: Is social media really “rewiring” kids’ brains, as Haidt suggests? 

Well, last week, a new meta-study published in the academic journal PLOS Mental Health reviewed all the evidence on “functional connectivity changes in the brain of adolescents with internet addiction,” and it found plenty to back up Haidt’s thesis. 

For more background on that, flash back to this Rational Sheep post connecting lots of dots about the “correlation not causation” issue.

Anyway, The Free Press contacted Haidt:

He replied that “at a time when many parents and policymakers really want to know whether the extant research gives us cause for comfort or alarm about kids who are heavy users of digital media, this paper is very important.”

He said the study “fits with common sense” and finds that “kids who are doing something that gives them massive amounts of quick and easy dopamine, for years, during the sensitive period of puberty, come out with brains that are different, in concerning ways, from those who don’t grow up in a flood of quick and easy dopamine.” In other words: Haidt is right.

Yes, this is distressing and depressing material. But I will continue to argue that there is no way — no VALID way — for parents, pastors, teachers and counselors to avoid these topics.

As I keep saying, lives and souls are at stake.

At this point, Rational Sheep is in its free “launch phase” — before the leap to being a project that is largely reader-supported. Let me stress that there will always be some free material every week.

At this point, I really want to hear what kinds of topics and materials are the most interesting and practical. But this “screens culture” issue is going to be part of the mix here, no matter what. It has to be.

Questions? Comments?

Is anyone out there interested in me trying to explore the emerging audio “chat” functions on X? I still want to find some way to do a once-a-month question-and-answer feature.