Not explicitly arguing against the thesis of the website, but showing trend lines which allegedly started in 2007 with data that starts in 2006 is... Not convincing.

>limiting life outcomes of millions around the globe

The US is such a small sliver of the world population, as is the west to some extent. ACT scores and such are extremely US centric.

Smartphones were a positive revolution for so much of the world. Consider the hundreds of millions of children (more than the entire US population exclusively used in this argument) growing up in rural poor households surrounded by illiteracy. They suddenly had access to the wider world. They had the opportunity to take initiative in ways they didn't have before. They had access to limitless education, and an easy way to pick up a global language. When kids left the village for a city they could video chat with family instead of going months of no contact.

To some extent, I'm talking about the final leg of the internet revolution, not phones specifically, but in many areas of the world where electricity is intermittent, it was phones that finally drove wider internet penetration.

Are there downsides? Certainly. is smartphone addiction and social media a problem? Research says that it probably is, but for a long time I've felt that the positive impacts on a global scale are being downplayed, especially in the US. Not everyone who gained cell phone connectivity had a PC at home with a steady power supply as a baseline, and schools stocked with computers. We have a huge wave of new people growing up who had access to far more information than the previous generation. If I'm going to make a casual, broad-sweeping generalization of impact, I'll hazard to guess that the positive impact is being greatly underappreciated globally.

The reverse Flynn effect should be by far the most concerning thing on this page. As others have pointed out, some of these trends are specious, but the Flynn effect has held up for a while, and is highly replicated. Even just the disappearance of the Flynn effect would be significant.

An adjacent phenomenon that needs investigation is "Adult ADD". Extending the theory of adolescent ADD to adults doesn't add up. It's surprising that these are considered by default to be the same condition, especially in people who didn't have issues during adolescence. The increase in prevalence demands a non-genetic explanation. Better explanatory theories are: 1. We've collectively decided that this is how we dispense amphetamines to consenting adults. 2. It's a fad (when will prevalence decrease?), and 3. It's the smartphones/apps.

Personally, I think it's mostly 3, with the infinite scrolling apps having a huge effect on attention and executive function, but also some of 1 given the information economy.

This should go without saying: if an intervention is working for you, or a disease theory has given you explanatory power, you should stick with both.

I definitely believe that the modern internet, computers, and phones are bad for us, but this argument is entirely unconvincing. Most of the data _seems_ to be U.S.-specific, which means that this data does not indicate if this is a global phenomenon. Further, a lot of the trend lines don't start in 2007 and could be easily attributed to other causes.

It tracks phone adoption but surely social media is the more likely culprit?

2007 seems a bit early to be looking for an effect. Smartphones were a luxury/tech-nerd/Apple-fanboy purchase in 2007, they didn’t start to see widespread adoption till the iPhone 4/4s (2010-2012) closer to when most of the graphs have their discontinuity. In the US, 50% smartphone ownership didn’t happen till 2014 for adults and 2016 for teens.

Thanks for putting this site together. Despite all the comments here, I find your point pretty convincing.

Smartphones + Social media

And then COVID appears to have had a massive impact.

On September 26, 2006, Facebook opened to everyone at least 13 years old, was a key date IMO.

You dont like margins on your web pages?

Nodding along with the site until Fig 8. "Internet Addiction". If it has made up graphs like this with included the rest of the argument is likely made of false premises too.

Where do you plan to get your time machine, to find a 1971 cohort of ACT test takers that looks like the 2025 one?

Why assume that the OECD is measuring something well? What do you know about them and the PISA test?

RFKJR, an idiot, has charts from the CDC, a reliable source, that show autism prevalence is going up and to the right.

There are two explanations for the chart: one is toxic environment increases and causes autism (RFKJR), and one is more screenings, broader criteria and diagnostic substitution (CDC). Who do you think is right? What do we call CDC's explanation?

Does the chart have "complexity" (you criticize this elsewhere)? Can a chart be both "real" (as in not "fake") but also flawed? Do we pick and choose which charts we use which words for, depending on our politics? (Yes).

Why do you think politically-influenced thinking doesn't apply to you? Do you think "blaming smartphones" is apolitical?

How does your analysis about smartphones differ structurally from an RFKJR presentation? Remember, he's an idiot. You bring out some charts, there's a lot of coincidence time series, and the sources on the face of it are reliable. Does that make "it" true?

RFKJR (an idiot) also talks about "rigor," like you do. He goes and mooks his theories on Fox News instead of Hacker News. Okay, does he ever take down the stuff he was wrong about? (No). Do you see? So even if you are "wrong", you go and talk about rigor, are you going to take down your website? Or bring it down until you fix its flaws? (No.)

Finally. We only talk about charts and benchmarks that align with vibes. Apolitical example: all the AI benchmarks show Anthropic, Google and OpenAI as the "top 3", because if you made a benchmark, as rigorous as it is, that showed something else, people would not believe it. It doesn't matter if what it measures is real. For something political, this problem is acute.

Does this vibes phenomenon exist for "charts" about "crime"? (Yes). Does this phenomenon describe test scores?

The biggest thing for what plagues the net, society in general, did occurred in 2007 / 8 - it was not the phones - it was what the US govt did in response to Facebook's rather dire lack of real mods over "bullying" ... the move to ban anonymous people arguing and flaming - this flowed though eventually via the new terms of service US based software for forums, boards, and hosting sites required to abide by the new laws. Many forums I used to frequent slowly disappeared being unable to adapt to different software and hosting sites that were happy to ignore US laws.

A real name when challenging the status quo unfortunately attaches the risk of retaliation from either the intended organisation or person, or their fanboys, via direct or creative sets of problems designed to waste time and / or money. Sadly the internet is a bit more fuzzy when it comes to trouble and those dishing it out. Social media of course, had welcomed the new rules, and any anonymous account speaking out against a popular idea could be quickly reported and thus indirectly permanently banned until they complied with real life details.

This is also when traffic fatalities on the US halted their decades-long decline and started to increase again.

I don’t think it’s smart phones per se. It’s social media, and more specifically attention maximizing algorithms.

Those also hit around the same time. People doom scroll on desktops and laptops too.

Honestly just infinite scroll alone is shockingly addictive. Pair it with algorithms that sort content by measured engagement and your brain stem doesn’t stand a chance.

Social media algorithms also prioritize trash content because that’s what maximizes engagement. Think of it this way. One person walks by on the street and says “hi.” Another walks up and strips naked and smears themselves with peanut butter and starts clucking like a chicken and saluting Hitler. Which one of these maximizes engagement? Which will the algorithm perpetuate? This, IMO, explains the evolution of political discourse over the past 15 years and is why a troll is now President.

Smart phones are just a particularly good platform for these systems, but it’s the systems themselves that are toxic. They work on a desktop screen too. It’s just that laptops and desktops aren’t as portable and are not always with us in the same way, which limits the damage.

I'm not a fan of smart phones or social media. No accounts anywhere except here and my phone isn't even in the room with me with now. Didn't own a phone at all until I was 27.

But still, not liking something doesn't mean it needs to be the cause of all social ills. These graphs don't seem to show anything. You've got trends starting in 2018, 2012, 2022, and some seeming to start before your data even begins, which was 2006, not 2007. Clearly, the only reason you picked 2007 at all is the iPhone debuted that year. The data didn't lead you to that year. These data don't seem to lead to anything. With respect to college admissions tests, the most obvious reason they'd be declining seems to also be the most mundane. With college all but mandatory and skilled trades collapsing, more people than ever are taking these tests, including people who won't do well and wouldn't have bothered in the past.

I'm not generally against the idea that smart phones and social media do real harm. The rise of at least visible and outright hostile political polarization seems related and Jonathan Haidt's arguments about mental health effects are at least reasonably provocative if not conclusive. But there is very little there there with these particular arguments. You may not necessarily be wrong, but I'd caution against starting with a conclusion and working backwards to try and find data that supports what you already believes, bending it if you can't actually find any. That isn't intellectually honest inquiry.

Correlation is not causation. Reminds me of spurious correlations LOL: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

What happened in 2007 was the great recession.

Most of the graphs look more like “what happened in 2020.”

This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen someone register a vanity domain for.

On IQs, I remember seeing higher CO2 levels can lower IQs a little bit, higher CO2, IQs get lower. Maybe that could be part of the reason at least for that.

It's social media. It's really obviously social media. We know it is social media.

But we no longer have any way to prove it, because the malign, anxiety-and-loneliness influence of social media cannot be avoided even if you are not on social media.

1) if you are not on social media, you will be more lonely, because nobody invites anyone to anything anymore except via social media (trust me on this) and people simply assume you've seen the news of their event and judge you if you don't turn up

2) if you are not on social media, you will find yourself excluded from friendship discussions that started on social media, you will find yourself negotiating family arguments wrongly etc.

3) not being on social media doesn't stop you being stuck with leaders who were elected off the back of a storm of social media **wit FUD posting; life's anxieties are real and in many ways worsening fast, and they are social-media-fuelled whether you are on Facebook or not.

4) You cannot properly advertise your product, find all your possible clients or respond to client feedback without engaging with social media; only a handful of tradespeople can really pull off just not being there at all.

There is no control group.

1) This is basically a meme, a riff on "WTF Happened in 1971?" sites.

2) We know what happened in 2007: the Global Financial Crisis.

I’m sorry, but this is such a terribly unscientific approach. You want to make a case for your hypothesis? Follow a structured approach with real arguments.

Saying «I know that correlation doesn’t imply causation», but then only demonstrating correlation isn’t really bringing this discourse any further.

Basing your site on wtfhappenedin1971 is not a positive signal.