Is Social Media Causing an Epidemic of Trans Kids?
Plus: Is "Social Contagion" a Phrase That is Useful?
This weekend a clip of psychologist Jonathan Haidt appearing on Firing Line began making the media rounds. In it, Haidt claims that trans identification, which has been dramatically increasing, is due to a social contagion among girls, particularly from social media, not due to reduced stigma. Here, Haidt1 is far out over his skiis, a common affliction of those selling books (and, in fairness to Jonathan, not one I claim immunity to). For there simply is very little data to connect social media to trans identification.
There really are two questions here. First, is trans identification associated with social media? Second is there a social contagion at play more broadly regarding trans identification? The first is easier to consider.
Regarding social media, Haidt’s comments are pretty wild because there simply is little to no data on this. He is asserting a connection that, effectively, there is exactly 0 evidence for, one way or another. Now, he could turn out to be right (and I’ve got one study with data just analyzed on the way) but asserting this as a definitive causal assertion without evidence on television is not a great thing for a respected scientist to do.
Even should social media not prove to be a vector, this doesn’t rule out some kind of social process as it relates to trans identification. Recent years have seen a pretty rapid rise in transgender identification, particularly in young people, albeit it’s still pretty rare. Although some of this may be due to reduced stigma, my suspicion is that such a rapid rise is likely explained by something other than only reduced stigma.
Increasingly though, I’m wary of the term “social contagion” which I find to be misleading. This is not because people don’t respond to social pressures and incentives (of course they do). But rather the term “social contagion” falsely implies this works simplistically like a virus. Just as bad, the term is emotionally evocative and such evocative terms tend to make people leap to snap conclusions which they then begin to defend against all evidence. For instance, I generally find the evidence for the idea that mass homicide works via social contagion to be weaker than I’d like to see for the kind of claims that go around about it.
My best guess (which I’ll say could be wrong, so let’s research it!), is that much of the social pressure on teens likely comes from adults: parents, teachers, physicians, therapists, etc. at least as much as from other teens if not more. But it’s important to point out that this whole thing may be complicated. I suspect teens may fall into three broad categories:
1) Truly trans kids with lifelong gender dysphoria who, in many circumstances, would benefit from transition.
2) Kids with mental illnesses such as borderline personality disorder or autism who’ve glommed onto transgenderism because it is trendy and seems to offer an explanation for their wider issues. These kids would likely not benefit from transition but rather from other types of mental health interventions.
3) Kids who are cosplaying gender fluidity because it is cool and offers status. It’s an unspoken truth that, if many girls are identifying as “progressive” and wearing nail polish and putting on a dress will attract these girls, some boys are going to wear nail polish and put on a dress. Similarly, some girls who are lesbian may instead identify as trans or nonbinary because being lesbian isn’t “cool” anymore. Most of these kids probably aren’t interested in any transition beyond social status.
If the left’s rush to conclusion over gender affirmation/no questions asked/”Children know who they are” is a disaster (and I believe it likely is), critics rushing to the conclusion that all trans-identifying kids belong in group #2, could equally be disastrous. It behooves us all to slow down and keep an open mind until good data comes in.
I feel bad criticizing Jonathan by name, but he has been making the media rounds so it’s fair game. For the record, although I think Jonathan has gone pretty far down a rabbit hole with his claims about social media, I do respect his work in other realms, believe he is well-intentioned, and a generally decent guy.