Anyone doubting that the U.S. was entering a full-blown panic over social media and smartphones hasn't been paying attention to the news recently.

On January 30, the advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) wrote a letter to Facebook requesting they drop plans to create a Messenger service for kids only. CCFC claims that social media causes youth depression and writes that it is "very likely this new app will undermine children's healthy development."

On February 4, the advocacy group Common Sense Media (CSM) promoted their partnership with some former tech executives to launch an "anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign," even though "tech addiction" has no diagnostic meaning.

These parallel efforts are almost certainly going to enflame ongoing fears about technology. But do data back their assertions?

It's important to understand that moral panics – a tendency to place blame for real or imagined social concerns on a scapegoat – tend to run in historical cycles. Twenty years ago, we worried whether violent video games were causing mass shootings. But research failed to substantiate clear links between them, and criminologists now consider a link a "myth."

This cyclical pattern seemed evident in a recent survey I conducted with Slate. It found parents were less concerned about violent games and aggression. Instead, concerns about technology addiction were very common. (That the parents in the survey spent more time on screens than their kids didn't seem to assuage their concerns.)

This is fueled by breathless headlines about supposed links between social media, smartphones and awful outcomes like suicide or addiction. But finding evidence to support these links has proven elusive.

MISSING DATA: Should we panic about teens' social media use?

Let's consider the claims of CCFC first – that social media use is linked to depression. CCFC cites one recent study by Dr. Jean Twenge correlating smartphone use with depression in youth. But this appears to be a misrepresentation of the data; this correlation is of trivial size and unlikely to be noticeable in the general public. Dr. Andrew Przybylski accessed the same dataset used by Dr. Twenge and said: "Based on that same data set, eating potatoes has the exact same negative effect on depression. The negative impact of listening to music is 13 times larger than the effect of social media." But we don't seem to be seeing those same headlines about the harmful effects of potatoes on today's youth.

Time spent on social media is actually a poor predictor of mental health. In one recent study of more than 400 young adults, my colleagues Chloe Berryman, Charles Negy and I found that neither time spent on social media nor the importance placed on it predicted mental health or suicide.

At the same time, some behaviors, such as "vaguebooking" (seeking attention through vaguely alarming posts) did serve as a red flag for suicidal thoughts.

But this all seems to track with other research that suggests that social media is no magic bullet to mental health problems: How one uses social media is more important than whether one uses it.

Though suicide prevalence has increased in the last few years, this does not seem to track well with social media use. Recent increases in suicide are not limited to youth using social media. Almost all age categories have seen a rise in suicide, suggesting that larger structural elements in society are at fault.

The CSM effort seems to focus more on the concept of "addiction" to technology, which remains a controversial concept. CSM has teamed with ex-industry execs, which gives their effort a bit more cachet.

QUESTIONING TRENDS: No, smartphones alone aren't making us unhappy

However, evidence that youth are experience anything like a widespread addiction (rather than adults just being annoyed with youth doing things differently) is lacking. Many scholars have been critical of efforts to use "addiction" terminology. UNICEF recently cautioned against using "addiction" language when discussing the use of technology by youth. Therefore, addiction talk is fanning fears over a concept that has no scholarly consensus.

As with all things financial, the general public should keep their eye on the source of this fear. Both CCFC and CSM are advocacy groups that tend to raise anxieties about media and solicit donations (CCFC is happy to take stocks or securities according to their website). This isn't to say these organizations are necessarily acting in bad faith. But they do have a product to sell and, too often, this involves fear rather than reasoned conversations about technology use.

We need to have those reasoned conversations. How, as parents, do we balance the use of technology with exercise, homework, real-life socialization and sleep? What limits are right for our families? How do we positively involve technology in our own interactions with our kids?

A moral panic has never nurtured these kinds of conversations.

Dr. Chris Ferguson (@CJFerguson1111) is a professor of psychology at Stetson University and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is coauthor of the book "Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong" and author of the mystery novel "Suicide Kings."

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