“It’s Just A Reaction To COVID, Bro.”

Why are high schoolers seemingly not social anymore?

Moral panic alert! Sound the alarm!

Here are three charts to look at. One is also the screenshot for this post.

There’s been a whole discussion for maybe 14 years now — ironically, that’s about when Instagram was bought by Facebook (something being litigated this week) and started to scale — about seemingly why current adolescents and early-20s peeps are less social than maybe previous generations were. First of all, empirically, I am not sure we are less social than someone who was 22 in 1970, but it might be social in different ways, and honestly, maybe those ways are more dangerous. This is a big, multi-faceted issue.

Recently, it seems like the “answer” to this “Um, what is up with the kids?” topic is:

• “Aftermath of COVID, bro.”

• “The phones, Dogg.”

Those seem to be the big “culprits” we’re looking towards — maybe as scapegoats, or maybe as ways to exit a conversation that’s bigger than us.