This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

You’ve likely felt it: The dull pull downwards of a smartphone scroll. The “five more minutes” just before bed. The sleep still there after waking. The edges of your calm slowly fraying.

After more than a decade of our most recent technological experiment, in turns out that having the entirety of the internet in the palm of your hands could be … not so great. Obviously, the effects of this are compounded by the fact that the internet that was built after the invention of the smartphone is a very different internet than the one before—supercharged with algorithms that get you to click more, watch more, buy more, and rest so much less.

But for one group, in particular, across the world, the impact of smartphones and constant social media may be causing an unprecedented mental health crisis: Young people.

According to the American College Health Association, the percentage of undergraduates in the US—so, mainly young adults in college—who were diagnosed with anxiety increased 134% since 2010. In the same time period for the same group, there was in increase in diagnoses of depression by 106%, ADHD by 72%, bipolar by 57%, and anorexia by 100%.

That’s not all. According to a US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of anxiety in America increased for every age group except those over 50, again, since 2010. Those aged 35 – 49 experienced a 52% increase, those aged 26 – 34 experienced a 103% increase, and those aged 18 – 25 experienced a 139% increase.

This data, and much more, was cited by the social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in debuting his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” In the book, Haidt examines what he believes is a mental health crisis unique amongst today’s youth, and he proposes that much of the crisis has been brought about by a change in childhood—away from a “play-based” childhood and into a “phone-based” one.

This shift, Haidt argues, is largely to blame for the increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and more.

And rather than just naming the problem, Haidt also proposes five solutions to turn things around:

• Give children far more time playing with other children. 
• Look for more ways to embed children in stable real-world communities.  
• Don’t give a smartphone as the first phone.
• Don’t give a smartphone until high school.  
• Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school (at least).

But while Haidt’s proposals may feel right—his book has spent five weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list—some psychologists disagree.

Writing for the outlet Platformer, reporter Zoe Schiffer spoke with multiple behavioral psychologists who alleged that Haidt’s book cherry-picks survey data, ignores mental health crises amongst adults, and over-simplifies a complex problem with a blunt solution.  

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Dr. Jean Twenge to get more clarity on the situation: Is there a mental health crisis amongst today’s teens? Is it unique to their generation? And can it really be traced to the use of smartphones and social media?

According to Dr. Twenge, the answer to all those questions is, pretty much, “Yes.” But, she said, there’s still some hope to be found.

“This is where the argument around smartphones and social media being behind the adolescent mental health crisis actually has, kind of paradoxically, some optimism to it. Because if that’s the cause, that means we can do something about it.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

Social media influencers are attractive targets for identity thieves. With large followings and a literal influence on their followers, it’s no wonder they are targeted by scammers and spreaders of fake news.

A subset of influencers are the so-called “finfluencers”: influencers that provide their followers with financial advice. Such a person influences the financial investment decisions of their followers by doling out advice or recommendations. This comes in the form of get-rich-quick schemes, cryptocurrency related advice, stock investment, financial planning, or just about anything people can do to make money.

On the platforms that matter these days, like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, the number of followers of some of the well-known finfluencers far exceeds the numbers of followers of some of the biggest broking houses. In May of 2023, India banned a YouTube finfluencer with over a million followers from the securities markets for a year for allegedly providing advisory services—daily stock investment/trading calls—without registering with the regulator.

With enough followers that heed their advice, these finfluencers also can have an effect on the financial markets. With enough demand, prices go up and if you know that’s going to happen, making money is indeed easy.

And as an exit scam in which you make one big whopper and then disappear, that’s a very profitable strategy. But most influencers are in it for the long run and don’t want to ruin the reputation they built. Unless their account falls into the wrong hands.

In October of 2023, the Federal Trade Commission warned people with a lot of social media followers they might be the target of scammers. These scammers would come up with fake job offers of offering to pay them for product promotion as “brand ambassadors.” But in reality the scammers are after personal and financial information.

Typically, the scammers say they’ll send you free products and pay you large amounts of money to promote those products in your social media posts. All you have to do is to accept the offer and give them your personal and banking information so they can pay you.

What the scammers are really after can vary from cleaning out the influencers’ bank accounts to taking over their social media accounts. “If you provide us with your login credentials, you don’t have to do the work, we’ll post the promotional content ourselves.”

The scammers will then leave the influencer behind with an account that has a bad reputation and lost a good part of its followers.

Some good news might come from the regulation side. The governments of ten nations have called on social media operators to improve their ability to detect and prevent fraud on their platforms. Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States did this because:

“Fraudsters operate at scale, exploiting telecommunications networks, cyberspace and a population that spends an increasing amount of time online.”

In a communiqué issued as a result of the Global Fraud Summit, which also included representatives from INTERPOL, the Financial Action Task Force, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the European Union, the partakers listed 29 action points that should help reduce online fraud.

It will be hard to accomplish this goal but as we have seen, similar actions led to a promising decline in robocalls. Australia also reported progress towards their vision of making Australia the world’s hardest target for scammers with, for example, a 38% decrease in losses due to investment scams.

What can influencers do to protect themselves

• Always assume that if it’s too good to be true, then it’s probably not true.
• Never give out your personal or financial information without doing proper research first.
• Contact the company directly to confirm the offer. Use a phone number or contact method you know to be legitimate.
• Check if the person contacting you is using an email address that’s affiliated with the company they claim to represent.
• Don’t let any person or app create posts on social media on your behalf.
• Don’t let scammers rush you into decisions. They will always claim it’s urgent or you need to act fast.

Check your digital footprint

If you want to find out how much of your data has been exposed online, you can try our free Digital Footprint scan. Fill in the email address you’re curious about (it’s best to submit the one you most frequently use) and we’ll send you a free report.

We don’t just report on threats – we help protect your social media

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your social media accounts by using Cyrus, powered by Malwarebytes.