Yascha Mounk has been watching the battle over the impact of social media on young Americans. On one side are psychologists, like Jonathan Haidt, who has written about this for many years and has published his book, The Anxious Generation. On the other side are the skeptics who remind us that we tend to exaggerate the impact of new technologies.

Mounk says, “In this battle, I have until now chosen to be a non-combatant.” What changed his mind? He came across what he calls a truly jaw-dropping chart. It showed “how the traits measured by the personality test most widely used in academic psychology have changed over the past decade.”

He is talking about the OCEAN test that measures five key traits. We have decades of research that show how these traits predict with great accuracy your future. For example, young people “have become far less conscientious and extroverted over the course of the past decade.” By contrast, “the trait most strongly associated with negative life outcomes, neuroticism, has sharply increased. To put it bluntly, the average 20-year-old today is less conscientious.”

He is quick to point out that these dramatic shifts may not be driven by social media. But it is difficult to find another alternative explanation. Young people spend lots of time on social media, and these shifts correlate with the arrival of social media on their digital devices.

He concludes that the problem isn’t just social media. He argues that we have fundamentally misunderstood how the internet would affect us. You might want to read his entire article because he discusses many other aspects of our online world.

As I have mentioned before, pastors and Christian leaders need to be speaking about the impact of the internet and social media on our lives.