Young Women and Liberalism

Last May 16th I wrote about Jonathan Haidt's book Anxious Generation and the masterful job Haidt does in tying smartphone use to an array of mental and emotional troubles. The troubles especially afflict the young and especially young women.

The information Haidt packs into his book raises a lot of concerns about the mental health of young women, but one alarming graph he derives from Pew survey data shows that at least half of young women who identify as being liberal have a diagnosed mental illness.

As can be seen from the chart mental illness diagnoses are especially common among liberal women and young liberal women in particular.

There certainly appears to be a correlation between age, gender, mental health, and ideology, but of course a correlation by itself doesn't prove causation. It could just be coincidence, but suppose there is a causative relationship here. If so, it raises a chicken and egg question: Does being liberal cause mental illness or does mental illness cause one to lean toward the left? And how do age and gender factor into this relationship? And why is the incidence of mental illness so much higher among young women than older women and so much higher than among young men?

Haidt thinks that social media is one very prominent explanatory factor for the mental illness among young women, but how does social media explain the correlation between mental illness and liberalism?

Whatever the answers to these questions might be they're doubtless complex, but finding those answers should be, for the sake of our daughters, a matter of some urgency.