This week, I watched a Ted Talk, which is a presentation that focused on “Why You Should Quit Technology”. The main idea of this presentation is to get people to quit technology because it increases the rates of depression.


One idea that I found interesting was that the speaker Cal Newport stated that people are getting so hooked on technology and its a huge part of this generation and its not good for people to constantly be on their technology as much as they are.


I thought this was interesting because Newport says social media causes depression and the rates of depression are increasing. I think that Newport is making technology seem worse than it really is.


I don't disagree that it is a factor in the depression rates increasing but I think he is making technology sound a lot worse than it is seeing that he has never used it before.


This made me wonder the percent of people with depression from technology, so I looked up some more information about this idea.


On the website “Child Mind Institute” I found more information about technology causing depression. One piece of information I found was ‘s using social media making our kids unhappy?


Evidence is mounting that there is a link between social media and depression. In several recent studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time.” (Miller).


Does this mean that social media such as Snapchat and Instagram are actually causing depression? According to Child MInd Institute, studies show there is a correlation not a causation of social media causing depression. One reason the correlation seems so coincidental is that an increase in depression occurred during the same time as the rise in smartphone use.





Miller, Caroline. "Does Social Media Cause Depression?" Child Mind Institute ,


childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/. Accessed 12


Dec. 2019.











Newport, Cal. "Why You Should Quit Social Media ." Tedxtyson , June 2016.


Lecture.