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A growing body of research complicates the question of social media’s effects on teens. But that hasn’t stopped many adults from perpetual worrying about its presumed perils.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Jack Smith’s backup option Trump can’t bluster his way through court. The gross spectacle of murder fandom

Grown-People Lore

More than half a decade has passed since the psychologist Jean Twenge asked, in a viral Atlantic feature, whether smartphones had “destroyed” the generation we’ve since anointed as Gen Z. In the intervening years, asking that question has become a popular pastime, a way to fill the uncomfortable silences between other societal crises (of which there have been plenty). Yet despite the years of hand-wringing over the presumed perils of young people’s use of smartphones—and social media, in particular—a growing body of research complicates the equation.

Said equation was never exactly straightforward in the first place. Even last month’s high-profile advisory on social media and youth mental health, from the U.S. surgeon general, acknowledged both negative and positive effects of young people’s connectivity through digital platforms. As my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany put it in a recent article, “The results have continually been mixed: Screens are ubiquitous, and they’re personal.”

If the science is so tough to pin down, why is the panic so widespread? Blame that common menace of seemingly unsolvable equations: too many variables.

Consider the research on smartphone use by adults. In terms of mental-health correlates, studies have found a similarly mixed bag as they have for kids and teens. Such uneven findings point toward the need to ask more, and perhaps different, questions about the technological, sociocultural, and material factors behind people’s reported states of mind, and perhaps hone in on areas of overlap. The takeaway might then evolve from “social media causes anxiety and depression” to, for example, “social-media content featuring people having rewarding experiences such as fun and friendship can worsen symptoms of anxiety.” But though that logic is true across the board, when adults are the research subject group in question, such nuance is likelier to enter the picture than when observers are probing the trouble with young people today—a conversation rife with conflated correlations and causations.

Then there’s the X factor of what I’ll diplomatically call “grown-people lore.” Those of us old enough to remember navigating jobs and social lives before everyone carried around a tiny pocket computer are wont to idealize that now-improbable-seeming before time, often forgetting that it came with its own inconveniences and anxieties. We also forget the panics that pervaded adults’ conversations during our coming-of-age, which may have differed in their content but otherwise echoed the tenor of current social-media debates. (In my late-1990s preadolescence, for instance, there was much angst over the potential impact of music lyrics on young people’s mental health, and serious debate as to whether the work of artists such as Marilyn Manson increased teens’ susceptibility to violent behavior.)

Nostalgia colors perspective, and all but certainly shapes widespread hypotheses of the clear and present dangers young people face. Because of this, adults across generations, and in every day and age, have demonstrated a knack for neglecting to apply the lessons of prior eras’ panics to the present moment. Today’s Gen X and Millennial parents fretting about their children’s social-media use may or may not be comforted to learn that, according to some studies, the overconsumption of TV and video games that marked many of their late-20th-century childhoods likely had a comparable impact on their tender, developing brains—for better and for worse.

This is not to diminish the real risks of excess social-media use on young people. A pronounced spike in teen mental illness neatly aligns with the dawn of the smartphone age—or, as the social psychologist and Atlantic contributor Jonathan Haidt calls it, “the transition to phone-based childhoods.” Parents and teachers see the ramifications firsthand: shortened attention spans, distractibility, strained interpersonal relationships, and, yes, elevated rates of depression and anxiety disorders, especially among girls.

Many young people are wary of tech dependency too. Their concerns, however, show a wider scope of analysis than those addressed in today’s social-media-dominated discussions, revealing a desire to find paths to a peaceful coexistence with digital tools, and also reflecting real introspection, wisdom, and resilience. This generation may indeed face hazards that their predecessors did not. But the evidence certainly seems to suggest that they’re far from a cohort “destroyed.”

Related:

No one knows exactly what social media is doing to teens. Get phones out of schools now.

Today’s News

Politico reported that former President Donald Trump raised more than $2 million at his first major campaign fundraiser of the season, hours after his arraignment in Florida, according to a source familiar with the campaign.   The Southern Baptist Convention voted to uphold the expulsion of two churches for having women pastors.    A fishing boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Greece. At least 78 have died, and more are feared missing.  

Dispatches

The Weekly Planet: French people are fighting over giant pools of water, Marion Renault reports.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Focus Features

Asteroid City Is Wes Anderson at His Best

By David Sims

I am here, hat in hand, to admit that I underestimated Wes Anderson. I’ve enjoyed the filmmaker’s work for many years—his methodical aesthetic, the subject of a thousand weak parodies, might be the most recognizable in moviemaking right now. But in the past decade or so, I struggled to excavate much deeper meaning beneath Anderson’s fine-tuned flair, and began to worry that he was disappearing inside his own eccentricities. Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch, in particular, seemed like charming, flimsy confections. His new film, Asteroid City, is a vigorous rebuke to that very critique. It pairs his inimitable visual elegance with an impassioned argument about the power of storytelling. And it’s a reminder that Anderson remains one of cinema’s best.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Saturn’s frozen moon just got a lot more interesting. Summer vacation is moving indoors. The owners who run teams for the money

Culture Break

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Read. Blood Meridian, one of Cormac McCarthy’s many novels that depicts worlds not built for you and me.

Listen. The podcast If Books Could Kill delves into the airport best sellers that we can’t escape.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

If you’re interested in further exploring the panics and preoccupations of yesteryear, I have two podcasts to recommend: You’re Wrong About (which busts common cultural myths about American life) and You Must Remember This (a series on 20th-century Hollywood and the sensibilities that surround it). Specifically, check out the May 2018 You’re Wrong About episode on the satanic panic of the 1980s and the current, ongoing You Must Remember This series “Erotic 90’s,” which explores the decade’s attitudes toward sex and women, and their treatment in cinema.

— Kelli

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned today—without incident—and he has now pleaded not guilty to 37 charges tied to the alleged mishandling of classified documents. But before we see more possible indictments (from Georgia or the January 6 investigation), Americans should not lose sight of the astonishing charges read to Trump today in Florida.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

No one knows exactly what social media is doing to teens. The threat from Trump’s supporters has evolved. The plutocrat vs. the monopoly Toast.

Perhaps former Attorney General William Barr—not a man I am given to quoting approvingly—said it best:

I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were ... and I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast.

I’m not so sure about the “toast” part. Trump lucked out by drawing Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed and whose last involvement with one of his cases produced a decision so biased in his favor and so poorly reasoned that a federal appeals court—including two more Trump appointees—overturned her ruling in a judicial body slam. And a Florida jury raises the odds that someone in one panel will simply refuse to convict no matter how strong the case. (MAGA emotions are running high: Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon—the beneficiary of a last-minute Trump pardon—reacted to Barr’s comments with a warning: “We’re gonna shove this up your ass, okay?”)

Let’s just say that I will be pleasantly surprised if Trump one day faces anything worse than a few rounds of golf with an ankle monitor. But before the inevitable blizzard of motions and delays and general mayhem, I thought we should review the actual charges in the indictment itself.

First, here’s what the government claims Trump took to Florida:

The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.

Remember, no one on the Trump team is really disputing this. Some Republicans, in a desperate struggle with reality, are suggesting that Trump did nothing wrong, but Trump—who cannot stop talking—says he had the right to take anything he wanted, especially after rendering the documents harmless using the Kreskin Declassification Method.

But perhaps the materials were at least in a safe place:

Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.

Ah. But Trump has a Secret Service detail; could they help protect the documents?

[The Secret Service] was not responsible for the protection of TRUMP's boxes or their contents. TRUMP did not inform the Secret Service that he was storing boxes containing classified documents at The Mar-a-Lago Club.

Oh.

Meanwhile, Trump’s aides—including his alleged co-conspirator, Walt Nauta—were moving this stuff around. (Nauta was indicted on six counts, including obstruction and making false statements, and he has not yet entered a plea; he requested an extension on his arraignment, now set for June 27.) When some of the boxes toppled over, Nauta apparently took a picture of classified material:

On December 7, 2021, NAUTA found several of TRUMP’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the floor of the Storage Room, including a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2, “I opened the door and found this …” NAUTA also attached two photographs he took of the spill. Trump Employee 2 replied, “Oh no oh no,” and “I’m sorry potus had my phone.” One of the photographs NAUTA texted to Trump Employee 2 is depicted below with the visible classified information redacted.

The only thing missing here is “Yakety Sax” as a soundtrack.

But perhaps Trump misunderstood or didn’t realize what he had, and he wanted to cooperate with the government to get the papers back where they belong? Unfortunately, one of Trump’s own lawyers made sure to memorialize Trump’s comments on that issue—because lawyers, despite the Stringer Bell Rule, know when to protect themselves by taking notes:

Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?

Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here? Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?

In one of the more widely publicized moments described in the indictment, Trump was apparently recorded, during a meeting with a writer working on a book (who was accompanied by his publisher) and two of Trump’s staff, saying that he had a U.S. war plan against a foreign nation (read: Iran) in his hand. He is recorded as admitting both that the document is classified and that he no longer has the power to declassify it. But for those of us who have worked with classified information, Smith adds an important detail:

At the time of this exchange, the writer, the publisher, and TRUMP’s two staff members did not have security clearances or any need-to-know any classified information about a plan of attack on Country A.

If this happened, Trump released classified information to people who should not see classified information.

This incident is particularly galling because one of the president’s former attorneys, Robert Ray, has been arguing that although the charges in the indictment are serious, they don’t show evidence of damage to U.S. national security. This is a risible claim: No one, at this point, can say with any confidence whether American national security has or has not been damaged. We do not live in a movie where intelligence leaks produce clear and instant disasters.

But more to the point, even Ray admitted that the government doesn’t need to prove such harm; that’s not how any of this works. Trump faces 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information,” not some notional charge of “actually damaging American security in some obvious way.” As a former Defense Department employee, I can only imagine what would have happened had I spirited boxes of classified information to my home and then, after my arrest, said, “Well, sure, I took it, but there’s no evidence I’ve hurt national security. At least not yet.”

Donald Trump is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, it will likely be a long time before we find out if our justice system is capable of Dropcapholding a former president to account. But if these charges were leveled against any other American citizen, they would be, in Bill Barr’s words, toast.

Related:

Will Trump get a speedy trial? This indictment is different. Today’s News Twenty-two U.S. service members were injured in a helicopter accident in northeast Syria. The novelist Cormac McCarthy has died at the age of 89. New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell announced her resignation after 18 months in the role. Dispatches Up for Debate: Young people, parents, and educators reflect on the potential hazards of smartphones for children.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read Rita Harper / eyevine / Redux

Killer Mike’s Critique of Wokeness

By Spencer Kornhaber

Killer Mike is a man of contradictions. He has campaigned for Bernie Sanders and rapped about celebrating Ronald Reagan’s death; he also supports gun ownership and speaks warmly about Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Years ago, he renounced the Christian faith he was raised with, but his first solo album in a decade, Michael—whose cover is a childhood photo of Mike, adorned with devil horns and a halo—is laden with gospel choirs and biblical references. “You don’t have to pick a side with me,” the 48-year-old said over Zoom, amid tokes from a joint. “You gonna go to church with me. You gonna go to the Blue Flame with me.”

That flexibility has, at times, invited controversy. Last year, a HuffPost column referred to the rapper as “more politically dangerous than Kanye West” because he’d praised Kemp’s outreach to Black constituents while the incumbent governor supported policies that Democrats say make it harder for those constituents to vote. Though many of his songs envision violent revolution, he went viral for asking protesters not to burn buildings during the George Floyd protests, leading some commentators to accuse him of playing to too many sides.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Beatlemania through Paul McCartney’s camera You don’t have to cremate your cat. Culture Break Al Levine / NBC Universal / Getty

Read. “Fieldnotes,” a new poem by Zoe Hitzig.

“You could tell by the gait, the way the body moved, and / when, and how, they approached.”

Listen. The Hans and Franz episodes of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast remind us that a very stupid premise can make for the most hilarious movie.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

Summer is here (pretty much), and I have begun to dive into books. I’m now done with the Washington Post reporter Ben Terris’s new book, The Big Break. If you ask me what it’s about, I will wave my hands at the hot mess of American politics and say, “All this,” but it’s actually a series of wonderfully rendered portraits of the people, as the subtitle puts it, who are “the gamblers, party animals and true believers trying to win in Washington while America loses its mind.” It’s my favorite kind of book about politics: informative but fun.

If you want a taste of it, the Post ran an excerpt a few months ago about the rise and fall of Sean McElwee, a 30-ish political operative. It’s a compelling read, and in one of his final conversations with Terris, McElwee sums up everything that can make a young person’s head spin in Our Nation’s Capital:  “You know the craziest thing?” McElwee says. “Before all this, I really thought everyone liked me.”

I’m enjoying the book, and you might too—if only because it will make you glad you don’t work in Washington.

— Tom

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Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.