Childhood depression on the rise, but are smartphones really the cause? Or is it schools teaching them to fear?

So reports of a rise in childhood depression have lead some of the world's leading child psychologists into blaming social media, such as Facebook, and material things such as smartphones.  The telegraph quotes a child psychologist with 25 years of experience named Julie Lynn Evans:

“In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teen aged girls taking overdoses, the things that don’t get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.... “f I try to refer people on, everyone else is choc-a-bloc too. We are all saying the same thing. There has been an explosion in numbers in mental health problems amongst youngsters. Something is clearly happening,” she says, “because I am seeing the evidence in the numbers of depressive, anorexic, cutting children who come to see me. And it always has something to do with the computer, the Internet and the smartphone.”

She's basically saying that kids are exposed to too much stuff, to too much information. They get too much access to wisdom too fast, and making more and more of them increasingly depressed.  I understand that kids today have fast access to knowledge we had to go out of our way to find at a library or bookstore when we were kids.

However, rather than jump to conclusions, lets consider some other things that are going on in the world today that might cause kids to become increasingly depressed.

1. Kids being taught that God, the harbinger of hope and faith, does not exist
2. Kids being taught that man made global warming is destroying the planet
3. Kids learning hearing doomsday predictions in schools
4. High rate of divorce that has kids separated from their families and friends
5. High rate of single parent households 
6. High rate of kids growing up in poverty
7. Kids being taught that they are bad if they respect traditional marriage
8. Kids being taught to be afraid of eating foods they love based on theories
9. Kids, many of whom are overweight, taught that being overweight is bad
10. Government programs taking away the incentive to work, thus leading to families trapped in poverty
11. Kids not being able to eat the feel good foods they want to eat while in school
12. Fear that Muslims will try to kill them
13. Not being able to speak the truth about Muslims
14. Christian children not being able to pray in school, or being ridiculed for talking about their beliefs
15. Conservative children being mocked and ridiculed for talking about their beliefs
16. Children hearing their parents called Nazis, homophobes, idiots, gramma haters, due to their beliefs
17. Christians being persecuted all over the world, and no one doing anything about it
18. The country being "fundamentally transformed" from capitalism to socialism. 
19. A rise in laws that tell people what they can and cannot do; laws that take away liberties
20. Kids not being told the truth about the founding of this country, and being ridiculed when they do
21. Kids being told they are idiots for believing in a "fictional, mythological Bible."
22. An endless parade of hate, fear, and vitriol being taught in schools.
23. Kids being told they cannot grow up to be better than their parents. 
24. Parents having to go bankrupt because of the poor economy
25. Parents losing their jobs because of the poor economy
26. Parents being forced to work two or three part time jobs because of Obamacare
27. Fear that they will have less freedom than their parents
28. Fear of terrorism
29. Fear that they will be forced to go to war
30. Fear of a Muslim Caliph
31. Fear of Russia taking over Europe
32. Fear of WWIII

I mean, I could go on.  What do you think.  Is too much access to wisdom making kids depressed? Or is it all the exposure to hate, fear and vitriol? 

Theories are just theories, part 3

So you have this theory that the NFL causes brain swelling that can only be diagnosed on autopsy. You have a theory that the NFL causes an increase in suicides. None of this is proven, but you have the NFL accepting the premise and defending itself.

And you have guys like Shannon Sharpe blaming the NFL for intentionally allowing the game to go on while knowing all along that it caused brain damage.

So, based on one theory, all the people who run the NFL are evil and wicked and trying to make a buck at the expense of all the people playing the game.

So then the media buys into the theory. Because that's what the media does: every time a new theory comes out they consider it as fact. Instead of just reporting on it and letting the people decide what is true or not, they treat it as a fact.

So then you have people like Chris Borland reading what the media says. Then Borland gets scared, and he quits the NFL based on his fears. And of course there are other players in the NFL equally scared but don't want to risk giving up all that money.

Surely we should respect theories. Surely we should be careful. But we should not panic and change the game of football based on a couple theories.

I think people tend to over react to theories, and it is this that has lead to the rise in mental disorders in this nation.  Yet, in the meantime, people who believe every new theory postulated think the cause is smart phones.