The Word “Mental” in Project 2025. (xiv + xv + xvi)
Guys, we’re getting to the end of this project! We’ve made it to the last three instances (14, 15, and 16) of the word “mental” in Project 2025. (I still need to return to the third instance; that will follow soon.) This will also be a short post because there’s not much to analyze in these last three instances.
The 14th instance of the word “mental” in Project 2025 is on page 879, in the closing section about the FTC:
Conservative approaches to antitrust and consumer protection continue to trust markets, not government, to give people what they want and provide the prosperity and material resources Americans need for flourishing, productive, and meaningful lives. At the same time, conservatives cannot be blind to certain developments in the American economy that appear to make government–private sector collusion more likely, threaten vital democratic institutions, such as free speech, and threaten the happiness and mental well-being of many Americans, particularly children. Many, but not all, conservatives believe that these developments may warrant the FTC’s making a careful recalibration of certain aspects of antitrust and consumer protection law and enforcement.
The 15th instance is a footnote at the end of the FTC chapter:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) is the authoritative publication of the American Psychiatric Association.
(Comment: Yes, the DSM-5-TR is an authoritative publication, though it's not without problems.)
The 16th instance is also a footnote and contains a reference:
Allcott, supra note 19; see also Jean M. Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Jimmy Lozano, and Kevin M. Cummins, “Specification Curve Analysis Shows that Social Media Use Is Linked to Poor Mental Health, Especially Among Girls,” Acta Psychologica, Vol. 224 (2022), p.103512, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103512 (accessed March 23, 2023).
I don't have anything more to add to what I noted earlier:
... there’s ambivalence in this chapter about the role of the FTC. Children’s mental health is used chiefly as a potential subject of regulation. Who is better poised to regulate social media and its effects on children? The government? Or parents? Surprisingly, this seems open to debate in this section.
The reference to the Acta Psychologica journal article (16th instance) is also interesting. We've discussed elsewhere in this series how the authors of Project 2025 have often ignored published data because it does not support their policy platform. We've also observed that this chapter on the FTC is notably less inflammatory than other chapters. Of all the articles they could have referenced that draws associations between social media and adverse mental health, they chose that one? (And only one?) Yours truly wasn't put on retainer to find evidence to support that argument and found more than one robust and relevant resource to do so.
The Presidential inauguration is happening in less than one month. Thanks for reading along with me. We together can watch how the new administration implements policies from Project 2025 and uses "mental health" as the reason why. We will know if they are using data and evidence, or just making things up because they can. If you have found this series useful, please share with others what you've learned.