The author has addressed that point before [1] in an article worth reading in its entirety:
> I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV. The lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that after two false alarms we should disconnect the alarm system. In that story, the wolf does eventually come.
That page also shows some graphs that to this day still surprise me, namely, the way in which rates of depression and psychological stress among teens explode around 2010. Unlike TV and DnD, this time we do have data, and it looks bad.
> I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV. The lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that after two false alarms we should disconnect the alarm system. In that story, the wolf does eventually come.
That page also shows some graphs that to this day still surprise me, namely, the way in which rates of depression and psychological stress among teens explode around 2010. Unlike TV and DnD, this time we do have data, and it looks bad.
[1] https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...