Jolien Trekels

Jolien Trekels's central argument, repeated across both appearances, is that the relationship between smartphones, social media and youth wellbeing is real but small, and that public debate has vastly overstated its size and simplicity. She is explicit about the numbers: "Er is een verband tussen smartphone gebruik en sociale media en welzijn... maar dat verband is heel klein en het verklaart ook vaak maar 1% van de welzijnsvariabelen" ¹. Even the strongest available evidence, meta-analyses and large cohort studies of over 100,000 youths, produces this same modest, negative but small effect ¹². For Trekels this is not a reason to dismiss the concern but a reason to resist the framing that technology is the singular cause of a youth mental health crisis. She is skeptical of viral graphs that overlay suicide-attempt trends with the launch of Facebook mobile, arguing that the actual statistical link between the two variables is small and that such visuals strip away the context needed to interpret them properly ¹².

A recurring theme is that there is no uniform effect: "Het one size fits all geldt niet voor sociale mediaeffecten. Dus er is geen uniform effect" ¹. She grounds this in what she calls the Swiss cheese model of social media effects, in which individual factors (emotional maturity, social sensitivity of the brain to likes and feedback), social factors (offline friendships and support) and platform factors (content, algorithms) act as layered buffers or holes that determine whether a given teenager is harmed, unaffected, or even helped by use ¹². Some adolescents have a more socially sensitive brain that makes them more reactive to online feedback, while strong offline friendships can buffer against negative effects ¹². This is why she resists treating social media as a monolithic "boeman": "Het is de technologie, dat is de boeman, neem die technologie weg en we hebben die problemen niet meer. Dus die wetenschappelijke stemmen spelen daarop in" ¹ — a narrative she says exists within science itself, not just in politics or media, and helps explain the speed with which smartphone bans have spread.

On policy, she is consistently critical of blunt instruments like fixed age limits. "Het is niet dat je kan zeggen: oké, je bent nu 14 jaar, nu is jouw ontwikkeling compleet en kunnen we jou gerust een smartphone of sociale media geven" ¹. Age cutoffs are politically attractive mainly because they are enforceable, not because they reflect developmental science; emotional maturity and personal circumstances matter more than calendar age ¹². She extends this skepticism to the assumption that withholding devices protects children: delaying access and hoping teens will later self-regulate simply doesn't work, because self-regulation is a skill that has to be built through supervised use. "Je kan alleen maar dat creëren door het hen ook te laten gebruiken," she says ¹², pointing to co-use and parental mediation as evidence-backed strategies rather than abstinence.

Her position on school phone bans is deliberately split rather than absolute. She supports banning phones during class time on solid cognitive grounds: "De smartphone die aanwezig is leidt af. Daar gaat al cognitieve capaciteit gewoon in" ², so merely having a phone nearby drains attention even if it isn't being used. But she draws a firm line at extending bans to breaks, arguing this goes too far because many teens, especially marginalized ones, rely on their phones during downtime as their main source of connection and security; such bans can also produce after-school overcompensation driven by fear of missing out ¹². This nuance, banning use where the evidence is strong while resisting the urge to extend the same logic reflexively, is one of her clearest concrete takeaways for schools and policymakers.

On the legal and corporate side, she acknowledges that internal documents at platforms show deliberate efforts to maximize engagement: "Er zijn wel interne documenten waarin dat ook wel wordt aangehaald van: we zoeken naar manieren om gebruikers langer in de app te houden" ¹. This lends plausibility to the idea that features like infinite scroll are addictive by design, and it underpins settlements involving companies like TikTok and Snapchat. But she is careful to separate design intent from proven harm, stressing that establishing a legal and scientific link between such features and actual mental health damage remains very difficult ¹².

Her closing emphasis, both times, is that media literacy cannot be an individual burden placed on teenagers alone. "Het gaat niet alleen over jongere mediawijs maken, maar het gaat ook over die platformen wel ter verantwoording houden" ². She calls for a collective approach combining regulation, platform accountability, parental modelling of healthy digital habits such as no phones at the dinner table, and peer-group interventions, since teens are highly attuned to what their friends do ¹². Looking ahead, she flags smart glasses and always-on wearables as the next stage of the same problem, likely to further blur the line between online and offline life and to intensify the distraction and notification stress that even a nearby smartphone already causes ¹². Throughout, her throughline is caution against both technological determinism and reflexive prohibition: "Het is niet dat als je die smartphone of die sociale media weghaalt dat dan opeens alle problemen zijn opgelost" ².