How can social media be a subset of the more widespread problem and the title of the article be correct? The article also does a poor job of framing the school apps as part of a wider problem with those technological behaviors. Looking back over the piece, I can’t find it. The argument appears much more to be “no, not social media, it’s school” without the framing.

The assumption when people say X is the problem is that it's the ROOT problem. So if you take it that way then everything is consistent including this author's title.

Yeah, that's basically it.

Not that we need analogies (yet) in this discussion, but if someone dies in a plane crash, their autopsy report will probably say something like "blunt-force trauma to the brain" as cause of death. That is absolutely correct, but it's also absolutely true that the person would still be dead even if the Flying Spaghetti Monster had intervened and prevented the blunt-force trauma to the person's brain.

Delete Facebook/Instagram from the world, and kids will still be anxious.