Teens face ‘worst mental health crisis in decades’
YOUNG people are ‘on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades’ because of smartphones, one of the leading researchers in the field has said.
Professor Jean Twenge has argued that while this generation might be drinking less, they are over-indulging when it comes to smartphones and technology.
Prof. Twenge’s latest research, published last year, focused on what she calls ‘iGen’: the age group who have not known life without the internet.
She said that those born between 1995 and 2012, members of iGen, have grown up inseparable from their smartphones, leading to a rise in youth depression.
‘Across the board, over and over there was this pattern, that around 2011-2012, anxiety, depressive symptoms, clinical depression and suicide rates all started to go up across many different surveys... It’s big and it’s sudden and it’s just such an unusual combination,’ said Prof. Twenge.
In her book, titled iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood – and What That Means for the Rest of Us, Prof. Twenge set out to find out what was behind the spike in depression.
During the time young people were reporting a decline in mental health, they were becoming increasingly attached to smartphones. Prof. Twenge said: ‘From 2011 to 2016, teens started spending much more time on social media and much less time with their friends face-to-face. Decades of research shows that being with other people face-to-face is good for mental health.’
While that trend doesn’t prove that social media or smartphones cause anxiety, she said it ‘points in that direction.’
‘On average, kids use their smartphone seven to eight hours a day. That heavy use means they are sleeping less and that’s a risk factor for developing anxiety. It also means that they are having less real-life social interaction,’ she said.