Study suggests less smartphone time = happier kids

Link between teens’ use, drop in life satisfaction not considered coincidence

Aprecipitous drop in the happiness, self-esteem and life satisfaction of American teens came as their ownership of smartphones rocketed from zero to 73 percent and they devoted an increasing share of their time online.

Coincidence? New research suggests it is not.

In a study published last week in the journal Emotion, psychologists from San Diego State University and the University of Georgia used data on mood and media culled from roughly 1.1 million U.S. teens to figure out why a decadeslong rise in happiness and satisfaction among U.S. teens suddenly shifted course in 2012 and declined sharply over the next four years.

Was this sudden reversal a response to an economy that tanked in 2007 and stayed bad well into 2012? Or did it have its roots in a very different watershed event: the 2007 introduction of the smartphone, which put the entire online world at a user’s fingertips?

Smartphones were a technological innovation embraced like no other: By 2012, half of Americans (and roughly 37 percent of teens) owned one. By 2016, 77 percent of all Americans carried an iPhone or something like it, including at least 73 percent of teens.

Evidence of their affect on teens has been all over the map. Some studies show that the greater the time spent engaged in online content and social media, the unhappier the child. Others have found evidence that participation in social media plays a positive role in teens’ self-images.

That’s led some to suggest