Are screens harming teens? What scientists can do to find answers Researchers and technology companies must work to improve it
The fierce debate about smartphones and adolescent mental health rests on conflicting science
The Handbook of Children and Screens, published earlier this year, handily summarizes studies on the impacts of digital media on young people’s development. The book took nearly 400 specialists and 87 chapters to cover the thousands of studies done. And yet, as we report in a News Feature, the debate among researchers about whether smartphones and social media are a major cause of mental ill-health in adolescents seems unlikely to end soon. That means there’s still a lot for scientists and technology firms to do.
Smartphones are changing the lives of young people worldwide. Many adolescents, parents, carers, teachers and policymakers are worried about what effects such devices might have. Netflix’s hit television show Adolescence has amplified worries about teenagers finding harmful content online. It’s important that scientists are transparent about the uncertainties in the current evidence and that they prioritize research that will help everyone to work out what to do.
The view that smartphones and social media are behind a worrying rise in adolescent mental-health conditions has been amplified in part by The Anxious Generation, a bestselling book published last year by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He argues that adolescents adopting smartphones and social media, and abandoning childhoods filled with real-life socializing and play, is the single biggest reason for the “tidal wave of adolescent mental illness that began in the early 2010s”. But many researchers question this thesis.
Some research — and common experience — suggests that phones can be distracting, and that apps can feel addictive, by encouraging people to mindlessly scroll through social-media content, for instance. Technology companies, often with business models that depend on eyeballs on screens, have an incentive to keep people hooked.
Researchers agree that the origins of mental-health conditions — which often become apparent during adolescence — are complex and shaped by genes, family, friendships and other personal experiences. Technology probably has an effect, but the extent of that influence, and whether it helps, harms, does both or neither, probably depends on an individual’s background, the social-media platforms they use and the content they view. And young people’s response to social media varies from one person to the next, studies show. A 2023 review, for example, highlighted evidence that viewing self-harm content online was linked to harmful behaviour in several studies1. But in some cases, say mental-health professionals, troubled young people considering self-harm have found crucial support and help online.
A common approach to studying technology and teenage mental health is with population studies. According to an analysis of 25 reviews published between 2019 and 2021, most of these found weak or inconsistent links between social-media use and adolescent mental health, although a few interpreted such associations as substantial and deleterious2.
One reason for these differing conclusions could be that many studies are methodologically weak. They often rely on measures of people’s self-reported screen time, but such data are notoriously unreliable3. They also fail to distinguish between the variety of things adolescents do on screens, from viewing TikTok to doing schoolwork.
There are ways to tease apart at least some of this tangle, but it needs the technology companies to play ball. Scientists agree they need better, fine-grained data on what young people are doing and seeing on their phones. Researchers are frustrated that firms who have these data are often reluctant to share them. This is admittedly a legally and ethically fraught area: young people can’t give research consent if they are underage, and their privacy and security must be protected. It should nevertheless be possible for companies and researchers to work out ways to access and analyse such data, with appropriate safeguards in place.
For their part, researchers should focus on well-designed, rigorous studies. They could engage in an approach used in other fields called adversarial collaboration, in which researchers with clashing views work together on shared studies that could resolve their dispute. Involving young people, teachers, parents and carers in designing the research would improve its validity and public reception. Too often, a study that finds little evidence of negative impacts is poorly received, because it seems contradictory to what people are experiencing on the ground.
Finding ways to help young people navigate technology does not have to wait until its consequences are nailed down. Schools that ban phones — as many are now doing — provide a natural experiment to study whether this restriction boosts grades and well-being. A study of 30 secondary schools in England, published in February, did not find evidence that restrictive phone policies are linked with reduced overall phone use or improved mental health4 — suggesting that phone bans might not be a panacea.
Screens are now so deeply embedded in young people’s lives — for everything from schoolwork to video calls with family — that researchers cannot randomly assign adolescents to entirely screen-free lives. But scientists could test small-scale practical measures. For instance, they could ask some randomly selected families, but not others, to keep their teenager’s phone out of their bedroom at night, suggests Amy Orben, who studies digital mental health at the University of Cambridge, UK. Technology companies should work with external researchers to test and develop platforms that support young people online — such as social-media sites that are easy, rather than nearly impossible, to quit5.
The goal must be to nurture young people who are flourishing, resilient, empowered to make informed decisions about the healthy use of technology and able to balance screen time with sleep, exercise and other real-world delights. Then they can then teach adults how to find that balance, too.
Nature 640, 7-8 (2025)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00991-7
This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:furtherReadingSection
