An Important New Study on Phones and Kids

One of the topics I’ve returned to repeatedly in my work is the intersection of smartphones and children (see, for example, my two New Yorker essays on the topic, or my 2023 presentation that surveys the history of the relevant research literature).

Given this interest, I was, of course, pleased to see an important new study on the topic making the rounds recently: “A Consensus Statement on Potential Negative Impacts of Smartphone and Social Media Use on Adolescent Mental Health.” 

To better understand how experts truly think about these issues, the study’s lead authors, Jay Van Bavel and Valerio Capraro, convened a group of 120 researchers from 11 disciplines and had them evaluate a total of 26 claims about children and phones. As Van Bavel explained in a recent appearance on Derek Thompson’s podcast, their goal was to move past the ‘non-representative shouting about these topics that happens online to try instead to arrive at some consensus views.’

The panel of experts was able to identify a series of statements that essentially all of them (more than 90%) agreed were more or less true. These included: 

• Adolescent mental health has declined in several Western countries over the past 20 years (note: contrarians had been claiming that this trend was illusory and based on reporting effects).
• Smartphone and social media use correlate with attention problems and behavioral addiction.
• Among girls, social media use may be associated with body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, exposure to mental disorders, and risk of sexual harassment.

These consensus statements are damaging for those who still maintain the belief, popular at the end of the last decade, that data on these issues is mixed at best, and that it’s just as likely that phones cause no serious issues for kids. The current consensus is clear: these devices are addictive and distracting, and for young girls, in particular, can increase the likelihood of several mental health harms. And all of this is happening against a backdrop of declining adolescent mental health.

The panel was less confident about policy solutions to these issues. They failed to reach a consensus, for example, on the claim that age limits on social media would improve mental health. But a closer look reveals that a majority of experts believe this is “probably true,” and that only a tiny fraction believe there is “contradictory evidence” against this claim. The hesitancy here is simply a reflection of the reality that such interventions haven’t yet been tried, so we don’t have data confirming they’ll work.

Here are my main takeaways from this paper…

First, rigorous social psychology studies are tricky. In addition to the numerous confounding factors associated with them, the experiments are particularly difficult to design. As a result, we don’t have the same sort of lock-step consensus on our concerns about this technology that we might be able to generate for, say, the claim that human activity is warming the globe. 

But, it’s also now clear that this field is no longer actually divided on the question of whether, generally speaking, smartphones and social media are bad for kids. In this new study, almost every major claim about this idea generated at least majority support, with many being accepted by over 90% of the experts surveyed. There were close to no major claims for which more than a very small percentage of experts felt that there was contradictory evidence.

In social psychology, this might be as clear a conclusion as we’re likely to achieve. Combine these results with the strong self-reports from children and parents decrying these technologies and their negative impacts, and I think there’s no longer an excuse not to act.

There’s been a sort of pseudo-intellectual thrill in saying things like, “Well, it’s complicated…” when you encounter strong claims about smartphones like those made in Jon Haidt’s immensely popular book, The Anxious Generation. But such a statement is tautological. Of course, it’s complicated; we’re talking about technology-induced social trends; we’re never going to get to 100% certainty, and there will always be some contradictory reports. 

What matters now is the action that we think makes the most sense given what we know. This new paper is the final push we need to accept that the precautionary principle should clearly apply. Little is lost by preventing a 14-year-old from accessing TikTok or Snapchat, or telling a 10-year-old they cannot have unrestricted access to the internet through their own smartphone, but so much will almost certainly be gained. 

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If you want to hear a longer discussion about this study, listen to the most recent episode of my podcast, or for the video version, watch here.

On an unrelated note: I want to highlight an interesting new service: DoneDaily. It offers online coaching for professional productivity, based loosely on my philosophy of multi-scale planning. I’ve known these guys for a long time (the company’s founder used to offer health advice on my blog), and I think they’ve done a great job. Worth checking out…