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…