Teens doing better

Are smart phones actually not the devil’s work?

[O]ver the last half-decade or so, the idea that there’s been a spiraling mental health crisis among teens has become so widely accepted we’ve moved on from freaking out about the pattern to debating its causes. One popular hypothesis, advanced by Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, is that the rise of smartphones has done most of the damage. Which makes it notable that during this same period, the standard measures tracked by the C.D.C. and the Department of Health and Human Services — in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health — have been getting better. Discussing the survey’s results with my newsroom colleague Azeen Ghorayshi, Twenge herself called the improvements “very striking.” This isn’t just because of a brief pandemic rebound, either: According to Twenge, one of the great Cassandras of teen mental health in America, the current trajectory is now best described as a “longstanding trend in improvement.”

🔗 Teen Mental Health Isn’t in Crisis. It Is Actually Improving.