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Young people who are already struggling offline might experience greater negative effects of life online, writes Candice Odgers.
Last year, I received a phone call from an angry father. He had just read in the newspaper about my research suggesting that some adolescents might benefit from time spent online. Once, he raged, his children had been fully engaged with family and church and had talked non-stop at meal times. Now, as adolescents who were constantly connected to their phones, they had disappeared into their online lives.
He is not alone in his concern. Increasingly, people are claiming that smartphones have destroyed a generation, or that they might be making adolescents lonely and depressed.
After ten years of tracking adolescents' mental health and use of smartphones, I think that such views are misguided. Most young people aged 11-19 (ages vary between studies) are doing well in the digital age. In the United States, a record 84% of students graduated from high school in 2016. Pregnancy, violence, alcohol abuse and smoking have all declined in teenagers in the past 20 years. Similar trends have been observed in other countries1.
More and better data are crucial. But studies so far do not support fears that digital devices are driving the downfall of a generation. What online activities might be doing, however, is reflecting and even worsening existing vulnerabilities.
SMARTPHONE GENERATION
In the United States, ownership of mobile phones begins early. My colleagues and I surveyed 2,100 children attending public schools in North Carolina in 2015. In that sample, which is likely to be representative of US adolescents, 48% of 11-year-olds told us they owned a mobile phone. Among 14-year-olds, it was 85% (unpublished data; see go.nature. com/2eeffku).
Another survey, done in the same year, indicates that on average, US teens aged 13-18 engage with screen media (from watching television or online videos to reading online and using social media) for more than 6.5 hours each day; mobile devices account for almost half this time2. Ownership and usage is also high elsewhere: in a 2014 survey of 9- to 16-year-olds in 7 European countries, 46% owned smartphones3.
Alongside this increase in the use of digital technology, young people are taking more time to move between childhood and adulthood....