Are Smartphones Hurting Our Kids?

On this week's episode of Fast Forward, we speak to author Dr. Jean Twenge, who recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic called Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? She did not write the headline, but it predictably set the internet ablaze. One thing everyone agrees on, however, is that technology is affecting this generation in ways that we really didn't anticipate. We spoke in PC Labs here in New York City.

Your new book—iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us—coins yet another generation: the iGen generation. I imagine the Simon and Schuster lawyers went back and forth with Apple a little bit on this, perhaps? Apple's very protective of that little "i."

Well, you can't copyright a little "i." At least, that's what I would guess.

Not yet. Who is this iGen generation? I still call anybody younger than me "millennial," but there's another generation that snuck in there.

That's right. Millennials are born roughly 1980 to around 1994. This new generation, iGen, is born about 1995 to 2012. At first, we thought millennials would last a little bit longer, but then some trends showing up in the data made me think that we have a new generation born around the mid-90s.

The reason it's a new generation is because they behave a little differently than the generation before them, and that's how you can put the marker down. What are some of those differences between those two generations?

Dr. Jean Twenge: Fast Forward

iGen's the first generation to grow up with the smartphone for their whole adolescence, and that's really had ripple effects across their behavior, their attitudes, their mental health. As one example, obviously, they spend a lot more time online and texting, and on social media than teens did 10 years before when it was the millennials who were the teens.

What makes the smartphone in particular any different than television or video games, or even radio back in the day? All these technologies that were going to ruin our youth. What makes the phone different?

Well, a couple of things. The first thing is a smartphone is with you all the time, especially teens. You see them now and it's always there and it can always be with you. It's small and in reach, so I think that's one thing that makes it different. The other thing is, I'm often asked about this. "Ah, everything is going to be ruined." Well, it's not quite that much. It's more nuanced than that. People said the same thing about TV. They were sort of right about TV. Some people have concluded, you look at community groups and so on and some of those breakdowns, that's probably because of TV. In some ways, they were right.

Behavior patterns change. I think the new technology's definitely changed behavior patterns. The thing about the phone is that where you use the technology was completely revolutionized. The television was something you participated in at home during certain hours. There was primetime TV. The phone breaks down all those barriers, both from a time perspective and a location perspective.

So that probably has something to do with why teens and adults use it so much. Teens are using their phones six to eight hours a day on average. Adults are probably not that far behind them, a lot of us. You're right; you're not doing it just at home. It's everywhere and it's all the time, including at night. That was another thing I found out in talking to teens, is how many of them slept with their phones or at least had their phones in arm's reach, sometimes with it on all night.

My son is 23 years old. He's gainfully employed, thank God. Talk to me about the day in the life of an iGen teenager.

First, we can start with that time, that six to eight hours of time on the phone online and social media. That's just in leisure time, so that means there's not a whole lot of time left for a lot of other things that teens used to do. Getting together with your friends or going to parties, going to a mall with your friends, iGen teens do that a lot less than teens did just five or 10 years ago. This kind of fell off a cliff in terms of the number of times they'd go out without their parents and get together. That in-person social interaction is falling by the wayside more and more as the communication moves to the phone. That's one of the biggest changes. A lot of other things about how teens spend their time hasn't changed a whole lot. Many people ask me, "Oh, maybe they're not getting together with their friends because they're doing more hours of homework." They're doing actually fewer hours of homework than teens who were in the '80s and the '90s, and it really hasn't changed a whole lot in the last five to 10 years.

Same thing with extracurriculars. There's a perception that there's a lot more time spent on that. That's also stayed about the same.

It's very interesting because in your research, you find all these different correlations saying that the iGen generation, they literally just don't go out of the house as much as previous generations. They're not even getting their driver's licenses as early as older generations because there's a lack of independence that's manifesting itself.

This is part of a trend that was accelerated by smartphones, but started with millennials and has really deeper cultural roots. This is the trend toward teens growing up more slowly, taking on both the pleasures and the responsibilities of adulthood later than they used to. Things like driving; a lot of them are not getting their driver's license, even by the end of senior year of high school. Going out on dates, going out without their parents, having a paid job, drinking alcohol, having sex during high school. iGen teens do those things less than teens used to.

It was very interesting reading your article. I'll quote from it here: it says, "The average teen now has sex for the first time in the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen X-er." It seems counterintuitive. We always thought that age was getting younger and younger, and now the trend is going back the other way.

That's right. It did, from Boomers to Gen X-ers. I'm a Gen X-er. We kind of started adolescence a little earlier than the Boomers did, and then we extended it as long as we possibly could. With this generation, with iGen, they're kind of extending childhood into adolescence. That comes up in ways like having sex and drinking alcohol where many people, especially parents, are like, "Isn't that a good thing?" I would say, "Of course, yes. That's a wonderful thing." It's a trade-off because with not going out of the house as much, not driving, not having a job, they're also not having as many experiences with independence. Then when they get to college or get a job, then sometimes they don't know exactly what to do because they just haven't had as much experience making decisions on their own.

Let's assume that all these patterns are in place. How do you know this is a causal relationship with phones and technology and not just a factor of changing cultural norms?

We can walk through a little bit of how I came to that conclusion. First, if you look at teens in these big national surveys, those who spend more time on screens, it's correlated with them being less happy, more depressed, and even having more risk factors for suicide. But, that's correlation, not causation. You always have to think, "Well maybe it's the teens who are unhappy and depressed who then use social media more," for example. There are three studies that have looked at that really carefully that more or less ruled out that explanation. They followed people over time, and found the more people were using social media the number of hours, then that meant later they were less happy. If they were less happy, that didn't mean they used social media more. I suggest that causation does go more from social media to unhappiness. There was another study that randomly assigned people to give up Facebook for a week or not, and then looked at the end how they felt. Those who gave up Facebook ended the week happier, less lonely, and less depressed. That was a true experiment.

After just one week of separation?

After one week. That's what that study found, and that was something that some folks did in Denmark. It was an interesting way to really nail down. Flip of a coin, you ended up in this group so we know it's not outside factors. We know it's not that reverse causation.

What do you think it is about social media? I think we could maybe separate the phone experience itself from social media, but they're pretty intermingled.

They're pretty intermingled.

What is it about the experience that is inherently depressing? Is it fear of missing out? Is it the constant distraction? Is it 24/7 peer-group interactions?

You know, I think a lot of it is if it's used in moderation, an hour a day, two hours a day, there actually aren't any negative effects on mental health. It's at two hours a day, three, four, five and beyond when you see the effects showing up. I think it suggests that it's only partially the phone and social media per se; it's what it's crowding out when you're spending that much time on it. That if you're spending so much time on that, maybe you're not exercising. Maybe you're not seeing your friends in person as much. Those two things, exercising, spending time with friends in person, study after study shows those are linked to better mental health. It's only partially some of the pressures around the phone and waiting for likes and that type of thing. It's also what you're not doing because you're on the phone.

Until I read your article, I really hadn't been paying attention to the suicide rate among children of these ages. You're right, that it was three times as many 12- to 14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007. It's an even wider gap for girls than it is for boys. Can you talk a little bit about why that is?

In one study, we were able to look at the time teens spent on electronic devices, which includes phones, and then what percentage of them had a suicide risk factor. Being sad or hopeless for two weeks, thinking about suicide, making a suicide plan, even attempting suicide. There was a pretty big difference between those who spent, say, an hour a day on electronic devices and those who spent five hours or more in terms of how many had a suicide risk factor. Those who spent a lot more time had much more risk.

Girls spend more time on social media. They spend about an equal amount of time on phones, but social media seems to have its own unique challenges with depression and with cyberbullying, and some of the other pressures there that were always there for girls and now become really acute when they can be bullied all the time. When they're on vacation, at night, even away from school. That might be one of the reasons why the suicide rate for girls has gone up at an even steeper pace than it has for boys.

It does seem like anecdotally, the worst cases of cyberbullying over the last couple of years, especially among young girls, happens among girls and part of it is because the bullying continues long after school. It can occur on the weekend. It's very public in a way that bullying that used to be the size of the crowd in the room, and when it's on social media, it's everybody in high school or everybody in middle school that can see. It just has this amplification effect that seems like it could be pretty powerful.

It's truly devastating what's happened to some of these girls. Girls have always bullied each other that way: more verbally, more socially than boys. There is a bigger link between cyberbullying and suicide risk factors than regular bullying. Both of them are obviously very bad and increase the risk like two or three times, but the risk is heightened with cyberbullying.

You also write a little bit about sleep and the effect of technology on sleep. I'm the kind of person who tends to fall asleep on the couch watching TV. I realize that's probably not the healthiest way to do it.

No, it's not.

It's even worse for these kids who have their phones on their bed stands.

Sure enough, since 2010, the percentage of teens who get seven or more hours of sleep at night has gone down. Teens are getting less sleep. Those who spend more time on screens get less sleep. There are all kinds of physiological things involved too with TV and with phones. It's the blue light. Then your body doesn't produce enough melatonin to get you to calm down, realize it's night time, to go to sleep. Plus, then there's all the emotional stimulation of being on the phone that isn't quite as much there for TV. Teens tell me, and young adults do too, that their phone's the last thing that they see before they go to sleep at night and the first thing they see in the morning. The first thing they see in the morning, that's okay, but doing that right before bed is just not a recipe for healthy sleep.

• Read: How to Stop Gadget Blue Light From Disturbing Your Sleep

It sounds like most of what we've talked about today could also be true of adults with technology as well. Are the consequences of technology the same for adults as it is for children, or what would make it different?

The data that I draw from is because it's a captive audience. We have a lot more data on teens and young adults. Some of those studies I describe about social media and unhappiness have been done on adults, and they find the same effects. I would suspect a lot of these trends are also showing up among adults, but I think with teens, it's especially worrisome because that's a really crucial time for emotional development, for socialization, and learning social skills. I think it's a time that is just so crucial for who you are and learning who you are if you're hanging out with your friends, and teens are doing that a lot less. They're communicating through the phone. Some people say, "Well that's fine because then they're still communicating with their friends the way kids have always done," but that assumes that that electronic communication is the same as face-to-face communication, that it's the same for mental health, that it's the same for developing social skills. It's pretty clear it's not the same. It's just not.

What do you think of the counterargument that these phones and these technologies are augmenting our intelligence, increasing the size of our social networks, providing us a support structure that may not have been there before, and allows people to connect on a better level? There's got to be some upside to these new technologies as well, isn't there?

Oh, absolutely. I don't even see that necessarily as a counterargument. I think that points toward moderation, as I was mentioning, because yes, smartphones are awesome. They can help us figure out where to go. They can give us information at our fingertips. If you're, say, someone who want to reach out to people to have a unique interest that maybe you have and that other people around you don't, you can do that. There's some wonderful things that you can do, but it shouldn't be seen as a replacement for the rest of your social life. You shouldn't see, as sometimes happens, two teens sitting next to each other not talking to each other but texting each other when they're sitting right next to each other.

I've seem some marriages that work that way, too. What are parents supposed to do when they see their teens, they're sitting at the table and they see this happening? The kitchen table's almost this ideal environment in which you have the most control over your children, but at a lot of homes, that meal doesn't happen. Then there's the rest of the day where you have very little control over what your kids are doing. What are parents supposed to do?

Well, if you have kids who are, say, elementary school, early middle school and they don't have a phone yet, put off getting them a phone for as long as you can. Until they're more emotionally ready to handle it. Some of the effects on mental health show up much more among younger teens than older ones. Then once they have that smartphone, there are apps that you can put on it to limit the amount of time your teen spends on it. You can choose whatever you think is right. It might be different from one kid to another, but the average, given the effects for mental health, I'd put it maybe at 90 minutes.

90 minutes a day of phone access.

90 minutes a day.

That pretty much eliminates the phone as a library resource.

Well, then you can use a desktop. You need to do your homework? Use the desktop. Or a laptop.

You think it's really the phone itself, not necessarily the connectivity. It's not the internet connection; it's the form factor and portability.

Well, it's hard to tell. With the data that I've been analyzing, it seems to be more just the total amount of time spent on screens. That seems to be the biggest risk factor. However, that's the total amount of time spent on screens during leisure time. That would mean if there's homework and so on, and that homework is actually being done rather than watching YouTube, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about for entertainment during leisure time, not necessarily for researching a project.

Is there a responsibility on the part of technology vendors and social media networks to sort of factor in these issues? Facebook's job is to get you to spend more time on Facebook and interact more. Instagram's job is to increase the amount of time you spend on the surface. These are businesses that are designed to be as addictive as possible. What are their responsibility in servicing this younger generation?

I'm glad you brought that up because I believe that's one thing that parents and teens need to keep in mind, that these are businesses, that they have an interest in people spending six to eight hours. That sounds good to them, but-

They brag about it in their quarterly reports.

Right. I understand why. It's business; that's what makes the money. People have asked me this, "Should we have regulations?" I always say, "That's kind of above my pay grade." I think that's something we need to have a conversation about and try to figure out. I can say that I think for some of these platforms, they'd have happier customers if they were, yes, absolutely using their platform but just maybe not for so many hours a day.

• Read: 11 Reasons to Stop Looking at Your Phone

We're about to enter into a world where not only do we have screens available to us 24/7, but we're going to have virtual worlds available to us. There's been a lot of science-fiction written about this, about "will people get lost in these virtual worlds?" What's your hunch, given the research that you've done? How are we going to handle virtual reality and augmented reality?

You know, I think it might just depend on how the technology evolves. The way it is now where you're kind of alone in this own world that may be just as isolating or more than being on the phone. If it ends up being something where there's touch and you can interact with other people. It's funny because on the one hand, you can say, "How cool would that be to give your friend who's 2,000 miles away a hug?" That sounds great, but then if we're living our lives completely online, then it crosses the line into the science fiction where then people start to say, "Well that sounds really scary, to just be living virtually." That that may not be the best idea. It'll be interesting to see what comes next.

I think there's an interesting context, too, that your book deals with very squarely, which is that this is a new generation that has never not known this technology. We tend to think of these technologies as being additive to our human experience and our lives, sometimes healthily, sometimes unhealthily, but they're additive. At a certain age, this could be replacing other interactions for kids at a certain age, and that may be where the psychological issues start to creep in.

I think it already is replacing those other interactions for iGen. What's interesting though is when I talk to iGen teens, and one in-depth survey and then the interviews that I did to augment the big national surveys, I asked them in this one question: "Would you rather interact with someone through social media and texting, or would you rather see them face to face?" Almost all of them said they'd rather see somebody face to face. That's the thing: you can change the technology, you can even change the amount of time that people spend on it, especially iGen, but you can't change basic human evolution that we evolved to interact face to face, and that that is still the most emotionally fulfilling and it's the best for mental health.

And possibly necessary for a healthy and happy life.

Yes, I think that's clear.

Let me get to my closing questions. What technological trend concerns you the most? Is there anything that keeps you up at night other than your iPhone?

Well, I try not to use the iPhone at night and keep it out of the room. I think the trend toward just having that phone in your hand all the time. If I had to pinpoint one thing, it's not just that teens are using that phone to replace the in-person interaction. It's that when they do get together in person, they're still on their phones, so that it's that "everything is on the phone" and they're just not present for their own lives, and not looking each other in the eye. One of the teens I interviewed, a 13-year-old told me that in her middle school, she had a teacher who said, "Put your phone in the box. We're learning to look each other in the eye." That that had to be taught was interesting.

It's a whole new world. Is there a service, an app, or a device that you use every day that you just feel has transformed your life that you're incredible impressed by?

Probably Apple Maps. I just went on a long road trip. Would've been tough without it.

Okay, so you're not a post-augmented reality but still live in the real world.

You know, I think all these things, smartphones and the apps, they're tools. We need to use them instead of them using us.

How can people follow what you're doing?

I'm on Twitter, @Jean_Twenge. Also my website, which will be updated any day now, jeantwenge.com. Have lots of stuff about the books and all the other writing I do.

Very good. Thanks so much for coming by the lab today and talking to me.

Thank you.

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