Are smartphones making teenagers depressed?
The debate over the psychological maladies of the digital generation picks up steam throughout the West.
Only two months ago, I wrote about concerns over a “youth crisis” and the new government’s plans for education reform and other measures affecting children and young people. The volume of discussion of a mental health crisis continues to grow both in Denmark and abroad. As a theme in last year’s parliamentary election campaign, it was focused on a shortage of staffing and long waiting lists for psychiatric services and a need for emergency funding.
Two years ago, Parliament launched a program giving young people from 18 to 24 the right to free psychotherapeutic treatment (DK) for stress, anxiety, and depression. But it hasn’t been carried out according to plan or hasn’t been given enough resources to meet the growing demand for services. There are renewed calls for more funding and new efforts underway to alleviate the problem. Here are some headlines:
America leads in tech and malaise
There are also new studies and debates about the causes of this “epidemic.” Several prominent American researchers and writers have weighed in. Jonathan Haidt, who has been studying teenage depression and anxiety, particularly among girls, has released a new metastudy bolstering his argument that the spread of smartphone and social media use since 2010 is the main culprit.
The historian Niall Ferguson, on the other hand, says the situation is more complex than that because the American population as a whole is undergoing a mental health crisis, with a sharp rise in “deaths of despair” such as opioid overdoses and suicide. Matt Yglesias looks at a 2021 study showing that mental health problems are worse among young people with leftist political views than among conservatives; even leftist boys had significantly higher rates than conservatives of both sexes. Yglesias puts some blame on “adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment.”
No immunity for the unwoke
Responding to these hypotheses, Richard Hanania surveyed international studies to ascertain whether this wave of unhappiness is owing more to smartphones or to progressive ideology. He concludes that, since similar trends are found in other countries besides the wokeness-addled US, smartphones and social media are more likely behind them. Denmark is an example.
In December, VIVE, the Danish Center for Social Science Research under the Ministry of the Interior and Health, issued a report on welfare and well-being in children and young people (DK). It found no clear increase in unhappiness since 2009 in children under 12. But it did show rising mental health issues in 15-19 year-olds, especially girls.
The social isolation during the pandemic exacerbated trends toward loneliness, low life satisfaction, and self-reports of poor physical and mental health, including psychosomatic symptoms, but at least there was no rise in suicidal behavior. Boys’ social activities were more limited than girls’, apparently because they were busy playing computer games. The study doesn’t consider the causes of this syndrome but notes lower results for children from disadvantaged homes and minority ethnic groups.
Blame the Kardashians
Sociologist Emilia van Hauen (DK), writing in Jyllands-Posten, argued that the trends shown in the American studies by Haidt and others are also occurring in Denmark. The latest survey from the Danish Center for Youth Research, for example, shows 44 percent of young people reporting some degree of dissatisfaction.
She also cites a July 2022 study by the Danish Children’s Rights National Association showing that, from fourth grade to eighth grade, the share of girls who are “happy with who they are” fell from 73 to 49 percent. She gives part of the blame to TikTok, used daily by 41 percent of girls aged 9 to 14 (despite an age requirement of 13), which heightens their anxiety about their appearance and social comparison.
Drag them AFK
Danish public agencies and organizations are also studying the effects of young people’s digital habits. The Danish Health Authority (DK) found that a quarter of 15-year-old girls are on social media for at least four hours a day, and a third of 13-year-old boys play computer games at least four hours a day on weekdays and more on weekends. It notes that all this screen time can harm their sleep, physical activity, and social life, and it makes recommendations for moderating their dependency and encouraging them to pursue other activities.
Without the booster of full-blown woke neuroticism, the situation in Denmark isn’t as dire as in America, but the trend is in the same, negative direction. Let’s hope the new initiatives to handle the volume of teen referrals for psychotherapy will include measures to prevent the dysphoria from arising. The solution isn’t simply for an individual to quit social media because if her peers are still there, she might suffer even worse FOMO. The usual method of discouraging a particular kind of behavior in Denmark is by slapping a tax on it. That might seem tricky in this case, but the Danes are experts at it.