Why are mental health issues amongst young people on the rise?
“The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. The twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time, if ever. There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives—and making them seriously unhappy.”
— Dr. Jean Twenge
My work continues to bring me young people with new and varied challenges and I am constantly reminded that the landscape of what it means to be young today is becoming increasingly complex. The need to teach this next generation of young people the tools required for increased emotional resilience has never been greater. The issues I see presented to me are also becoming increasingly diverse; social anxiety, substance misuse, body image issues, eating disorders, identity crises, anger issues, gang affiliation, lack of aspiration, cyber-bullying, loneliness/social rejection, family dysfunction, pressures of materialism, gaming addiction, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, insomnia… and I could still continue. Even for young people who do not present difficulties as serious as some of the ones just mentioned, I still notice a heightened level of generalised anxiety.
Similar trends are being noted globally and we have for some time now acknowledged that we are in the midst of a youth mental health pandemic. A large-scale national survey conducted in the US has been comparing generational differences since the 1970s to deduce levels of happiness amongst teens in each generation, with the research in total consisting of more than 11 million subjects. The findings had largely been slow and steady until a sudden change was noticed after 2010. These were the significant shifts:
- Teens became less likely to go out with their parents as often.
- Teens were getting together with friends less often.
- More teens started to feel left out and lonely.
- More teens felt like they couldn’t do anything right, their life was not useful, and that they did not enjoy life.
In addition to this, a national screening study showed the following:
- A 50% increase in major depressive disorder between 2011-2015 among teens, with severe impairment showing a similar trend.
- Suicide in 12-14-year-olds has doubled since 2007.
So, what happened between 2010-2015 that could have possibly caused this surge? Dr. Jean Twenge, an American psychologist, author, and public speaker, has conducted a plethora of research on generational differences. Her research points unequivocally to one thing; smartphones.
One of the biggest cultural shifts between 2010-2015 was smartphone ownership. The percentage of people with smartphones in the US crossed 50% by 2012. Therefore, by far the largest change in teens' lives since 2010 was that more of them owned smartphones, and spent more time online and on social media. Dr. Twenge asserts, “The increase in adolescent major depressive episode began after 2011, concurrent with the increased ownership of smartphones and digital media in this age group.” Her research also shows that teens are twice as likely to be unhappy and 71% of teens are more likely to have at least one risk factor for suicide. Both of these variables rise in tandem with hours of smartphone use per day.
So, what is it about smartphones that is having such an adverse effect on young people? Her 2017 article for The Atlantic, titled ‘Have smartphones destroyed a generation?’, which gained worldwide traction, gave some suggestions. When I match up my own experience with young people, the assertions she makes strongly resonate.
One of her first suggestions is that smartphones are causing teens to spend less time face to face with other humans. “Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.” I see this frequently. When I ask young people what they did over the weekend, they tend to say they spent most of their time at home, on their phones. When I ask them if they met with their friends, many say they saw them on Facetime. There often seems to be an element of social anxiety at the core of this way of interacting. By socialising through a screen, they comment that they feel safer and less self-conscious, they have to worry less about how they look or what they are wearing. But ironically, this new way of being social tends to make them feel more isolated and lonely. I am forever encouraging young people to interact with their friends in person, and how they are missing out on the development of vital social skills by choosing to interact with their peers through a screen.
Another reason suggested is that due to smartphone ownership, young people are spending less time with their families. “One of the ironies is that despite spending far more time under the same roof as their parents, today’s teens can hardly be said to be closer to their mothers and fathers than their predecessors were.” When you consider screen-time has increased amongst adults too, a wedge has been created in the family unit from top to bottom, not just bottom up. This breaking down of the family unit has been cited as one of the reasons why young people are becoming increasingly less resilient. In addition, research has also suggested that modern economic pressures and the resulting lack of work/life balance has affected parents’ ability to provide quality caregiving, causing neglect and possibly disrupted early attachment. The nurturing that young people could previously rely on is therefore under question. Part of my job involves liaising with concerned parents about their disengaged children; I witness first-hand how distant and fragile these relationships can be, and an erosion of the traditional cohesive family unit is very clear to see. Parents frequently complain that their child is spending long hours in their room alone on either their smartphone or games console, whilst children complain that their parents do not understand them. Technology expert Linda Stone coined the term ‘continuous partial attention’, referring to a modern adaptive behaviour of constantly dividing one’s attention. In the context of the parent-child relationship, she said, “The new parental-interaction style can interrupt an ancient emotional cueing system, whose hallmark is responsive communication, the basis of most human learning.” When we consider how clearly smartphones split our attention, could this be a reason why children often say they do not feel understood by their parents?
According to the article, modern teens are also less likely to sleep enough. I encounter young people frequently looking visibly exhausted. They comment on how they could not sleep, so they picked up their phone and hours later eventually fell asleep. “Electronic devices and social media seem to have an especially strong ability to disrupt sleep. Sleep deprivation is linked to a myriad of issues, including compromised thinking and reasoning, susceptibility to illness, weight gain, and high blood pressure. It also affects mood: people who don’t sleep enough are prone to depression and anxiety.”
In addition to Dr. Twenge’s work, here are a couple of other things I have noticed. The young people that I encounter are generally becoming more self-conscious and have lower levels of self-esteem. Through discussion with them over the years and unpicking the self-rejecting narrative so many of them hold at their core, it would seem that social media has played a role in creating a generation of young people with a high focus on acquisition and materialism, particularly through platforms such as Instagram. Perfect lives and perfect bodies are imprinted on formative young minds to desire an almost unattainable ideal of perfection. When they realise they cannot reach these impossible standards, a self-rejecting narrative very quickly ensues.
Then there is the instant gratification element. I notice young people have less patience and less of a long-term vision. When you consider how fast smartphones can process a demand, offering an endless stream of entertainment with hardly any waiting time, we can see how formative young minds have been trained to expect things instantly whilst putting in minimal effort. The issue with this is that the things in life that truly matter; love, joy, confidence, a skill-set, a career.. all take time to develop. Yes, you can accelerate parts of the process, but the overall journey is arduous.
Although young people now have so much more than previous generations in the material sense, it has come at a cost. Not only is the world so much different from the one previous generations knew, but it is also constantly evolving, creating a relentless pressure to keep up. So much of my work involves encouraging young people to simplify their lives. I do an exercise called ‘Pillars of Your Life’ to inspire young people to give the best of their time to the things they truly value, treating everything else as leisure activities reserved for their spare time. By establishing and aligning them with their values, my hope is to relieve them of some of the pressure they feel to keep up in this constantly evolving world.
We may be able to do very little in containing the way the world is changing, but we can focus instead on trying to help young people develop the resilience needed to survive in a world that is constantly demanding it. I believe the first step towards increased resilience is self-awareness. The profound thing about self-awareness is that once a human being experiences an awakening, there is no going back, and it begins a life-long journey of introspection. There is a need for young people to start this inward journey earlier than ever.
In the context of smartphones, and whatever else that is waging war on the mental well-being of our youth, by helping young people go within we can equip them with the awareness needed to notice and assess their relationship with whatever they are interacting with, and thus be able to prioritise their mental well-being accordingly. In doing so, we are giving them the keys to solve their own crisis.
“Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed”. Thich Nhat Hanh