Written Testimony: The Impact of Smartphones, Social Media, and School Laptops on Youth Mental Health and Academic Performance
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On January 15, 2026, Jean Twenge submitted written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee's hearing 'Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America's Youth,' alongside witnesses including pediatrician Jenny Radesky and screen-time consultant Emily Cherkin. The testimony lays out the case Twenge has made across her published research: that U.S. adolescent mental health and academic performance began declining sharply around 2012, a period she says lines up with rising smartphone ownership and social-media use rather than with economic or other social trends that moved the opposite way. She cites federal survey and CDC mortality data showing rising depression diagnoses and self-harm-related ER visits among younger teen girls over this period, presents these as associated risk factors rather than single-cause outcomes, and recommends restricting school-day phone access and setting 16 as a minimum social-media age. TechKids Foundation includes this as Twenge's most current formal policy statement to Congress.
Twenge's testimony estimates that if the U.S. suicide rate for 10- to 19-year-olds had stayed at its 2007 low, about 12,472 more adolescents would be alive today — an average of roughly 800 additional deaths a year — presenting this as associated with, not proven to be solely caused by, the post-2012 trends she describes.
Citing CDC WISQARS data, the testimony states emergency-department admissions for self-harm behaviors quadrupled among U.S. girls ages 10–14 between 2001 and 2023.
Twenge testifies that associations between social-media time and lower well-being are usually stronger for adolescents ages 10–15 than for older teens, which she says has led her and other researchers to recommend 16 as a minimum age for social-media accounts.
Twenge, Jean M. "The Impact of Smartphones, Social Media, and School Laptops on Youth Mental Health and Academic Performance." Written testimony submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, hearing "Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America's Youth," January 15, 2026.