Peer-Reviewed Study

Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology

Sep 2018 🇺🇸 Emotion (American Psychological Association) PEER-REVIEWED PAYWALLED — LINKED, NOT HOSTED

Published in the APA journal Emotion, this study by Jean Twenge, Gabrielle Martin, and W. Keith Campbell drew on yearly national surveys of U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders from 1991 to 2016 — about 1.1 million adolescents in total — tracking self-esteem, life satisfaction, and happiness over time. The authors report that well-being had followed gradual trends for decades but dropped suddenly after 2012, in the same years adolescents spent more time on screens and less on activities like in-person socializing, exercise, and religious attendance. Adolescents reporting a small amount of electronic communication were the happiest group overall. The authors note economic indicators like unemployment did not track with the shift, arguing against the Great Recession as the driver, and instead point to smartphone adoption as a plausible associated factor. TechKids Foundation cites this as a key study behind the 'something changed around 2012' argument.

n ≈ 1.1 million U.S. 8th/10th/12th graders, 1991–2016

Yearly nationally representative Monitoring the Future surveys tracked self-esteem, life satisfaction, and happiness across 25+ years.

Well-being 'suddenly decreased after 2012'

The authors describe a sharp break from decades of gradual trends, occurring in the same period smartphone ownership and social-media use rose rapidly among U.S. teens.

Light electronic-communication users reported highest well-being

Adolescents who used a small amount of electronic communication reported the greatest happiness of any use-level group in the dataset.

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CITATION

Twenge, Jean M., Gabrielle N. Martin, and W. Keith Campbell. "Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology." Emotion 18, no. 6 (2018): 765–780. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000403

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