Social media use, Twenge explains, means teens are spending less time with their friends in person. This makes sense developmentally, since the onset of puberty triggers a cascade of changes in the brain that make teens more emotional and more sensitive to their social world. The mental health consequences are especially acute for younger teens, she writes. And experimental studies suggest that when teens give up Facebook for a period or spend time in nature without their phones, for example, they become happier. This is correlational data, but competing explanations like rising academic pressure or the Great Recession don’t seem to explain teens’ mental health issues. She draws these conclusions by showing how the national rise in teen mental health problems mirrors the market penetration of iPhones-both take an upswing around 2012. While other observers have equivocated about the impact, Twenge is clear: More than two hours a day raises the risk for serious mental health problems. They spend five to six hours a day texting, chatting, gaming, web surfing, streaming and sharing videos, and hanging out online. IGens “grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet,” writes Twenge. Twenge finds that new media is making teens more lonely, anxious, and depressed, and is undermining their social skills and even their sleep. IGens have poorer emotional health thanks to new media. In addition to identifying cross-generational trends in these surveys, Twenge tests her inferences against her own follow-up surveys, interviews with teens, and findings from smaller experimental studies. Those surveys, which have asked the same questions (and some new ones) of teens year after year, allow comparisons among Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and iGens at exactly the same ages. She identifies their unique qualities by analyzing four nationally representative surveys of 11 million teens since the 1960s. Twenge names the generation born between 19 “iGens” for their ubiquitous use of the iPhone, their valuing of individualism, their economic context of income inequality, their inclusiveness, and more. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.
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