Study: Kids With Smartphones Are Less Depressed, Anxious, Bullied Than Peers Without Them

A large new study finds smartphone ownership positively correlated with multiple measures of well being in 11- to 13-year-old kids.

It's funny how much media coverage is devoted to anything suggesting that phones might be ruining kids—and how little coverage goes to studies suggesting the opposite. So it goes with a new report from researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) that links smartphone ownership among 11- to 13-year-olds with a number of positive indicators of well-being.

"We went into this study expecting to find what many researchers, teachers and other observers assume: smartphone ownership is harmful to children," said Justin D. Martin, the study's lead researcher. Instead, "most of the time we found the opposite—that owning a smartphone was associated with positive outcomes."

Martin's research is part of a major undertaking meant to "track digital media use and wellness across the lifespan," notes USF in a press release.

Less Anxiety, Higher Self-Esteem

For the first part of this study, researchers surveyed 1,510 Florida kids ages 11 to 13. On almost every metric measuring well-being, smartphone-owning kids showed better results.

For instance, kids with smartphones were more likely to spend in-person time with friends. "Contrary to the position that smartphone use is associated with fewer in-person meetups with friends, on average, smartphone owners spend nearly three days a week in-person with a friend(s), while kids with no smartphone spend closer to two days a week in-person with friends," write the researchers. "The same trend was seen for tablet ownership, daily video gaming, and daily social media use."

Kids with smartphones were less likely to report symptoms of anxiety or depression and more likely to report feeling good about themselves. Eighty percent of kids who own smartphones and 82 percent of those who own tablets said they felt good about themselves, compared to 69 percent for those without smartphones and 71 percent for those without tablets. Asked if they agreed with the statement that "life often feels meaningless," 18 percent of kids with smartphones said yes, compared to 26 percent of those without their own smartphone. And length of smartphone ownership was not correlated with depression or anxiety symptoms, either.

Kids with smartphones were also significantly less likely to be "cyberbullied" than their peers without smartphones. For instance, 32 percent of those without phones said someone had spread rumors or lies about them online, compared to 18 percent of those with phones. And 28 percent of those without phones said they had been called mean or hurtful names online, compared to 16 percent of those with smartphones.

Not All Screen Time Created Equal

This doesn't mean that smartphone use was universally positive. Kids who slept with their phones in their rooms got less sleep on average, suggesting that parents might want to think about confiscating phones before bedtime. (Though even the group that slept with phones in their rooms reported an average of 8.6 hours of sleep per night.)

Heavy video gamers were more likely than light gamers to report trouble stopping tech use once started, and heavy users of social media were more likely than lighter users to report sleep issues.

And respondents who reported posting publicly and often on social media were more likely to report sleep issues and symptoms of depression and anxiety, possibly related to the exposure to mean comments and other forms of cyberbullying that posting could bring. Unsurprisingly, kids who experienced online bullying were more likely to report negative effects from technology.

Of course, these statistics—like the stats wielded to argue that screen time is bad for kids—don't actually tell us what comes first, the issues in question or the heavy use of technology. For instance, kids suffering from anxiety, insomnia, depression, and social isolation could find these issues triggered by social media, but it seems at least as likely that frequent posting to social media or heavy consumption of such posts may be a symptom of anxiety, insomnia, social isolation, or depression that they already felt.

It's Complicated

While we're on caveats, there's a big one on this study overall. The kinds of families that get smartphones for their 11- to 13-year-olds may be fundamentally different from those who don't. And the kinds of kids in this age group whose parents deem them ready for a phone may also be different from the kids whose parents don't think they're ready. So some of the differences in well-being between phone-wielding kids and those without phones could come down to differences that have nothing to do with technology.

Despite the caveats, this survey provides another point against smartphone doomers such as Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. At the very least, it suggests "that the effects of smartphone ownership are complex," as Wendy Rote, an associate professor of psychology as USF, put it.

A few points to demonstrate this complexity:

• Heavy social media users were more likely than lighter users to report exercising or playing sports at least once a day (50 percent versus 31 percent).
• While use of social media apps was high (87 percent), more kids reported using apps for school (94 percent).
• While the researchers found that "kids who own a smartphone are slightly less likely to report feeling depressed most days compared with those who don't own a smartphone"—21 percent versus 26 percent—"children who own a tablet are more likely to report feeling depressed compared to those who don't (26% vs. 19%)."
• Kids themselves reported some negative effects from technology—more than half said they found it "difficult to stop using technology" once they started and nearly half said they don't do things they're supposed to because they're using technology—but there was little difference in self-perceived negative outcomes among kids who had their own phones and kids who didn't.
• App preferences and usage differed based on socioeconomic status. Overall, YouTube and TikTok were the most likely to be cited as kids' most-used app, followed by Netflix, Roblox, Instagram, and Disney+. But there were significant shifts in app usage depending on household income, with Roblox and YouTube most used among kids in households with an annual income of $50,000 or less and Instagram and TikTok more used among kids from higher-income households. Kids from higher-income households were also significantly more likely to post publicly to social media (77 percent for kids from the highest income households compared to 56 percent among kids from the lowest income households).

Speaking of socioeconomic status: You might imagine, as I originally did, that those without smartphones would be more likely to come from low-income families. But "while some kids likely don't have their own smartphones due to the financial cost, fewer kids in wealthier households have their own smartphones than kids from poorer backgrounds," the researchers say. Between 80 and 87 percent of kids in families with incomes of less than $100,000 had smartphones, while only 67 percent of kids in families making $150,000 or more did.

Another interesting aside: Kids—or at least those in Florida—are not abandoning Facebook at quite the levels popularly believed. Among social platforms used by survey respondents, Facebook and Facebook Messenger ranked fifth, behind YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Also notable: Kids prioritized feeling "welcome and safe" online over free speech (sigh).

And a large percentage of kids overall agreed with the sentiment that "life often feels meaningless," with agreement significantly higher among boys (23 percent versus 16 percent for girls) and among kids from higher-income households (31 percent among kids in households making $150,000 or more versus 10 percent among kids from households making $50,000 or less).

The USF researchers are next taking the survey nationwide, hoping to track the phone habits and well being metrics of 8,000 adolescents for 25 years.

No 'One-Size-Fits-All Answers'

In another strike against smartphone alarmists, a group of international experts argued in The BMJ late last month that banning phones and/or social media for minors won't necessarily improve their well-being. There are "no simple, one-size-fits-all answers," they write:

Although many policy makers, schools, and parents are primed to believe arguments that smartphones and social media are inherently harmful, the evidence about their overall effect on children is not clear cut. Smartphone bans have the advantage of being immediately actionable and relatively straightforward to enforce. However, despite positive anecdotal data, we do not have the evidence to establish the types of bans that are effective and what works best for children of different ages. A recent evaluation of school smartphone policies in England reported that restricted smartphone use in schools was not associated with benefits to adolescent mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and sleep, educational attainment, or classroom behaviour. In addition, this study found no evidence of school restrictions being associated with lower levels of overall phone or media use or problematic social media use.

Moreover, bans may do children a disservice by failing to prep them for healthy technology use as adults:

Bans and restrictions have been successfully used for public health issues such as smoking. But smoking is not comparable with smartphone and social media use because the harms from smoking are extensive, clear cut, and by far outweigh the benefits. Prescribing abstinence from all technologies to protect against harms is unrealistic and potentially detrimental in a society where technology use is a practical necessity and confers various benefits, including information access and social support. Overall, blanket restrictions are "stop gap" solutions that do little to support children's longer term healthy engagement with digital spaces across school, home, and other contexts and their successful transition into adolescence and adulthood in a technology filled world.

Bans and restrictions are context dependent, and their effects will be highly variable across regions and populations. Families' experiences and perspectives related to screen engagement for their children vary by culture, religion, and socioeconomic circumstances, including internet access and quality, and access to safe and green outside spaces.

Unfortunately, the group writing in BMJ does go on to promote some one-size-fits-all solutions, including restrictions on the use of algorithms in apps used by minors. (Related: "In Defense of Algorithms.")

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