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.
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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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If you gave them dope they'd probably feel good too.
Kids are scared of phone calls, they don't meet people in real life, they can't solve basic problems - but sure, they're 'happier' staring at a screen all day.
Exactly. Self-reported studies are basically worthless.
They may well be happier with phones. I suspect it is true. But I don't think it's because phones make you happier, but because without a phone, a kid is excluded from most social activity.
It's funny to think now how much time I spent in my teens and twenties waiting for people and wondering where they were.
Since Postrel, Reason's mission has basically been to promote technology without skepticism. What it doesn't promote with nearly the same enthusiasm is freedom.
Kids who grow up with a pony do better than kids who don't.
don't actually tell us what comes first,
Oh, nevermind
"No 'One-Size-Fits-All Answers'"
Sorry, you still haven't got an ounce of libertarian in you. Government regulations are always "One-Size-Fits-Nobody", by design. The last thing any bureaucrat wants is to solve the problem that created and sustains their job.
"And a large percentage of kids overall agreed with the sentiment that "life often feels meaningless,"
Um, I have bad news.
Joking aside, some people never realize that "meaning" is internal not external, and entirely under your control.
Not when you are a teen.
no shit the kids w/o phones get bullied. they don't have phones. did you even teenage?
I'm glad I read through the comments, first, without posting. I was going to post the same, as it's a pretty obvious connection.
stepped onto a school bus first day of sixth grade I just moved from Iowa to New Jersey like a week before ... kids saw my painter's pants and Star Wars lunchbox and I was destroyed before I could say hello lol
it wasn't even the Star Wars on the lunchbox, it was the lunchbox itself
In third grade at a new school, I was a very picky eater. My mom would pack me a lunch, but I would eat only a tiny bit of it. I also grew to despise the normal staple of a school lunch, the PB&J sandwich. At home I loved eating cereal (at any time of day). She decided to pack me a disposable plastic bowl and spoon, as well as a small bag of dry cereal, and I'd use the milk we all got at school to make cereal. I was roasted for that. Everyone mocked me for it. Fast forward a couple months and half the class was doing the same and eating cereal during lunchtime.
I've never gotten what's so great about Star Wars, even when I was a kid. I understand the first trilogy was revolutionary as far as movie special effects go, but the story always seemed lame to me. (I do like sci-fi and fantasy. Star Trek TNG and DS9 were great, IMO.)
It's too bad you didn't save that lunchbox, though, as people will pay ridiculous money for that kind of vintage crap today. I had some DC comic books that I threw out years ago, so the same goes for me.
I think SW was the first non-Disney movie I went to ... my mom took me & couple friends to see it in the theater for my birthday in '77 ... and I kept the action figures so I'll be okay
ENB is such a guppy. Follow the science.
They don't science here. That would involve investigating the methodology, evaluating the accuracy, and interpreting the data. Most of the time when I dig into studies I find poor procedures and that the author claims things that are unsupported or even refuted by the data.
Lets see, a smart phone easily costs $600 and if you buy an expensive mobile device for an 11 year old kid odd's are good you're not hurting for things like food, shelter, or other necessities. Just from this, I'd surmise that the kids who had smart phones are probably from at least middle class families and are doing pretty good.
The kids without smart phones I'd surmise are from poorer families that can't afford to shell out for a device for an 11 year old that will probably be broken within a week. That right there could easily account for the difference.
I'm not going to read the whole article, perhaps this is addressed, but it's from ENB so I doubt it. Either way the methodology I'm seeing is garbage since kids lie and self reported studies are largely horse shit.
This feels like the type of study that has potential major blindspots, especially when it comes to things like self-reporting.
It puts me in mind of the studies which continuously showed how black kids didn't suffer a social 'penalty' for excelling in school. They all relied on self-reporting. It wasn't until Roland Fryer, the black rock-star professor (now canceled) from Harvard crafted a much more clever study which no longer relied on self reporting, but relied on a more complex model relying on peers. Then suddenly, the 'penalty' showed up incandescently.
There's also a consideration of active parents vs inactive ones. Some middle to upper class parents hold off on giving their kids phones due to the known negatives and keep the kids active. Many poor parents give the kids a phone and otherwise ignore them. Lots of variables to consider.
"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."
This is very relevant information. I'd suspect that you're getting very different results from the kids who are 1/10 or 1/5 of their peers without a phone compared to those who are 1/3.
I wish the data was better grouped and reported in a way that truly addresses all the relevant variables that should have been included. That's how a scientific study would run rather than throwing their hands up about those effects and still reporting non-contextualized conclusions.
My own experience mirrors those shared by parents of teens when taking away the phone. Kids are happier, better behaved, more active, productive, and all around better people once they lose access to their devices for 3+ days. I think this study needs to re-evaluate its own controls.
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.
Now do the same study in California, New York and/or Massachusetts.
Some major confounding factors in these states, not least a much higher percentage of trans/nonbinary kids who tend to not to have good mental health to begin with.
Also, I imagine kids in Florida spend a lot more time outside.
Two guys are suing OnlyFans because content creators they thought were chatting directly with them were allegedly employing agencies to interact with fans on their behalf.
What we need is a recursive Section 230, the 1A of the internet, for Section 230 to will the admin/chatbot internet (Web 3.0b Rev. 2) into existence so that parent companies can't be held liable by litigious trolls for the actions of the admin/chatbot companies they contracted to deceive their customers for them.
Really, it would be much easier, more efficient, and equal to just blanket immunize all corporations for all liability for any action taken, but I have a feeling that won't quite cut the "Prosecute and persecute the people and companies I don't like while protecting the ones I do." social justice/feelz mustard.
Loser guys were mad that the fake conversations they thought they were having with content creators were just fake conversations with fake content creators.
You're paying for fake conversations either way, or you wouldn't have to pay to have the conversation.
"7 out of 10 doctors prefer Lucky Strike!"
As if these sorts of studies are famously replicable and reliable. Reason is the champion of pro-tech junk science.
a case that illuminated the complex legal gray area of prosecuting pregnancy loss
As opposed to the clearly illuminated black and white legal area of covertly dumping adult human bodies?
Don't want to get treated like human body dumping thug? Don't dump a human body like a thug. As someone who has put a *lot* of non-human bodies in the ground, this really isn't that difficult.
“On almost every metric measuring well-being, smartphone-owning kids showed better results.”
I can’t believe I have to say this, but correlation is not causation.
Are you saying wet roads DON'T cause rain, and increased ice cream sales DON'T cause shark attacks!?
Next you'll tell me that selling ice cream when the roads are wet has no effect on the formation of sharknados.
Anyone want to guess which teens get bullied more than ones without a smartphone? Try giving a teen an Android phone and report back.
In my mind that makes the Android way cooler.
There wasn't cellphones or social media when I was a kid. The internet was still relatively new. How did these researches compare the well-being of today's youth with those of previous generations who didn't have the screens, internet, and social media? Many adults I know, to include myself, have healthy technology use even though we didn't have these devices when we were children. If the researchers are positing that device usage and ownership is needed for healthy human development, how have the millions of people who didn't have these devices been able to develop healthily?
Kids With Smartphones Are Less Depressed, Anxious, Bullied Than Peers Without Them
"Hey, kid, you look good with that cigarette. Kind of sophisticated."
You vill use ze apps und you vill like it.
And respondents who reported posting publicly and often on social media were more likely to report sleep issues and symptoms of depression and anxiety
Cool. So make a smartphone that blocks social media usage. No social media apps, no access to social media websites, no independent browser downloads, no outside .apk installations, and have any attempts to jailbreak the phone necessarily brick it.
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.
Caveat? The lack of any kind of control or even an attempt compare apples to apples (in Brown's description of this, at least) makes it impossible to draw valid conclusions about any causal connection between cell phone use and the mental health of the kids in the study.
I also made note of the line where she mentions that kids that were "poorer" had higher rates of cell phone use by the 11-13 year olds, where "poorer" was families with incomes below $100k a year.