A New Study Suggests No, Actually
Adults seem to love bemoaning how much teenagers are on their phones, citing smartphone use as a primary cause of the increase in adolescent depression and other mental health struggles. But a new study suggests that heavy use of smartphones may not be bad for teenagers, especially when those teens are texting their friends. And it's not just teenagers that can benefit from using your smartphone strategically: combating loneliness and seeking mental health support through texting doesn't stop post-adolescence, according to the mental health support service Crisis Text Line.
The new study focused on teens but has implications that transcend age. Published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, the study tracked the smartphone usage and mental health symptoms of nearly 2,000 teenagers for three years. The research focused intensively on 400 of these young people by checking in multiple times a day about cell phone use and mental health symptoms. The young people participating in the study were from a racially and economically diverse public school system in North Carolina, and they ranged from ages 10 to 15 during the years of the study.
After extensive check-ins with the students, the study concluded that young people who logged more time on their phones during the first year of the study were not more likely to experience depression or other mental health struggles in the later years of the study. And on a more day-to-day basis, the study also noted that the teens' daily mood fluctuations were not negatively impacted by cell phone use.
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