The mental-health-decline curve has the same shape and inflection year across countries that share little besides a common smartphone-adopti
The mental-health-decline curve has the same shape and inflection year across countries that share little besides a common smartphone-adoption window in 2010–2013.
Showcase: Smartphones, social media, and adolescent mental health
Beginning around 2012, adolescent rates of major depressive episodes, emergency-department visits for self-harm, and completed suicides rose sharply and roughly contemporaneously across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries — the same set of countries in which a majority of teens acquired smartphones, and in which image-based social platforms became dominant, during the 2010–2013 window.
CDC — Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS)
UNICEF Innocenti — Report Card 17: Places and Spaces (2022)
Children's well-being depends on multiple, interacting environmental factors; no single policy lever is sufficient.