No Simple Answers for Kids and Screens

Chances are, you’re reading this on a screen. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning after your phone alarm rings, in the moments before the hectic battle to get the kids ready for school. Or perhaps it’s when you’re trying to turn off your mind after a long day of juggling the demands of parenting, work, and household chores. Or maybe it’s during that one peaceful hour of the day at your child’s soccer practice.

These are typical scenes in the daily lives of American parents. Parents are so stressed that in 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory about it. The report found that 48 percent of parents said the stress they feel is overwhelming on most days; this share was more than 1.8 times higher than it was among other adults. Main sources of stress included rising financial strain and increased time demands. So, if you’re using your phone to relax, self-regulate, learn something new, or stay connected, then as a fellow parent, an educator, and a social scientist, I’m OK with that.

But according to a new book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, by Jean M. Twenge, you (and your kids) won’t understand or remember this review as well if you read it on a screen as opposed to on paper (and there’s some evidence for this). If you’re one of the only 16 percent of American adults who reads for pleasure each day, should you read this specific book? My research examines topics related to youth, digital tech, empathy, and burnout, and I also understand firsthand how complex today’s digital environment is in our homes and classrooms, which is why I was excited to read it.

The book is organized around 10 rules for children that are supposed to help parents protect them from the dangers of digital technology by simplifying decision-making. They are:

• Rule 1: You’re in charge.
• Rule 2: No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight.
• Rule 3: No social media until age 16—or later.
• Rule 4: First phones should be basic phones.
• Rule 5: Give the first smartphone with the driver’s license.
• Rule 6: Use parental controls.
• Rule 7: Create no-phone zones.
• Rule 8: Give your kids real-world freedom.
• Rule 9: Beware the laptop—and the gaming console and the tablet.
• Rule 10: Advocate for no phones during the school day.

Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, justifies these rules in part by documenting a few major trends that afflict today’s young people: increases in mental health symptoms, declining sleep and time with friends, and delayed milestones like getting a driver’s license, working, and dating. She asserts that these trends are all due to the rise of social media and smartphone use since around 2010.

I’ve co-authored two scientific papers with Twenge on narcissism trends among American youth, so I am familiar with her work on generational changes in the United States. But I don’t think it’s that simple: Some of the trends (sleep, getting together with friends, milestones) appear to have started long before smartphones were in virtually every pocket, while others (declining mental health) appear to align with the wide adoption of these devices.

With cultural trends, it’s tempting to zero in on one specific cause (the phones in young people’s hands) and ignore others (the phones in adults’ hands, and the reasons we turn to them). It’s impossible to know for sure why these changes have happened. The year 2010 followed a major global recession, which put long-term economic strain on all except the richest of us, with associated demands on our time. Yet Twenge and I found that narcissism—which had been rising in American youth from the 1980s on—began declining around 2009. With another research team, I found that empathy showed a parallel trend, declining in American youth after the late 1970s, then rising after about 2009.

This prompts the question: Based on these trends (which are not mentioned in the book), did the rise in digital-tech use among kids also cause narcissism to decrease and empathy to increase? Again, we can’t know this for sure. However, research that followed teens over time found that those who used social media more often grew more in their empathy over the next year. And my research has found that smartphones can be used to increase empathy and generous behaviors among youth. This, along with increases in empathy since 2009, suggests that digital tech may have some benefits—or at least, that it may not be as uniformly harmful as Twenge argues.

Yet isn’t digital tech to blame for the rise in youth mental health symptoms? The wealth of research on this topic has often found mixed or no effects from social media. Some evidence suggests that taking a break from devices can bring benefits, yet even this conclusion applies only for some outcomes and not others. At the same time, certain apps can help to reduce stress and promote better mental health, and smartphones are now regularly used as part of mental health treatment. Beyond the many tools and programs that now exist in this space, the effects of typical daily use on mental health and well-being likely depend on many things: who is using it, for what reason, how they’re using it, for how long, and so on.