#98. Smartphone Ownership Correlates with Wellbeing in 11- to 13-Year-Olds.

Finally, a research study has addressed the question of whether kids are better off with or without a smartphone.

Easy-Peasy

Dear friends,

I’m an outdoors person. I spend hours every week taking long bicycle rides, walking or skiing (when we have snow, which, sadly, is rarer every year) on wooded trails near my home, or kayaking on local rivers. I usually do this alone, or (on walks) just with my little dog Cookie. I always take my smartphone with me when I go.

The most obvious reason for taking my phone is safety. If something happens such that I need help, I can call. This happened in February of 2024. I was riding my bike offroad into a wooded area, my front wheel hit a tree root as I was making a turn, and I fell hard on my side on a rock. After about 15 minutes of trying, I realized I could not get up from that fall. I was in considerable pain and could not move my left leg. So, I called my wife. She came, realized that even with her help I could not get up and into the car, and, right there, with her smartphone, called an ambulance. It turned out that I had a fractured pelvis (see my story about it here). Without the phone I might have been there for hours, maybe even overnight, before someone found me. I was far enough from anyone that shouting would have been useless.

So, safety is the main reason for taking my phone when I adventure out, especially when I go alone, but it is far from the only reason. The phone enriches my outdoor experience. On my bike I often like to explore areas I have never been to before. Google Maps, in bicycle mode, allows me to find bike-friendly back roads to get where I’d like to go. It also allows me to explore farther from home than I otherwise would because, no matter where I am, it shows me how to get home and how long it will take, at my usual speed, so I can be sure to be home in time for an online meeting or whatever other event I have scheduled. What a remarkable navigational tool!

And there is more. As you may know, I’m a longtime advocate of self-directed education. I’m also a practitioner of it. The smartphone is, without question, the most powerful educational tool ever invented. It gives me access, no matter where I am, to the world’s knowledge. Here’s an example. I’ll be out walking along a woodland trail and see a beautiful wildflower. I’ll wonder what it’s called and whether it’s native or invasive. I’ll wonder if I could get such a flower to grow in my own yard at home. Before I had a smartphone the wondering would have stopped there. By the time I got home I would likely have forgotten about the flower, and even if I remembered it and the details of its appearance I would not have had the time to pore through field guides to try to identify it. But now, with my smartphone, I have an app called “Picture This.” I point my phone camera at the flower and, voila, within seconds I have not just the plant’s name but information about its native habitat, whether this specimen looks healthy or not, and information about how to cultivate it if desired. My smartphone makes the outdoor world even more interesting and wonderful to me than it was before such a tool was invented.

And it’s not just learning about nature. I do some of my best thinking when I’m out walking solo. Sometimes in that thinking I’ll hit upon an idea that strikes me as original and I’ll wonder if it is. So, right there, outdoors, I Google it. I don’t do deep research on it there, that will come later at home if it comes at all, but I get some input that helps me in my immediate woodland trail of thought.

I’ve been writing here about what I get from my smartphone, but here’s the question to which I’m leading. Why would anyone want to deprive children of this remarkable tool? I keep running into people who say they aren’t going to let their son or daughter have a smartphone until some age—14 seems to be most often mentioned—or not let them have one with an internet connection until even a later age, many say 16. Why? They read in a book that smartphones are dangerous for kids. They read that smartphones, especially with internet access, cause anxiety and depression and various other ill effects.

I read that book, too, and saw the claims. In fact, I studied the book carefully and looked up many of the references listed in it, focusing on those that seemed in the book to be most promising as evidence, and nowhere did I find evidence backing up the claim of general harm to kids for having a smartphone, with or without internet access. For some of my writing on this, see here and here. I’m not the only one who has studied that book and concluded that the claims of harm are not backed by science (see, for examples, here and here).

Now, for the first time, a research study has been conducted and published that directly tests the question: Are smartphones good for kids or bad for them?

The Florida Study of Kids with and Without Smartphones

The study, called The Life in Media Survey, was conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida in collaboration with the Harris Poll (Martin et al., 2025). The study surveyed 1,510 children, ages 11 to 13, in Florida. In addition to demographic information collected from the children’s parents, the survey collected information from the children themselves about their access to technology and about various aspects of their behavior and mental health. Of particular interest in the survey was the question of whether children who owned a smartphone were worse off or better off psychologically than those who did not own one. On almost every question, those who owned a smartphone were found to be better off than those without. Here are some of the specific findings:

• Kids with smartphones were less likely than kids without smartphones to agree with the statement, “Life often feels meaningless” (18% vs. 26%).

• Kids with smartphones were less likely than kids without smartphones to agree with the statement “I get very angry and often lose my temper” (23% vs. 34%).

• Kids with smartphones were less likely than kids without smartphones to say they felt depressed most days in the prior year (21% vs. 26%).

• Kids with smartphones were more likely than kids without smartphones to say they feel good about themselves (80% vs. 69%).

• Kids with smartphones reported spending more time hanging out with friends in person than did kids without smartphones (I couldn’t find specific numbers on this in the report, only the direction of the finding).

• Kids with and without smartphones were nearly equally likely to report that they exercise or play sports every day (44% vs. 42%).

These findings held up regardless of the participants’ ages (11, 12, and 13) and regardless of the age at which the kids reported first owning a smartphone. There was no evidence that those who got a smartphone earlier than age 11 were either better off or worse off than those who got one later.

Based on these data, you might hypothesize that kids with smartphones felt better because they came from wealthier families than kids without smartphones. But, in fact, kids from poorer families were somewhat more likely to own a smartphone than kids from wealthier families (maybe their parents didn’t read the book saying kids shouldn’t have one), and the findings listed above appeared to be true for all income categories.

These findings may surprise some, but common sense tells us they should not be surprising. The smartphone helps kids get together physically; it helps them keep in touch with friends when they can’t be together physically; and it is in many ways a vehicle for learning and self-expression. In fact, the findings that smartphones generally improve the quality of life for kids, in this age of technology, are consistent with what sensible thinking would predict.

A smartphone problem the Florida researchers did document, however, concerned sleep. On average—no surprise—kids who took their smartphone to bed with them or used it just before bed, unlike kids who kept the phone in another room, got, on average, a few minutes less than the 9 hours of sleep a night recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for young adolescents. To the degree that’s a problem, it should be an easy one to solve!

What About Social Media?

The study did find one significant negative correlation between technology use and mental wellbeing. The correlation was not with smartphone ownership and use per se, nor with access to the internet (most of the kids with smartphones had internet access on their phones), nor with access to social media (most of the kids used social media regularly, primarily to keep in touch with friends), but with frequent public posting on social media. Those who engaged in frequent public posting were more likely to report symptoms of depression and anxiety than those who did not.

The researchers did not suggest an explanation for this finding but described it in such a way as to imply that public posting somehow caused depression. Well, maybe, but maybe not. As I have pointed out elsewhere, it seems more likely that the causal direction is the other way around: depression and anxiety result in increased public posting. Other studies have shown that depressed or anxious people often post publicly as a way of finding solutions to or in other ways dealing with their unhappy condition. The Florida study was not longitudinal, so there was no way to know if the anxiety or depression preceded or followed increased public posting. Longitudinal studies showing a correlation between social media posting and anxiety or depression have shown that the increased anxiety or depression typically precedes the increase in social media use (e.g. Heffer et al., 2019).

One of the most revealing such studies was of 100 teens who were enrolled in an outpatient program for depression and suicidality (Hamilton et al., 2021). At weekly visits to the clinic, over the course of a month, the teens reported on their use of social media over the past week and were assessed with measures of depression and suicidal ideation. The main finding was that those who used social media more showed greater improvement in mental health from week to week—less depression and fewer suicidal thoughts—than those who used it less or not at all. The researchers concluded, “among adolescents who are at high risk for suicide, social media may be indicative of adaptive or healthy social engagement.”

Concluding Thoughts

I don’t want to suggest with this letter that online life is completely safe for kids (or for adults either, for that matter). Similarly, I would never suggest that free play or independent mobility in the outdoor physical world is completely safe. My message is this. The route to protecting children is not to deprive them of freedoms to play and explore independently, neither in the physical world nor the online world, but to teach safety rules. Outdoors, look both ways before you cross the street. If a stranger offers you candy to get into their car with them, don’t do it! Kids are not stupid. They can understand and following safety rules and use common sense to avoid dangers. But treating them as stupid may make them stupid. And treating them as untrustworthy may make them untrustworthy. I’ll discuss in another letter the value of teaching safety rules regarding internet use.

I have argued elsewhere, with much evidence, that depriving children of freedoms is a primary cause of their unhappiness and psychopathology (e.g. here). To grow and thrive, children need the freedom to play and explore. And they need to be trusted. That is true not just in the physical world, but now, in our technological age, it is also true in the online world.

And now, what questions and thoughts do you have about smartphones and kids, or even about smartphones and you? This Substack is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your stories, thoughts, and questions are valued and treated with respect by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. They add value to these letters for everyone.

With respect and best wishes,

Peter

Addendum

Added Nov. 23, 2025. I want to thank readers for the many thoughtful comments on this letter, especially those who pointed out weaknesses in the survey and the conclusions drawn. In particular, I should have pointed out that the positive correlations between smartphone ownership and indices of mental wellbeing MAY indicate that smartphone ownership improves mental wellbeing, as the authors and I stated, but other interpretations are possible, as several commenters pointed out. It seems plausible, for example, that kids who are psychologically healthier to begin with would be more likely to be given a smartphone than other kids. In this case the causal direction would be psychological health causes increased likelihood of smartphone ownership. This is why comments on my letters are so valuable! Dialogue promotes critical thinking by disrupting our solo thought bubbles.

References

Hall, J. A. (2024). Ten myths about the effects of social media use on well-being. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, e59585.

Hamilton, J.L. et al. (2021). Social media use and prospective suicidal thoughts and behaviors among adolescents at high risk for suicide. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 51, 1203–1212.

Heffer, T., Good, M., Daly, O., MacDonell, E. & Willoughby, T. (2019). The longitudinal association between social-media use and depressive symptoms among adolescents and young adults: An empirical reply to Twenge et al. 2018. Clinical Psychological Science, 7, 462­ –470

Martin, J.D. et al. (2025). The Life in Media Survey: A baseline study of digital media use and well-being among 11- to 13-year-olds. Researchers at the University of South Florida in collaboration with the Harris Poll. Retrieved from lifeinmediasurvey.org

Odgers, C. L. (2024). The great rewiring unplugged: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? Nature, 628, 29-30.