Researchers looked at data from 1 million teenagers. Here’s the sweet spot for smartphone use and happiness.
Every parent I know wants to raise kids who are at least as successful and happy as we are–more so, if we can pull it off. But something disturbing has happened in the last few years to radically reduce how happy kids in middle and high school are.
There are a lot of potential culprits, but researchers think they’ve figured the likely culprit behind this sad decline: It’s that the rise in unhappiness began just as smartphone adoption in the United States began to skyrocket around 2012, with the entry of lower-cost phones and plans. Among teens, we’ve gone from almost zero adoption in 2009, to 37 percent in 2012, and 73 percent in 2015.
It’s nearing ubiquity now, and a new study using longitudinal data from more than 1 million U.S. teenagers says it’s likely this sudden and dramatic spike in the use of smartphones that has negatively impacted happiness. But before you dismiss this as just-another-study, I think there’s something that sets it apart.
That’s that the researchers doesn’t preach the unrealistic goal of total digital abstinence. Instead, they crunch the numbers and concludes that there’s potentially a reasonable amount of smartphone use–above zero–that correlates with greater happiness.
The sweet spot?
Writing in the journal Emotion (.pdf link, may require purchase), researchers “found that teens who spent more time in front of screen devices–playing computer games, using social media, texting and video chatting–were less happy than those who invested more time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interaction.”
That makes sense and is consistent with many other recent studies. However, the difference here is the recognition that teens can report less happiness if they use smartphones too rarely, too.
In general, the sweet spot for reasonable screen time that doesn’t inhibit happiness is somewhere between one and two hours per day. This may be in part because so much legitimate social interaction now does take place online.
“The key to digital media use and happiness is limited use,” study co-author Jean M. Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, said in a university press release. “Aim to spend no more than two hours a day on digital media, and try to increase the amount of time you spend seeing friends face-to-face and exercising–two activities reliably linked to greater happiness.”