TWISS #5: The Global Youth Mental Health Crisis
What’s behind the rise in youth anxiety, depression, and despair?
Welcome to This Week in Social Science. This edition explores research about the decline in youth mental health and the search for its causes.
Youth mental health is declining around the world
A new NBER paper and report analyzed mental health trends around the world. Historically, happiness was highest among the young and the old, with a dip in midlife (the proverbial midlife crisis). This pattern existed for nearly every country and was even observed in great apes. But starting in the early 2010s, researchers observe a sharp decline in life satisfaction among youth, and rises in youth anxiety, depression, and suicide. In the U.S., the share of young people experiencing despair, defined as reporting poor mental health every day for the last 30 days, rose from about 3% for boys and girls in 1993 to 6.6% for boys and 9.4% for girls in 2023; similar trends exist for other countries. This research suggests that youth around the world are suffering from a mental health epidemic. It forces us to ask: what has changed? Why are young people around the globe struggling at the same time?1
What has caused the youth mental health epidemic?
Researchers have put forth many explanations for the global decline in youth mental health. One recent study analyzed data from 47 countries and considered three possible causes: smartphones and social media, the Great Recession, and decreased stigma around reporting mental health issues, rather than a true mental health epidemic. They rule out declining social stigma: it does not explain the dramatic rise in suicide rates and other forms of self-harm. Economic conditions are also unlikely to be the main cause of worsening mental health: most of the mental health decline occurred years after the Great Recession, when some countries were experiencing a post-recession economic expansion. The researchers believe social media use is the most likely culprit. The youth mental health decline began just as there was a rapid increase in smartphone use, and it is especially severe among people whose screen time rose sharply.2
TL;DR: The world is experiencing a youth mental health crisis. The causes are likely multifaceted, but mental health issues correlate with and are plausibly caused by overuse of social media. Researchers are currently trying to understand (a) the extent to which social media use causes mental health issues and the extent to which mental health issues cause social media use, (b) why youth, and especially young women, are most affected, and (c) the long-term consequences of declining youth mental health.
Our Take. Want to read our perspective on this research? Check out TWISS: Addendum. Its latest post, Studying Society Through a Keyhole, discusses how research has yet to address the “secondhand smoke” of social media and its impacts on users and non-users alike.
Blanchflower, David G. (2025). The Global Decline in the Mental Health of the Young. National Bureau of Economic Research: The Reporter.
Blanchflower, D. G., Bryson, A., Lepinteur, A., & Piper, A. (2024). Further evidence on the global decline in the mental health of the young (No. w32500). National Bureau of Economic Research.
I think young women are more heavily affected by social media because social media is designed to showcase the "best" part of someone's life, unattainable standards for health/beauty.
Speaking from experience as a older gen z who grew up with unfiltered access to social media, there have been many instances growing up of comparing myself to what others curated themselves as online. It has definitely affected my mental health state and self-worth.
Therapy has helped lessen social media's grip on my mental health in general, but it still has too large of a grasp on.
Now speaking as a parent, the fear I have of social media's firm grasp on society is large. I want to shield my daughter from it, but don't want her alienated by lack of use.
Thanks for bringing more light onto the topic.
Thanks for the write up!
I’m of two minds about this topic. I think we are seeing some troubling trends with respect to youth mental health in the US over the past several years, and these issues are tied up with technology in intricate and complex ways.
At the same time, I try to remain skeptical of claims that social media is solely to blame and that simply banning smartphones will solve the issue. For instance, the authors here say “those with poorer mental health spend more time daily in front of a screen on the internet or their smartphone,” but they don’t do much to establish causality. It could be the case that those with poor mental health are more likely to seek out friends or validating things to do online, or lonely people are more online simply because they have more free time than those who have commitments with family and friends.
With every technological innovation — be it smartphones, computers, TV, radio, even books — you can find people who say it is causing making kids lonelier, stupider, lazier, etc. It’s possible social media is a different beast, but I want to see more studies on this.