How Smartphones Are Hurting Our Kids

'WE'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS,' SAYS AUTHOR AND PSYCHOLOGIST JONATHAN HAIDT. 'THERE'S MASSIVE EVIDENCE OF HARM'

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When NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt looks at the charts tracking teen mental health, he sees an undeniable truth. Beginning in 2012, five years after the introduction of the iPhone and two years after Instagram debuted, "anxiety and depressive disorders go up with a sharp increase," he says.

Since then, incidents of self-harm and suicide rates among teens have more than doubled. "It happened in many countries at the same time, at a specific point in time: the moment when teens traded their flip phones for smartphones," Haidt says. "It's as if you had a murder, and all eyewitnesses point to this suspect." In his new book The Anxious Generation, out now, Haidt examines the connection between this "great rewiring" of childhood and the decline in teen mental health-and advises how to help.

What's the connection between smartphones and kids' mental health?