Why Teens Feel They Can’t Look Away from Their Phones

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Interestingly, a lot of kids are also saying that they feel that they can’t spend time looking away from their phone because they experience so much concern about what they might be missing on their profiles. This is referred to in the literature as “digital stress,” and the idea is that kids are getting just constant notifications from so many platforms. Even chatbots are writing to them and saying, “Why haven’t you talked to me today?” They’re really concerned about what they might be missing out on in those interactions online, because this is the fodder that will be discussed the next day. And in some cases, it’s about them. They may get a notification saying someone just posted a comment or a picture and tagged you in it. So they feel very much inclined to want to go online and see what’s happening. Their friends might believe them or be very disappointed with them if they don’t approve of posts that their friends put up there right away. So if your friend posts a selfie and you don’t go up there and tell him or her how great they look within just a few moments, that’s a major friendship violation these days. So you have to be on there to like your friends’ posts. And if you post something — we actually heard from undergraduates that, even at the age of 21, they spend about 30 minutes staring at their own post and doing nothing else just to make sure their post is getting favorable comments and they’re not getting canceled online. Well, all together, this creates digital stress and, among young high school kids, we learned that 45% of them are experiencing so much digital stress that it’s interfering with their daily roles and routines. And that’s causing them so much distress, in fact, that the more digital stress you report in one year, the more depression you’re reporting a year later.