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T H E

R H E T O R I C A L P R É C I S

A rhetorical précis (pronounced pray-see) differs from a summary in that it is a less neutral, more analytical
condensation of both the content and method of the original text. If you think of a summary as primarily a brief

representation of what a text says, then you might think of the rhetorical précis as a brief representation of what a

text both says and does. Although less common than a summary, a rhetorical précis is a particularly useful way to

sum up your understanding of how a text works rhetorically.

 THE STRUCTURE OF A RHETORICAL PRÉCIS
Sentence One: Name of author, genre, and title of work, date in parentheses; a rhetorically active verb; and a THAT

clause containing the major assertion or thesis in the text.

Sentence Two: An explanation of how the author develops and supports the thesis.

Sentence Three: A statement of the author’s apparent purpose, followed by an “in order to” phrase.

Sentence Four: A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship

the author establishes with the

audience.

 CLASSIC RHETORICAL PRÉCIS SENTENCE STARTERS

Sentence One (Who/What?)

__________________________, in the ________________ ________________________________ ,
(Author) (A) (Title, punctuated correctly)

__________________________ that ____________________________________________________
(B) (major assertion/thesis statement)

__________________________________________________________________________________.

Sentence Two (How?)

_________________________ supports his/her ___________________ by ____________________
(Author’s Last Name) (B) (C)

___________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________

Sentence Three (Why?)

The author’s purpose is to __________________________________________________________
(D)

__________________________________ in order to / so that ______________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________.

Sentence Four (To Whom?)

The author writes in ____________________tone for ____________________________________.
(E) (audience)
Word Bank – some possibilities (see additional handouts)

A B C D E
article,

book review,

essay, column,

editorial

argues, argument,

asserts, assertion,

suggests, suggestion,

claims, questions,

explains,

explanation

comparing, contrasting,

telling, explaining,

illustrating, demonstrating,

defining, describing,

listing

show

point out

suggest

inform

persuade

convince

Formal

informal

sarcastic

humorous

contemptuous

Précis Examples

A. Sheridan Baker, in his essay “Attitudes” (1966), asserts that writers’ attitudes toward their subjects, their
audiences, and themselves determine to a large extent the quality of their prose. Baker supports this assertion by

showing examples of how inappropriate attitudes can make writing unclear, pompous, or boring, concluding that

a good writer “will be respectful toward his audience, considerate toward his readers, and somehow amiable

toward human failings” (58). His purpose is to make his readers aware of the dangers of negative attitudes in

order to help them become better writers. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of college

students who are interested in learning to write “with conviction” (55).

B. Toni Morrison, in her essay “Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks” (2001), implies that racism
in the United States has affected the craft and process of American novelists. Morrison supports her implication

by describing how Ernest Hemingway writes about black characters in his novels and short stories. Her purpose is

to make her readers aware of the cruel reality of racism underlying some of the greatest works of American

literature in order to help them examine the far-reaching effects racism has not only on those discriminated

against but also on those who discriminate. She establishes a formal and highly analytical tone with her audience

of racially mixed (but probably mainly white), theoretically

sophisticated readers and critical interpreters of

American literature.

C. Sandra M. Gilbert, professor of English at the University of California, Davis, in her essay “Plain Jane’s
Progress” (1977), suggests that Charlotte Brontë intended Jane Eyre to resemble John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s

Progress in that Jane’s pilgrimage through a series of events based on the enclosure and escape motif eventually

lead toward the equality that Brontë herself sought. Gilbert supports this conclusion by using the structure of the

novel to highlight the places Jane has been confined, the changes she undergoes during the process of escape, and

the individuals and experiences that lead to her maturation concluding that “this marriage of true minds at

Ferndean – this is the way” (501). Her purpose is to help readers see the role of women in Victorian England in

order to help them understand the uniqueness and daring of Brontë’s work. She establishes a formal relationship

with her audience of literary scholars interested in feminist criticism who are familiar with the work of Brontë,

Bunyan, Lord Byron and others and are intrigued by feminist theory as it relates to Victorian literature.

D. In her article “Who Cares if Johnny Can’t Read?” (1997), Larissa MacFarquhar asserts that Americans are
reading more than ever despite claims to the contrary and that it is time to reconsider why we value reading so

much, especially certain kinds of “high culture” reading. MacFarquhar supports her claims about American

reading habits with facts and statistics that compare past and present reading practices, and she challenges

common assumptions by raising questions about reading’s instrisic value. Her purpose is to dispel certain myths

about reading in order to raise new and more important questions about the value of reading and other media in

our culture. She seems to have a young, hip, somewhat irreverent audience in mind because her tone is sarcastic,

and she suggests that the ideas she opposes are old-fashioned positions.

E. Douglas Park, in his essay “Audiences” (1994), suggests that teaching audience is an essential but
elusive aspect of teaching writing. Park develops this idea by exploring different definitions of audience,

looking at how a text itself can delineate audience, and then discussing specific strategies writers can use

to create contexts for audience. His purpose is to help teachers of writing understand and teach the

different aspects of audience in order that they can help students improve the sense of audience in their

writing. Park establishes an informal relationship with teachers who are interested in strengthening their

students’ weak writing.

The Rhetorical Précis Cont’—a Breakdown of B (see previous page)

SENTENCE 1 – include the following:

 the name of author,

 a phrase describing the author (optional),

 the type and title of work, the date of work (inserted in
parentheses),

 a rhetorically accurate verb (such as “assert,” “argue,”
“suggest,” “imply,” “claim,” etc.) that describes what the

author is doing in the text,

 a THAT clause in which you state the major assertion
(thesis statement/claim) of the author’s text.

EXAMPLE:

Toni Morrison, a well-known

scholar in the humanities, in

her essay, “Disturbing

Nurses and the Kindness of

Sharks,” implies THAT

racism in the United States

has affected the craft and

process of American

novelists.

SENTENCE 2 : An explanation of how the author develops

and/or supports the thesis (for instance, comparing and

contrasting, defining, narrating, illustrating, defining, using

humor or sarcasm, relating personal experience, depending on

facts /statistics /opinion, etc.). Consider the author’s

organization, use of evidence, and/or strategies used to

construct his/her argument. Your explanation is usually

presented in the same chronological order that the items of

support are presented in the work.

EXAMPLE:

Morrison supports her

implication by describing

how Ernest Hemingway

writes about black characters

and by illustrating his

strategies for plot

development seen within his

novels and short stories.

SENTENCE 3: A statement of the

author’s apparent purpose, followed by

an IN ORDER TO phrase in which you

explain what the author wants the

audience to do or feel as a result of

reading the work.

EXAMPLE:

Her purpose is to make her readers aware of the cruel

reality of racism underlying some of the greatest

works of American literature IN ORDER TO help

them examine the far-reaching effects racism has not

only on those discriminated against but also on those

who discriminate.

SENTENCE 4: A description of the

intended audience and the relationship

the author establishes with the
audience.

EXAMPLE:

She establishes a formal and highly analytical tone

with her audience of racially-mixed, theoretically-

sophisticated readers and critical interpreters of
American literature.

Additional Templates for the Rhetorical Précis (Don’t always sound the same)

Provided below are three templates you can refer to when using the rhetorical précis form. You

should use these for guidance, but use your best judgment about how to form sentences

appropriate to the text and/or author you write about.

1. (Author’s credentials), (author’s first and last name), in his/her (type of text), (title of text),
published in (publishing info), addresses the topic of (topic of text) and argues that

(argument).

2. S/he supports this claim by___________, then___________, and finally____________.

3. (Author’s last name)’s purpose is to (author’s purpose in writing) in order to (change in
reader/society the author wants to achieve).

4. He/she adopts a(n) __________ tone for his/her audience, the readers of (publication)
and others interested in the topic of______________.

1. In the (type of text), (title of text) ((year)), author (author’s first and last name), (author’s
credentials), asserts that (argument) and suggests (explanation of sub-claims or

resolution).

2. S/he backs up this claim by doing the following: first, s/he ; next, s/he
; last, s/he .

3. (Author’s last name) appears to write in hopes of (author’s purpose in writing) in order
to (change in reader/society the author wants to achieve.

4. Because of the author’s tone, it seems as if s/he writes for a and
audience.

1. In his/her (type of text) (title of text) ((year)), (author’s credentials) (author’s first and last
name) asserts that (argument) by addressing , , and

.

2. By supplying the reader with information about and ,
(author’s last name) builds his/her claims about .

3. (Author’s name) wishes to convey to readers the importance of (author’s purpose in
writing) in order to (change in reader/society the author wants to achieve).

4. The author’s audience likely consists of those interested in as is
evident through his/her references to and ; s/he addresses

readers with a tone that is and .

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

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  last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who

lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone

since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about

her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than
adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

Story by Jean M. Twenge

SEPTEMBER 2017 ISSUE TECHNOLOGY

Jasu Hu

Subscribe

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friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked,

recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-

free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied.

“We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have

to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30

minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and

her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens

of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline

with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send

pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their

Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with

each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of

friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using

her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone

in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We

didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like

our phones more than we like actual people.”

I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a

22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that

come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs

and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for

instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been

increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had

grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and

valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The

gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and

many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to

disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the

1930s—I had never seen anything like it.

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The allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds

less sway over today’s teens.

At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several

years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren’t just in degree, but in

kind. The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was

in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in

their views but in how they spend their time. The experiences they have every

day are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a

few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after

the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker

effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was

exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a

smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

  I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and

the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became

that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the

concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and

2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an

Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time

before the internet. The Millennials grew up with the web as well, but it wasn’t

ever-present in their lives, at hand at all times, day and night. iGen’s oldest

members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced, in 2007, and

high-school students when the iPad entered the scene, in 2010. A 2017 survey of

more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone.

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by

hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of “screen time.” But the impact of

these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual

concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has

radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social

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I

interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in

every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear

among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and

small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their

smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem

foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb

to nostalgia for the way things used to be; it’s to understand how they are now.

Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both.

More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens are

physically safer than teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into

a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are

less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates

of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an

exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health

crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

Even when a seismic event—a war, a technological leap, a free concert in the

mud—plays an outsize role in shaping a group of young people, no single factor

ever defines a generation. Parenting styles continue to change, as do school

curricula and culture, and these things matter. But the twin rise of the

smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not

seen in a very long time, if ever. There is compelling evidence that the devices

we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives—

and making them seriously unhappy.

   1970s, the photographer Bill Yates shot a series of portraits at

the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in Tampa, Florida. In one, a shirtless

teen stands with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps stuck in the

waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks no older than 12 poses with

a cigarette in his mouth. The rink was a place where kids could get away from

their parents and inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink,

smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-and-white, the

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adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates’s camera with the self-confidence born of

making your own choices—even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn’t

think they were the right ones.

Fifteen years later, during my own teenage years as a member of Generation X,

smoking had lost some of its romance, but independence was definitely still in.

My friends and I plotted to get our driver’s license as soon as we could, making

DMV appointments for the day we turned 16 and using our newfound freedom

to escape the confines of our suburban neighborhood. Asked by our parents,

“When will you be home?,” we replied, “When do I have to be?”

But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less

sway over today’s teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their

parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often

than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009.

Today’s teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen

Xers called “liking” (as in “Ooh, he likes you!”), kids now call “talking”—an

ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After

two teens have “talked” for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56

percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen

Xers, the number was about 85 percent.

The decline in dating tracks with a decline in sexual activity. The drop is the

sharpest for ninth-graders, among whom the number of sexually active teens has

been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991. The average teen now has had sex for

the first time by the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen

Xer. Fewer teens having sex has contributed to what many see as one of the most

positive youth trends in recent years: The teen birth rate hit an all-time low in

2016, down 67 percent since its modern peak, in 1991.

Even driving, a symbol of adolescent freedom inscribed in American popular

culture, from Rebel Without a Cause to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, has lost its appeal

for today’s teens. Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver’s

license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still

lack one at the end of high school. For some, Mom and Dad are such good

chauffeurs that there’s no urgent need to drive. “My parents drove me everywhere

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and never complained, so I always had rides,” a 21-year-old student in San Diego

told me. “I didn’t get my license until my mom told me I had to because she

could not keep driving me to school.” She finally got her license six months after

her 18th birthday. In conversation after conversation, teens described getting

their license as something to be nagged into by their parents—a notion that

would have been unthinkable to previous generations.

Independence isn’t free—you need some money in your pocket to pay for gas, or

for that bottle of schnapps. In earlier eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager

to finance their freedom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a

dollar. But iGen teens aren’t working (or managing their own money) as much.

In the late 1970s, 77 percent of high-school seniors worked for pay during the

school year; by the mid-2010s, only 55 percent did. The number of eighth-

graders who work for pay has been cut in half. These declines accelerated during

the Great Recession, but teen employment has not bounced back, even though

job availability has.

Of course, putting off the responsibilities of adulthood is not an iGen

innovation. Gen Xers, in the 1990s, were the first to postpone the traditional

markers of adulthood. Young Gen Xers were just about as likely to drive, drink

alcohol, and date as young Boomers had been, and more likely to have sex and

get pregnant as teens. But as they left their teenage years behind, Gen Xers

married and started careers later than their Boomer predecessors had.

Gen X managed to stretch adolescence beyond all previous limits: Its members

started becoming adults earlier and finished becoming adults later. Beginning

with Millennials and continuing with iGen, adolescence is contracting again—

but only because its onset is being delayed. Across a range of behaviors—

drinking, dating, spending time unsupervised— 18-year-olds now act more like

15-year-olds used to, and 15-year-olds more like 13-year-olds. Childhood now

stretches well into high school.

Why are today’s teens waiting longer to take on both the responsibilities and the

pleasures of adulthood? Shifts in the economy, and parenting, certainly play a

role. In an information economy that rewards higher education more than early

work history, parents may be inclined to encourage their kids to stay home and

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study rather than to get a part-time job. Teens, in turn, seem to be content with

this homebody arrangement—not because they’re so studious, but because their

social life is lived on their phone. They don’t need to leave home to spend time

with their friends.

If today’s teens were a generation of grinds, we’d see that in the data. But eighth-,

10th-, and 12th-graders in the 2010s actually spend less time on homework than

Gen X teens did in the early 1990s. (High-school seniors headed for four-year

colleges spend about the same amount of time on homework as their

predecessors did.) The time that seniors spend on activities such as student clubs

and sports and exercise has changed little in recent years. Combined with the

decline in working for pay, this means iGen teens have more leisure time than

Gen X teens did, not less.

So what are they doing with all that time? They are on their phone, in their

room, alone and often distressed.

Jasu Hu
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    of iGen life is that despite spending far more time under the

same roof as their parents, today’s teens can hardly be said to be closer to

their mothers and fathers than their predecessors were. “I’ve seen my

friends with their families—they don’t talk to them,” Athena told me.

“They just say ‘Okay, okay, whatever’ while they’re on their phones. They

don’t pay attention to their family.” Like her peers, Athena is an expert at tuning

out her parents so she can focus on her phone. She spent much of her summer

keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or Snapchat. “I’ve been

on my phone more than I’ve been with actual people,” she said. “My bed has,

like, an imprint of my body.”

In this, too, she is typical. The number of teens who get together with their

friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015;

the decline has been especially steep recently. It’s not only a matter of fewer kids

partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. That’s something

most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor kids and rich kids, C students and

A students. The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local

necking spot—they’ve all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps

and the web.

You might expect that teens spend so much time in these new spaces because it

makes them happy, but most data suggest that it does not. The Monitoring the

Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to

be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions

every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The

survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time

they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person

social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using

social media, texting, and browsing the web. The results could not be clearer:

Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to

be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen

activities are more likely to be happy.

There’s not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness,

and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who

spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say

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they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10

hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social

media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who

use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those

who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20

percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-

average amount of time.

The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are

to report symptoms of depression.

If you were going to give advice for a happy adolescence based on this survey, it

would be straightforward: Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do

something—anything—that does not involve a screen. Of course, these analyses

don’t unequivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it’s possible that

unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent research suggests that screen

time, in particular social-media use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study

asked college students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on their

phone over the course of two weeks. They’d get a text message with a link five

times a day, and report on their mood and how much they’d used Facebook. The

more they’d used Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not

subsequently lead to more Facebook use.

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the

portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated

generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends

in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of

times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more

good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained

high since.

This doesn’t always mean that, on an individual level, kids who spend more time

online are lonelier than kids who spend less time online. Teens who spend more

time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person, on

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average—highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens

are less so. But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on

smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more

common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The

more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report

symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media

increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to

religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk

significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent

more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan.

(That’s much more than the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data

that indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for good and for

bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide

rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have

become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In

2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen

homicide rate.

Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the

only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before

smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take

antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type

most strongly linked to suicide.

’   between smartphones and the apparent

psychological distress this generation is experiencing? For all their

power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the age-

old teen concern about being left out. Today’s teens may go to fewer parties and

spend less time together in person, but when they do congregate, they document

their hangouts relentlessly—on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. Those not

invited to come along are keenly aware of it. Accordingly, the number of teens

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 11/19

who feel left out has reached all-time highs across age groups. Like the increase

in loneliness, the upswing in feeling left out has been swift and significant.

This trend has been especially steep among girls. Forty-eight percent more girls

said they often felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared with 27 percent

more boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them additional

opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or

classmates getting together without them. Social media levy a psychic tax on the

teen doing the posting as well, as she anxiously awaits the affirmation of

comments and likes. When Athena posts pictures to Instagram, she told me, “I’m

nervous about what people think and are going to say. It sometimes bugs me

when I don’t get a certain amount of likes on a picture.”

Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today’s

teens. Boys’ depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015,

while girls’ increased by 50 percent—more than twice as much. The rise in

suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. Although the rate increased for

both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015

as in 2007, compared with twice as many boys. The suicide rate is still higher for

boys, in part because they use more-lethal methods, but girls are beginning to

close the gap.

These more dire consequences for teenage girls could also be rooted in the fact

that they’re more likely to experience cyberbullying. Boys tend to bully one

another physically, while girls are more likely to do so by undermining a victim’s

social status or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls a

platform on which to carry out the style of aggression they favor, ostracizing and

excluding other girls around the clock.

Social-media companies are of course aware of these problems, and to one degree

or another have endeavored to prevent cyberbullying. But their various

motivations are, to say the least, complex. A recently leaked Facebook document

indicated that the company had been touting to advertisers its ability to

determine teens’ emotional state based on their on-site behavior, and even to

pinpoint “moments when young people need a confidence boost.” Facebook

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 12/19

acknowledged that the document was real, but denied that it offers “tools to

target people based on their emotional state.”

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 13/19

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 14/19

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 15/19

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 16/19

I
  ����, a 13-year-old girl in North Texas woke to the smell of

something burning. Her phone had overheated and melted into the sheets.

National news outlets picked up the story, stoking readers’ fears that their

cellphone might spontaneously combust. To me, however, the flaming cellphone

wasn’t the only surprising aspect of the story. Why, I wondered, would anyone

sleep with her phone beside her in bed? It’s not as though you can surf the web

while you’re sleeping. And who could slumber deeply inches from a buzzing

phone?

Curious, I asked my undergraduate students at San Diego State University what

they do with their phone while they sleep. Their answers were a profile in

obsession. Nearly all slept with their phone, putting it under their pillow, on the

mattress, or at the very least within arm’s reach of the bed. They checked social

media right before they went to sleep, and reached for their phone as soon as

they woke up in the morning (they had to—all of them used it as their alarm

clock). Their phone was the last thing they saw before they went to sleep and the

first thing they saw when they woke up. If they woke in the middle of the night,

they often ended up looking at their phone. Some used the language of

addiction. “I know I shouldn’t, but I just can’t help it,” one said about looking at

her phone while in bed. Others saw their phone as an extension of their body—

or even like a lover: “Having my phone closer to me while I’m sleeping is a

comfort.”

It may be a comfort, but the smartphone is cutting into teens’ sleep: Many now

sleep less than seven hours most nights. Sleep experts say that teens should get

about nine hours of sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a

night is significantly sleep deprived. Fifty-seven percent more teens were sleep

deprived in 2015 than in 1991. In just the four years from 2012 to 2015, 22

percent more teens failed to get seven hours of sleep.

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 17/19

T

The increase is suspiciously timed, once again starting around when most teens

got a smartphone. Two national surveys show that teens who spend three or

more hours a day on electronic devices are 28 percent more likely to get less than

seven hours of sleep than those who spend fewer than three hours, and teens who

visit social-media sites every day are 19 percent more likely to be sleep deprived.

A meta-analysis of studies on electronic-device use among children found similar

results: Children who use a media device right before bed are more likely to sleep

less than they should, more likely to sleep poorly, and more than twice as likely

to be sleepy during the day.

I’ve observed my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confidently

swiping her way through an iPad.

Electronic devices and social media seem to have an especially strong ability to

disrupt sleep. Teens who read books and magazines more often than the average

are actually slightly less likely to be sleep deprived—either reading lulls them to

sleep, or they can put the book down at bedtime. Watching TV for several hours

a day is only weakly linked to sleeping less. But the allure of the smartphone is

often too much to resist.

Sleep deprivation is linked to myriad issues, including compromised thinking

and reasoning, susceptibility to illness, weight gain, and high blood pressure. It

also affects mood: People who don’t sleep enough are prone to depression and

anxiety. Again, it’s difficult to trace the precise paths of causation. Smartphones

could be causing lack of sleep, which leads to depression, or the phones could be

causing depression, which leads to lack of sleep. Or some other factor could be

causing both depression and sleep deprivation to rise. But the smartphone, its

blue light glowing in the dark, is likely playing a nefarious role.

   depression and smartphone use are strong

enough to suggest that more parents should be telling their kids to put

down their phone. As the technology writer Nick Bilton has reported, it’s a

policy some Silicon Valley executives follow. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids’ use

of the devices he brought into the world.

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 18/19

What’s at stake isn’t just how kids experience adolescence. The constant presence

of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood. Among people who

suffer an episode of depression, at least half become depressed again later in life.

Adolescence is a key time for developing social skills; as teens spend less time

with their friends face-to-face, they have fewer opportunities to practice them. In

the next decade, we may see more adults who know just the right emoji for a

situation, but not the right facial expression.

I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on

a generation of kids so accustomed to being wired at all times. My three

daughters were born in 2006, 2009, and 2012. They’re not yet old enough to

display the traits of iGen teens, but I have already witnessed firsthand just how

ingrained new media are in their young lives. I’ve observed my toddler, barely

old enough to walk, confidently swiping her way through an iPad. I’ve

experienced my 6-year-old asking for her own cellphone. I’ve overheard my 9-

year-old discussing the latest app to sweep the fourth grade. Prying the phone

out of our kids’ hands will be difficult, even more so than the quixotic efforts of

my parents’ generation to get their kids to turn off MTV and get some fresh air.

But more seems to be at stake in urging teens to use their phone responsibly, and

there are benefits to be gained even if all we instill in our children is the

importance of moderation. Significant effects on both mental health and sleep

time appear after two or more hours a day on electronic devices. The average

teen spends about two and a half hours a day on electronic devices. Some mild

boundary-setting could keep kids from falling into harmful habits.

In my conversations with teens, I saw hopeful signs that kids themselves are

beginning to link some of their troubles to their ever-present phone. Athena told

me that when she does spend time with her friends in person, they are often

looking at their device instead of at her. “I’m trying to talk to them about

something, and they don’t actually look at my face,” she said. “They’re looking at

their phone, or they’re looking at their Apple Watch.” “What does that feel like,

when you’re trying to talk to somebody face-to-face and they’re not looking at

you?,” I asked. “It kind of hurts,” she said. “It hurts. I know my parents’

generation didn’t do that. I could be talking about something super important to

me, and they wouldn’t even be listening.”

2/25/2020 Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ 19/19

Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who was texting her

boyfriend. “I was trying to talk to her about my family, and what was going on,

and she was like, ‘Uh-huh, yeah, whatever.’ So I took her phone out of her hands

and I threw it at my wall.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You play volleyball,” I said. “Do you have a pretty

good arm?” “Yep,” she replied.

This article has been adapted from Jean M. Twenge’s forthcoming book, iGen: Why Today’s

Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and

Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

Related Video

5 8 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 T H E A T L A N T I C

The post-Millennials were raised on the iPhone—
and the eff ects have been seismic. More
comfortable online than out partying, they are
safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been.
But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

H A S T H E S M A R T P H O N E H A S T H E S M A R T P H O N E
D E S T R O Y E D A
G E N E R A T I O N ?

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H A S T H E S M A R T P H O N E H A S T H E S M A R T P H O N E
D E S T R O Y E D A D E S T R O Y E D A D E S T R O Y E D A D E S T R O Y E D A D E S T R O Y E D A
G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ? G E N E R A T I O N ?
D E S T R O Y E D A

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N E D A Y last summer,
around noon, I called
Athena, a 13-year-old
who lives in Houston,
Texas. She answered

her phone—she’s had an iPhone since
she was 11—sounding as if she’d just
woken up. We chatted about her favor-
ite songs and TV shows, and I asked her
what she likes to do with her friends.

“We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your
parents drop you off ?,” I asked, recal l-
ing my own middle-school days, in the
1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free
hours shopping with my friends. “No—I
go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll
go with my mom and brothers and walk
a little behind them. I just have to tell my
mom where we’re going. I have to check
in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—
about once a month. More often, Athena
and her friends spend time together on
their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the
teens of my generation, who might have
spent an evening tying up the family
landline with gossip, they talk on Snap-
chat, the smartphone app that allows
users to send pictures and videos that
quickly disappear. They make sure to
keep up their Snapstreaks, which show
how many days in a row they have Snap-
chatted with each other. Sometimes
they save screenshots of particularly
ridic ulous pictures of friends. “It’s good
blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s
a minor, I’m not using her real name.)
She told me she’d spent most of the
summer hanging out alone in her room
with her phone. That’s just the way her
generation is, she said. “We didn’t have
a choice to know any life without iPads
or iPhones. I think we like our phones
more than we like actual people.”

I’ve been researching generational
diff erences for 25 years, starting when
I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in
psychology. Typically, the character-
istics that come to defi ne a generation
appear gradually, and along a contin-
uum. Beliefs and behaviors that were
already rising simply continue to do so.
Millennials, for instance, are a highly
individualistic generation, but individ-
ualism had been increasing since the
Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and
dropped out. I had grown accustomed
to line graphs of trends that looked like

modest hills and valleys. Then I began
studying Athena’s generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts
in teen behaviors and emotional states.
The gentle slopes of the line graphs be-
came steep mountains and sheer cliff s,
and many of the distinctive characteris-
tics of the Millennial generation began
to disappear. In all my analyses of gen-
erational data—some reaching back to
the 1930s—I had never seen anything
like it.

At first I presumed these might be
blips, but the trends persisted, across
several years and a series of national
surveys. The changes weren’t just in
degree, but in kind. The biggest diff er-
ence between the Millennials and their
predecessors was in how they viewed the
world; teens today diff er from the Mil-
lennials not just in their views but in how
they spend their time. The experiences
they have every day are radically diff er-
ent from those of the generation that
came of age just a few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such
dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after
the Great Recession, which offi cially
lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a
starker effect on Millennials trying to
find a place in a sputtering economy.
But it was exactly the moment when the
proportion of Americans who owned a
smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

T H E M O R E I pored over yearly surveys of teen atti-
tudes and behaviors, and
the more I talked with young

people like Athena, the clearer it became
that theirs is a generation shaped by the
smartphone and by the concomitant rise
of social media. I call them iGen. Born
between 1995 and 2012, members of this
generation are growing up with smart-
phones, have an Instagram account be-
fore they start high school, and do not
remem ber a time before the inter net.
The Millennials grew up with the web as
well, but it wasn’t ever-present in their
lives, at hand at all times, day and night.
iGen’s oldest members were early ado-
lescents when the iPhone was introduced,
in 2007, and high-school students when
the iPad entered the scene, in 2010. A
2017 survey of more than 5,000 Ameri-
can teens found that three out of four
owned an iPhone.

B Y J E A N M . T W E N G E

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASU HU

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Fifteen years later, during my own teenage years as a mem-
ber of Generation X, smoking had lost some of its romance, but
inde pendence was defi nitely still in. My friends and I plotted
to get our driver’s license as soon as we could, making DMV
appoint ments for the day we turned 16 and using our newfound
freedom to escape the confi nes of our suburban neighbor hood.
Asked by our parents, “When will you be home?,” we replied,

“When do I have to be?”
But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous

generations, holds less sway over today’s teens, who are less
likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stun-
ning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-
graders did as recently as 2009.

Today’s teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage
of courtship, which Gen Xers called “liking” (as in “Ooh, he
likes you!”), kids now call “talking”—an ironic choice for a
generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After
two teens have “talked” for a while, they might start dating.
But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went
out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was
about 85 percent.

The decline in dating tracks with
a decline in sexual activity. The drop
is the sharpest for ninth-graders,
among whom the number of sexu-
ally active teens has been cut by
almost 40 percent since 1991. The
average teen now has had sex for
the fi rst time by the spring of 11th
grade, a full year later than the aver-
age Gen Xer. Fewer teens having sex
has contributed to what many see
as one of the most positive youth
trends in recent years: The teen
birth rate hit an all-time low in 2016,
down 67 percent since its modern
peak, in 1991.

Even driving, a symbol of adoles-
cent freedom inscribed in American
popular culture, from Rebel Without
a Cause to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,
has lost its appeal for today’s teens.

Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver’s
license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four
teens today still lack one at the end of high school. For some,
Mom and Dad are such good chauff eurs that there’s no urgent
need to drive. “My parents drove me everywhere and never
complained, so I always had rides,” a 21-year-old student in
San Diego told me. “I didn’t get my license until my mom told
me I had to because she could not keep driving me to school.”
She fi nal ly got her license six months after her 18th birthday. In
conversation after conversation, teens described getting their
license as something to be nagged into by their parents—a notion
that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.

Independence isn’t free—you need some money in your
pocket to pay for gas, or for that bottle of schnapps. In earlier
eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager to fi nance their free-
dom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a dollar.
But iGen teens aren’t working (or managing their own money)
as much. In the late 1970s, 77 percent of high-school seniors

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was
followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious ef-
fects of “screen time.” But the impact of these devices has not
been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns
about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone
has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the
nature of their social inter actions to their mental health. These
changes have aff ected young people in every corner of the na-
tion and in every type of household. The trends appear among
teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, sub-
urbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are
teens living their lives on their smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adoles-
cence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of gen-
erational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for
the way things used to be; it’s to understand how they are now.
Some generational changes are positive, some are negative,
and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than
in a car or at a party, today’s teens are physically safer than
teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into
a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their
predecessors, are less susceptible to
drinking’s attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they
are more vulnerable than Millenni-
als were: Rates of teen depression
and suicide have skyrocketed since
2011. It’s not an exaggeration to
describe iGen as being on the brink
of the worst mental-health crisis in
decades. Much of this deterioration
can be traced to their phones.

Even when a seismic event—a
war, a technological leap, a free con-
cert in the mud—plays an outsize role
in shaping a group of young people,
no single factor ever defi nes a gen-
eration. Parenting styles continue to
change, as do school curricula and
culture, and these things matter. But
the twin rise of the smartphone and
social media has caused an earth-
quake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time, if ever.
There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed
in young people’s hands are having profound eff ects on their
lives—and making them seriously unhappy.

I

N T H E E A R LY 1970s, the photographer Bill Yates

shot a series of portraits at the Sweetheart Roller Skat-
ing Rink in Tampa, Florida. In one, a shirtless teen
stands with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps

stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks
no older than 12 poses with a cigarette in his mouth. The rink
was a place where kids could get away from their parents and
inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink,
smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-
and-white, the adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates’s camera
with the self-confi dence born of making your own choices—
even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn’t think they
were the right ones.

T H E A L L U R E O F
I N D E P E N D E N C E ,
S O P O W E R F U L
T O P R E V I O U S
G E N E R A T I O N S , H O L D S
L E S S S W A Y O V E R
T O D A Y ’ S T E E N S .

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I

T H E A L L U R E O F T H E A L L U R E O F
I N D E P E N D E N C E , I N D E P E N D E N C E ,
S O P O W E R F U L S O P O W E R F U L
T O P R E V I O U S T O P R E V I O U S
G E N E R A T I O N S , H O L D S G E N E R A T I O N S , H O L D S
L E S S S W A Y O V E R L E S S S W A Y O V E R
T O D A Y ’ S T E E N S .T O D A Y ’ S T E E N S .

stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks

N T H E E A R LY 1970s, the photographer Bill Yates

6 2 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 T H E A T L A N T I C

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6 2 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 T H E A T L A N T I C

T H E S M A R T P H O N E G E N E R A T I O N :
A S T A T I S T I C A L P O R T R A I T

The constant presence of the internet, particularly social media, is
changing the behavior and attitudes of today’s teens.

Not Hanging Out With Friends
Times per week teenagers go out without their parents

Percentage of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders who
get less than seven hours of sleep most nights

Less Likely to Get Enough Sleep

201520102005200019951991

45%

40%

35%

30%

25%

20152010200520001995199019851980197

6

2.7

2.9

2.

5

2.

3

2.1

1.9

— 12th-graders
— 10th-graders

— 8th-graders

In No Rush to Drive

Percentage of 12th-graders who drive

201520102005200019951990198519801976

85%

90%

80%

75%

70%

— Drove at all in the past year
— Have a driver’s license

Percentage of teenagers who ever go out on dates

Less Dating …

201520102005200019951990198519801976
80%
90%
70%

60%

50%

40%
30%
— 12th-graders
— 10th-graders
— 8th-graders

1
–

3
,

5
–

6
:

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4

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.

2007 – iPhone released

2007 – iPhone released
2007 – iPhone released
2007 – iPhone released
2007 – iPhone released

Percentage of high-school students who have ever had sex
… And Less Sex

201520102005200019951991
30%

20%

40%
50%
60%
70%
— 12th-graders
— 10th-graders

— 11th-graders
— 9th-graders

Percentage of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders who agree or mostly agree with
the statement “I often feel left out of things” or “A lot of times I feel lonely”

More Likely to Feel Lonely

201520102005200019951991

28%

26%

30%

32%

34%

24%

22%

20%

— Often feel left out
— Often feel lonely

2007 – iPhone released
1
3
5

2

4
6

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A S T A T I S T I C A L P O R T R A I TA S T A T I S T I C A L P O R T R A I T

Not Hanging Out With Friends Not Hanging Out With Friends

Less Likely to Get Enough SleepLess Likely to Get Enough Sleep

201520102005200020001995199519911991

201520152010201020052005200020001995199519901990198519851980198019761976

In No Rush to Drive
Less Dating …

2015201020052005200020001995199519901990198519851980198019761976

… And Less Sex… And Less Sex

201520152010201020052005200020001995199519911991

More Likely to Feel LonelyMore Likely to Feel Lonely

201520152010201020052005200020001995199519911991

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S P E N D L O O K I N G A T
S C R E E N S , T H E M O R E
L I K E L Y T H E Y A R E T O
R E P O R T S Y M P T O M S
O F D E P R E S S I O N .

worked for pay during the school year; by the mid-2010s, only
55 percent did. The number of eighth-graders who work for
pay has been cut in half. These declines accelerated during the
Great Recession, but teen employment has not bounced back,
even though job availability has.

Of course, putting off the responsibilities of adulthood
is not an iGen innovation. Gen Xers, in the 1990s, were the
fi rst to postpone the traditional markers of adulthood. Young
Gen Xers were just about as likely to drive, drink alcohol, and
date as young Boomers had been, and more likely to have sex
and get pregnant as teens. But as they left their teenage years
behind, Gen Xers married and started careers later than their
Boomer predecessors had.

Gen X managed to stretch adolescence beyond all previ-
ous limits: Its members started becoming adults earlier and
fi nished becoming adults later. Beginning with Millennials
and continuing with iGen, adolescence is contracting again—
but only because its onset is being delayed. Across a range of
behaviors— drinking, dating, spending time unsupervised—
18-year-olds now act more like 15-year-olds used to, and
15-year-olds more like 13-year-olds. Childhood now stretches
well into high school.

Why are today’s teens waiting
longer to take on both the respon-
sibilities and the pleasures of adult-
hood? Shifts in the economy, and
parenting, certainly play a role.
In an information economy that
rewards higher education more
than early work history, parents
may be inclined to encourage their
kids to stay home and study rather
than to get a part-time job. Teens,
in turn, seem to be content with
this homebody arrangement— not
because they’re so studious, but
because their social life is lived
on their phone. They don’t need
to leave home to spend time with
their friends.

If today’s teens were a genera-
tion of grinds, we’d see that in the
data. But eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders in the 2010s actu-
ally spend less time on homework than Gen X teens did in the
early 1990s. (High-school seniors headed for four-year col-
leges spend about the same amount of time on homework as
their predecessors did.) The time that seniors spend on activi-
ties such as student clubs and sports and exercise has changed
little in recent years. Combined with the decline in working for
pay, this means iGen teens have more leisure time than Gen X
teens did, not less.

So what are they doing with all that time? They are on their
phone, in their room, alone and often distressed.

O N E O F T H E I R O N I E S of iGen life is that despite spending far more time under the same roof as
their parents, today’s teens can hardly be said to
be closer to their mothers and fathers than their

predecessors were. “I’ve seen my friends with their families—
they don’t talk to them,” Athena told me. “They just say ‘Okay,

okay, whatever’ while they’re on their phones. They don’t pay
attention to their family.” Like her peers, Athena is an expert at
tuning out her parents so she can focus on her phone. She spent
much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of
it was over text or Snapchat. “I’ve been on my phone more than
I’ve been with actual people,” she said. “My bed has, like, an
imprint of my body.”

In this, too, she is typical. The number of teens who get
together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more
than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been
especially steep recently. It’s not only a matter of fewer kids
partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out.
That’s something most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor
kids and rich kids, C students and A students. The roller rink,
the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot—
they’ve all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through
apps and the web.

You might expect that teens spend so much time in these
new spaces because it makes them happy, but most data sug-
gest that it does not. The Monitoring the Future survey, funded
by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be

nationally representative, has asked
12th-graders more than 1,000 ques-
tions every year since 1975 and que-
ried eighth- and 10th-graders since
1991. The survey asks teens how
happy they are and also how much
of their leisure time they spend on
various activi ties, includ ing non-
screen activities such as in-person
social inter action and exercise, and,
in recent years, screen activities such
as using social media, texting, and
browsing the web. The results could
not be clearer: Teens who spend
more time than average on screen
activities are more likely to be un-
happy, and those who spend more
time than average on nonscreen
acti vities are more likely to be happy.

There’s not a single exception.
All screen activities are linked to less

happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more hap-
piness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on
social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy
than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly,
10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a
week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they
are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The
opposite is true of in-person inter actions. Those who spend an
above-average amount of time with their friends in person are
20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who
hang out for a below-average amount of time.

If you were going to give advice for a happy adolescence
based on this survey, it would be straightforward: Put down the
phone, turn off the laptop, and do something—anything—that
does not involve a screen. Of course, these analyses don’t un-
equivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it’s pos-
sible that unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent
research suggests that screen time, in particular social-media

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T H E M O R E T I M E T E E N S
S P E N D L O O K I N G A T S P E N D L O O K I N G A T
S C R E E N S , T H E M O R E S C R E E N S , T H E M O R E
L I K E L Y T H E Y A R E T O L I K E L Y T H E Y A R E T O
R E P O R T S Y M P T O M S R E P O R T S Y M P T O M S
O F D E P R E S S I O N .O F D E P R E S S I O N .

OO

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This trend has been especially steep among girls. Forty-
eight percent more girls said they often felt left out in 2015 than
in 2010, compared with 27 percent more boys. Girls use social
media more often, giving them additional opportunities to feel
excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates
getting together without them. Social media levy a psychic tax
on the teen doing the posting as well, as she anxiously awaits
the affirmation of comments and likes. When Athena posts
pictures to Instagram, she told me, “I’m nervous about what
people think and are going to say. It sometimes bugs me when
I don’t get a certain amount of likes on a picture.”

Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive
symptoms among today’s teens. Boys’ depressive symp-
toms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls’
increased by 50 percent—more than twice as much. The rise
in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. Although the
rate increased for both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-
year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, compared
with twice as many boys. The suicide rate is still higher for
boys, in part because they use more-lethal methods, but girls
are begin ning to close the gap.

These more dire consequences for teenage girls could also be
rooted in the fact that they’re more likely to experience cyber-
bullying. Boys tend to bully one another physically, while girls
are more likely to do so by undermining a victim’s social status
or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls
a platform on which to carry out the style of aggression they
favor, ostracizing and excluding other girls around the clock.

Social-media companies are of course aware of these
problems, and to one degree or another have endeavored to
prevent cyber bullying. But their various motivations are, to
say the least, complex. A recently leaked Facebook document
indicated that the company had been touting to advertisers
its ability to determine teens’ emotional state based on their
on-site behavior, and even to pinpoint “moments when young
people need a confidence boost.” Facebook acknowledged that
the document was real, but denied that it offers “tools to target
people based on their emotional state.”

I

n J u ly 2 0 1 4 , a 13-year-old girl in North Texas woke

to the smell of something burning. Her phone had
overheated and melted into the sheets. National news
outlets picked up the story, stoking readers’ fears that

their cellphone might spontaneously combust. To me, how-
ever, the flaming cellphone wasn’t the only surprising aspect
of the story. Why, I wondered, would anyone sleep with her phone
beside her in bed? It’s not as though you can surf the web while
you’re sleeping. And who could slumber deeply inches from a
buzzing phone?

Curious, I asked my undergraduate students at San Diego
State University what they do with their phone while they sleep.
Their answers were a profile in obsession. Nearly all slept with
their phone, putting it under their pillow, on the mattress, or
at the very least within arm’s reach of the bed. They checked
social media right before they went to sleep, and reached for
their phone as soon as they woke up in the morning (they had
to—all of them used it as their alarm clock). Their phone was the
last thing they saw before they went to sleep and the first thing
they saw when they woke up. If they woke in the middle of the
night, they often ended up looking at their phone. Some used the

use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study asked college
students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on
their phone over the course of two weeks. They’d get a text
message with a link five times a day, and report on their mood
and how much they’d used Facebook. The more they’d used
Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not
subsequently lead to more Facebook use.

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect
us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the
data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit
social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person
less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements

“A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and
“I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneli-

ness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.
This doesn’t always mean that, on an individual level, kids

who spend more time online are lonelier than kids who spend
less time online. Teens who spend more time on social media
also spend more time with their friends in person, on average—
highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less
social teens are less so. But at the generational level, when
teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on
in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities
is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens,
the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression.
Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase
their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play
sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more
than the average teen cut their risk significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic
devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for sui-
cide, such as making a suicide plan. (That’s much more than
the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data that
indirectly but stunningly captures kids’ growing isolation, for
good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens
has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have
started spending less time together, they have become less
likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves.
In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was
higher than the teen homicide rate.

Depression and suicide have many causes; too much tech-
nology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate
was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed.
Then again, about four times as many Americans now take
antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe
depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide.

W h a t ’ s t h e c o n n e c t i o n between smart-phones and the apparent psychological distress
this generation is experiencing? For all their
power to link kids day and night, social media

also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out.
Today’s teens may go to fewer parties and spend less time
togeth er in person, but when they do congregate, they document
their hangouts relentlessly— on Snapchat, Insta gram, Facebook.
Those not invited to come along are keenly aware of it. Accord-
ingly, the number of teens who feel left out has reached all-time
highs across age groups. Like the increase in loneliness, the up-
swing in feeling left out has been swift and significant.

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also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out.

their cellphone might spontaneously combust. To me, how

n J u ly 2 0 1 4 , a 13-year-old girl in North Texas woke

T H E A T L A N T I C S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 6 5

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language of addiction. “I know I shouldn’t, but I just can’t help
it,” one said about looking at her phone while in bed. Others saw
their phone as an extension of their body—or even like a lover:

“Having my phone closer to me while I’m sleeping is a comfort.”
It may be a comfort, but the smartphone is cutting into

teens’ sleep: Many now sleep less than seven hours most nights.
Sleep experts say that teens should get about nine hours of
sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a night
is signifi cantly sleep deprived. Fifty-seven percent more teens
were sleep deprived in 2015 than in 1991. In just the four years
from 2012 to 2015, 22 percent more teens failed to get seven
hours of sleep.

The increase is suspiciously timed, once again starting
around when most teens got a smartphone. Two national sur-
veys show that teens who spend three or more hours a day on
electronic devices are 28 percent more likely to get less than
seven hours of sleep than those who spend fewer than three
hours, and teens who visit social-media sites every day are
19 percent more likely to be sleep deprived. A meta-analysis of
studies on electronic-device use among children found similar
results: Children who use a media device right before bed are
more likely to sleep less than they should, more likely to sleep
poorly, and more than twice as likely
to be sleepy during the day.

Electronic devices and social
media seem to have an especially
strong ability to disrupt sleep.
Teens who read books and maga-
zines more often than the average
are actual ly slightly less likely to
be sleep deprived— either reading
lulls them to sleep, or they can put
the book down at bedtime. Watch-
ing TV for several hours a day is
only weakly linked to sleeping less.
But the allure of the smartphone is
often too much to resist.

Sleep deprivation is linked to
myriad issues, including compro-
mised thinking and reasoning, sus-
ceptibility to illness, weight gain,
and high blood pressure. It also
aff ects mood: People who don’t sleep enough are prone to
depres sion and anxiety. Again, it’s diffi cult to trace the precise
paths of causation. Smartphones could be causing lack of sleep,
which leads to depression, or the phones could be causing
depres sion, which leads to lack of sleep. Or some other factor
could be causing both depression and sleep deprivation to rise.
But the smartphone, its blue light glowing in the dark, is likely
playing a nefarious role.

T H E C O R R E L A T I O N S B E T W E E N depression and smartphone use are strong enough to suggest
that more parents should be telling their kids to
put down their phone. As the technology writer

Nick Bilton has reported, it’s a policy some Silicon Valley exec-
utives follow. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids’ use of the de-
vices he brought into the world.

What’s at stake isn’t just how kids experience adolescence.
The constant presence of smartphones is likely to aff ect them

well into adulthood. Among people who suff er an episode of
depression, at least half become depressed again later in life.
Adolescence is a key time for developing social skills; as teens
spend less time with their friends face-to-face, they have fewer
opportunities to practice them. In the next decade, we may see
more adults who know just the right emoji for a situation, but
not the right facial expression.

I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic
demand to impose on a generation of kids so accustomed to
being wired at all times. My three daughters were born in 2006,
2009, and 2012. They’re not yet old enough to display the traits
of iGen teens, but I have already witnessed fi rsthand just how
ingrained new media are in their young lives. I’ve observed
my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confi dently swiping her
way through an iPad. I’ve experienced my 6-year-old asking
for her own cellphone. I’ve overheard my 9-year-old discuss-
ing the latest app to sweep the fourth grade. Prying the phone
out of our kids’ hands will be diffi cult, even more so than the
quixotic eff orts of my parents’ generation to get their kids to
turn off MTV and get some fresh air. But more seems to be at
stake in urging teens to use their phone responsibly, and there
are benefi ts to be gained even if all we instill in our children

is the importance of moderation.
Signifi cant eff ects on both mental
health and sleep time appear after
two or more hours a day on elec-
tronic devices. The average teen
spends about two and a half hours
a day on electronic devices. Some
mild boundary- setting could keep
kids from falling into harmful habits.

In my conversations with teens,
I saw hopeful signs that kids them-
selves are beginning to link some of
their troubles to their ever- present
phone. Athena told me that when
she does spend time with her
friends in person, they are often
looking at their device instead of
at her. “I’m trying to talk to them
about something, and they don’t
actually look at my face,” she said.

“They’re looking at their phone, or they’re looking at their
Apple Watch.” “What does that feel like, when you’re trying
to talk to somebody face-to-face and they’re not looking at
you?,” I asked. “It kind of hurts,” she said. “It hurts. I know
my parents’ generation didn’t do that. I could be talking about
something super important to me, and they wouldn’t even
be listening.”

Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who
was texting her boyfriend. “I was trying to talk to her about my
family, and what was going on, and she was like, ‘Uh-huh, yeah,
whatever.’ So I took her phone out of her hands and I threw it
at my wall.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You play volleyball,” I said. “Do
you have a pretty good arm?” “Yep,” she replied.

Jean M. Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State
University. This article has been adapted from her book iGen,
published by Atria Books in August.

I ’ V E O B S E R V E D M Y
T O D D L E R , B A R E L Y O L D
E N O U G H T O W A L K ,
C O N F I D E N T L Y S W I P I N G
H E R W A Y T H R O U G H
A N I P A D .

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I ’ V E O B S E R V E D M Y
T O D D L E R , B A R E L Y O L D
E N O U G H T O W A L K ,
C O N F I D E N T L Y S W I P I N G C O N F I D E N T L Y S W I P I N G
H E R W A Y T H R O U G H H E R W A Y T H R O U G H
A N I P A D . A N I P A D .

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