In our house, getting a driver’s license prompts another big teen milestone: A first smartphone. We’ve followed Rule #4 in my book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World that first phones are basic phones, not smartphones. That meant our 14-year-old and 16-year-old had phones designed for kids – an Android phone with built-in parental controls and no way to download social media, gambling, or AI companion apps. But once a teen gets her license, Rule #5 (first smartphone with the driver’s license) kicks in, and she gets the smartphone. My daughter insisted we go to the AT&T store within minutes of coming home after passing the driver’s test.

But I wasn’t just going to hand her the smartphone and hope for the best. Driver’s license or not, she’s still a teen and needs some guardrails. The process of setting up an iPhone for a teen is not as easy as I was hoping it would be, so I’m sharing what I learned in case it’s helpful to other parents. Since these are device-based controls, not a dashboard you control from your own device, you’ll need your teen’s brand-new phone for a few hours to set it up. The good news is it’s free, since the controls are built into the device. Here are the steps you might consider:

1. Downtime at night. If you don’t want your teen playing games or watching Netflix on their phone in the middle of the night, you’ll want to set up Downtime. First, go to the Settings app, then Screen Time, and then Downtime. Toggle on “Scheduled” for every day (I left the default of 10pm to 7am; you can choose different hours, or set different hours for the weekdays vs. weekends). Then go to “Always Allowed” to choose the apps your teen will always have access to, even overnight. Phone calls are automatically always allowed. I also left Maps as always allowed. I deleted Messages (texting) and Facetime from always allowed. If things go well (for example, she always puts her phone downstairs at night), I’ll consider putting these two back in always allowed. For now, they’re only accessible during the day, between 7am and 10pm.

2. Block app downloads. Don’t want your teen downloading TikTok without your permission? Or, even worse, an AI girlfriend? Then you need to block app downloads. Go to Settings, then Under Screen Time, go to Content & Privacy Restrictions and toggle it on. Go to iTunes & App Store Purchases and turn off “Installing Apps.”

3. Set time limits for apps. You can set limits for whole categories (like Games) or for individual apps. I wanted to set limits app by app, and this took me a little bit to figure out -- choose Games (or Entertainment), not the circle next to it, to get to the menu of individual apps. Then click the circle next to the individual app (say, YouTube), click Next, and scroll for the time limit. You’ll want to consider the total time this adds up to. If you’d rather set a total time limit for, say, all Games or all Entertainment, you can do that instead.

4. Block adult websites. Under Screen Time, Content & Privacy Restrictions, and then App Store, Media, Web & Games: Choose the settings appropriate for your kid – for example, you can turn music, podcasts, news, and fitness to “clean” instead of “explicit.” I clicked “don’t allow” for movies and TV shows because I don’t want her watching movies on her phone. Under Apps I chose the age range 16+ (the default is 18+); there are lower age limits as well. Under Web Content, I chose “Limit Adult Websites.” (“Unrestricted” is the default).

5. Lock the passcode. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions, under “Allow Changes to” turn “Passcode & Face ID” to “Don’t allow.” This way your kid can’t change their phone passcode, so you have access to their phone without having to weasel the passcode out of them.

6. Block nude photos. Go to Screen Time, and then Communication Safety to turn on blocking nude photos and videos.

7. Limit who they can communicate with. Under Screen Time, then Communication Limits. Here, you can decide who your kid can get messages and calls from. There’s one section for “During Screen Time” – for our purposes that means during the day. I chose “Contacts & Groups with at least one Contact” here. That means she can communicate with anyone in her contacts and anyone in a group chat with one of her contacts. It blocks single messages from anyone not in her contacts; my thought was this would prevent her from getting unknown number calls and texts. Another section is “During Downtime,” meaning overnight. Emergency numbers are always allowed, and I added the contact for AAA and the numbers of our immediate family here.

8. Set your parental control passcode. Under Screen Time, go to Lock Screen Time Settings. You’ll have to enter your email and the password to your Apple ID (not your email password!) to recover the code if you forget it. This means you need an Apple ID and have to remember your password; make sure you have these before you start. Then you’ll choose a 4-digit number code that you know & your kid doesn’t. This is the most important step – if you don’t set up this code your kid can easily change all of the settings you just set up.

There are lots of other things you can restrict as well. Under Intelligence & Siri, you can block AI “math results” and “writing tools.” For Siri, you can block explicit language.

The whole process took about two hours – twice as long as I anticipated, partially because Apple has expanded their parental controls since our older daughter got her first iPhone. That’s good, but it also means there are a lot of settings I didn’t understand.

And it wasn’t over. A week or so after I’d set up my daughter’s phone, I saw she had TikTok on it, which we had not agreed to. How did she get it when I’d blocked app downloads? She’d gone to the TikTok website and downloaded it there – apparently app downloads are only blocked via the app store, not websites.

[cue primal scream]

So if you want to more completely block kids downloading certain apps, there are three steps you can take:

1. Block specific websites. This setting is pretty hidden, so bear with me. Under Settings, Screen Time, Content & Privacy Restrictions, and then App Store, Media, Web & Games, then Web Content: Click “Limit Adult Websites.” Once you do that, additional menus will appear that say “Always Allow” and “Never Allow.” Click on Add Website and add the URLs of the websites you don’t want your kids to access. That could be social media like Instagram and TikTok, or it could be gambling sites or gaming sites (pornography sites should already be blocked by default). This eliminates the work-around for downloading the associated apps.

2. Disallow apps. Under Screen Time and then Content & Privacy Restrictions, go to Allowed Apps & Features and toggle off the offending apps. You can turn off the web browser (Safari) here if you want to prevent your kid from downloading social media via the web again. Of course then they can’t use the internet with the phone at all, so this might be a step to take temporarily until they regain your trust.

3. Set time limits to zero. Under Screen Time, App Limits, click Add Limit, and then choose the category and then the app by touching the circle; then click next. Then set the time limit to 0 hour, 0 min. This is another step to take if they have already dowloaded an app you didn’t want them to have. Even if they download it again, it won’t work.

At least it shouldn’t. This is the supremely frustrating thing about phones: Kids seem to always find a workaround. This experience made me even more grateful my daughter had a basic phone until now. It also strengthened my view that parents should put off giving their kids smartphones for as long as possible – there are just too many ways kids can do stuff parents don’t want them doing on a smartphone compared to a basic phone.

This experience also highlights why we desperately need more regulation of social media. It just plain should not be this hard to keep kids off social media or other apps and websites. The settings are complicated, and a lot of parents don’t have the time, resources, or fight in them to install them.

But if governments required parental permission for minors to have social media, these issues would go away. Same thing if they required age verification. If the age minimum was 16 and was actually verified, parents could at least postpone this rigamarole for a few years. Or the minimum age for social media could be 18, legal adulthood. After all, what other contract can minors sign other than the social media account disclaimer signing away their data? Seventeen-year-olds need a parent signature to go on a school field trip, but not to use social media.

For now: Please share this post. I’ve made it free from day one because I hope it will help other parents in the same situation. With so little support from government or the social media companies, we parents have to work together to keep our kids safe, happy, and healthy. It’s not fair that this is on us, but, for the most part, it is.

Not completely, of course, but it’s clear they’ve had some impact when the number of teen boys who don’t agree with equal pay for women goes from 12% to 22% (since 2017, with most of that change occurring 2022-2024). In my view, it’s not a coincidence that these attitudes shifted in the age of ubiquitous social media use and the concomitant rise of manosphere and tradwife influencers.

In discussion of the post on X, this comment popped up:

My initial thought was “OK, fine, it’s probably not just time spent – teens could still be influenced by manosphere and tradwife content in an hour or so a day.” An inverse relationship also seemed at least somewhat plausible as I’ve found (with 12^th graders) that more liberal students spend more time on social media. Still, I thought, that might not be true for these particular views around gender … and then I realized: Why speculate when I can go look at the data? And the link between social media use and gender beliefs is an interesting research question.

I used 8th and 10th graders in Monitoring the Future 2018-2024, as the response choices changed for the social media questions in 2018. I looked at hours per day of social media use and the percentage who agreed or mostly agreed that “It is usually better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the family.” The results are separated for boys vs. girls and controlled for grade level (8^th vs. 10^th), race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (mother’s education). Total n was 24,971, so a nice sample size.

So, do heavy social media users have the most progressive views, as Dr. MacDonald posted on X?

They do not – in fact, it’s the opposite. Especially among boys, more social media use means more agreement with rigid gender roles (see Figure 1). And it’s not subtle: Among boys, 43% of the heaviest social media users agree with rigid gender roles, compared to 27% of non-users. That translates to 56% more heavy users (vs. non-users) with traditional views among teen boys.

Figure 1: Percentage of U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders who agree it’s best if the man achieves outside the home and the woman takes care of the family, by hours per day of social media use and gender. Figure shows those who answered agree or mostly agree; data are from 2018-2024 combined. Controlled for race/ethnicity, grade, and socioeconomic status (mother’s education). Source: Data from Monitoring the Future analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

The association is not as strong among girls, but even there the heaviest social media users are 36% more likely to hold traditional views than non-users.

Thus: heavy social media users have the least progressive views, not the most progressive views as Dr. MacDonald claimed.

I’m not sure why he got this wrong. Maybe he thought the item was scored in the other direction? He did say he was looking at only the 2023 and 2024 data, but the pattern looks the same even with only those two years. Or perhaps he didn’t separate the data by sex or control for it. That’s essential, as girls spend more time on social media and are less likely to agree with this question.

So, assuming the graph above is instead correct, what does this mean? More social media use is linked to belief in more rigid and traditional gender roles, supporting the theory that time spent on social media is associated with more traditional views of men and women’s roles. It seems likely that a combination of more hours on social media plus more manosphere and tradwife content is at least partially behind the rise in support for more rigid gender roles.

The more linear and larger association among boys deserves exploring. Perhaps hours per day has a stronger influence on boys’ exposure to the manosphere and tradwife culture than it does for girls, who might be consuming other types of content more often. This is the opposite of what we usually see with social media and mental health, where effects for girls are larger than for boys. Perhaps hours per day on social media has a bigger impact on girls’ mental health and on boys’ beliefs, especially gender role beliefs.

Another conclusion: Don’t believe everything you read on X.

Then, from the late 1960s to the 1980s, the number of women business leaders, TV reporters, lawyers, professors, engineers, and doctors shot upward. For several decades, half of newly minted doctors and lawyers have been women.

Laws and attitudes have followed suit. Equal pay for equal work is the law, and rejection of rigid gender roles skyrocketed among American adults between the 1970s and the early 2020s (see Figure 3.22 in Generations).

Questions about equal pay and gender roles have also been asked of teens – specifically, of 8^th and 10^th graders (ages 13 to 16) from 1991 to 2024. My colleagues and I had previously found that 12^th graders’ attitudes toward women working had gotten more positive between the 1970s and 2013. But a lot has changed, culturally and politically, since then. For one thing, 13- to 16-year-olds are often immersed in social media, some of them in the so-called manosphere promoting traditional gender roles (often along with a heavy dose of misogyny; last year, the Netflix movie Adolescence did an excellent job showing the impact of manosphere influencers on young males). Both Trump’s first term (2017-2021) and second term (2025-present) have coincided with a rightward shift in the country. Still, political shifts don’t always show up in real people’s attitudes, and even in this environment it would be surprising if teens were questioning the idea that women should be paid equally for the same work.

But they are.

Or at least more are. Monitoring the Future asks 8^th and 10^th graders if they agree or disagree with the statement “Men and women should be paid the same money if they do the same work.” From 1991 to 2019, only about 12 to 13% of boys did not agree that women should be paid equally for their work. Then that began to rise. By 2024, the most recent data we have, 22% of boys – more than 1 out of 5 -- did not agree that women should be paid equally for doing the same work as men. That’s an all-time high in the four-decade history of the survey (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percent of U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders who do not agree that women should be paid equally for the same work, by gender, 1991-2024. Figure shows those who answered disagree, mostly disagree, or neither. Source: Data from Monitoring the Future analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

In contrast, only about 5% of teen girls don’t agree women should be paid equally, with no consistent changes over the years.

Teens are also asked if they agree that “A woman should have exactly the same job opportunities as a man.” The number of teen boys who did not agree with this statement declined in the 2010s but then nearly doubled between 2018 and 2024, ending at 3 out of 10 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Percent of U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders who do not agree that women should have the same job opportunities as men, by gender, 1991-2024. Figure shows those who answered disagree, mostly disagree, or neither. Source: Data from Monitoring the Future analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Even more stunning, the number of girls who do not agree women should have the same job opportunities as men has also risen – not as much as among boys, but enough to amount to nearly twice as many girls in agreement in 2024 vs. 2018.

Then the changes come home. Teens are also asked if they agree “It is usually better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the family.” This is the kind of rigid gender role division Boomers fought against in the 1970s and Gen X’ers thought they demolished in the 1990s. Previous research up to 2013 found that 12^th graders’ agreement with this statement declined an enormous amount between the 1970s and the 1990s, with agreement starting to creep back up in the 1990s.

What happened after that? Agreement with rigid gender roles increased slightly among 8^th and 10^th graders between the 1990s and 2010s, but then fell from 47% to 32% among boys and from 26% to 13% among girls up to 2021.

Then, in 2023 for boys and 2024 for girls, attitudes suddenly shift again, with 41% of boys and 23% of girls agreeing that it’s best if the man achieves outside the home and the woman takes care of the family (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Percent of U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders who agree it’s best if the man achieves outside the home and the woman takes care of the family, by gender, 1991-2024. Figure shows those who answered agree or mostly agree. Source: Data from Monitoring the Future analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Unlike the questions on women’s pay and job opportunities, here the shift in attitudes among girls is just as large as the shift among boys. By relative statistics, it’s actually larger, with 72% more girls favoring rigid gender roles in 2024 vs. 2021 (for boys, the jump is 29%).

The trend is even more stark if we instead look at agreement and neutrality combined – in other words, those who do not reject rigid gender roles. By 2024, 3 out of 4 boys and half of girls don’t disagree with the idea that it’s best if men are the achievers and women take care of the home and family (see Figure 4). Those numbers are all-time highs in the history of the survey. They’re also sudden changes, shooting up in 2023 and 2024 with a 66% increase among girls and a 22% increase among boys in just three years.

Figure 4: Percent of U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders who do not disagree it’s best if the man achieves outside the home and the woman takes care of the family, by gender, 1991-2024. Figure shows those who answered agree, mostly agree, or neither. Source: Data from Monitoring the Future analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Why the sudden shift? Online discourse on social media is once again a possibility – “tradwife” accounts promoting exactly this type of gender role division suddenly started to gain traction a few years ago. It’s hard to say if tradwife accounts are a symptom or a cause, though. Perhaps attitudes shifted toward more traditional gender roles, which is why tradwife discourse caught on. Or tradwife discourse caught on and then attitudes shifted toward more traditional gender roles. Manosphere content may also have promoted these ideas. That content has been around for longer, making it more likely it’s a cause instead of a symptom.

This increasing support for women stepping back from work occurred at a time when nearly 60% of four-year college degrees go to women. Women’s incomes have been rising faster than men’s for a very long time, partially because more young men are not working. These traditional attitudes, especially those questioning equal pay and job opportunities, could be a backlash reaction to how well young women are doing relative to young men.

At the same time, the cost of buying a first home is very high, usually requiring two earners, not to mention the spiraling cost of groceries, gas, and education. With those realities as a backdrop, tradwife culture is unattainable for many.

But Gen Z and Gen Alpha are tired of the rat race. They’re not willing to put in the hours previous generations did at work, partially because they are pessimistic and don’t expect hard work to get them anywhere. That might be why girls have increased even more in their support of traditional gender roles: being a tradwife means they could opt out of the workplace.

No matter what the cause, these are big changes in a short period of time. Teens’ increasing support for rigid gender roles is both surprising given the ascendence of young women in the workplace and not surprising given the cultural shift toward the traditional and online discourse in the last few years. Whether Gen Z and Gen Alpha will live differently due to this shift in attitudes is unclear – we won’t have a good picture of that until they get older. For now, there’s a growing segment of teens who are apparently done with gender equality, with consequences unknown.

But are younger adults just less likely to identify as non-heterosexual, or are they also less likely to engage in non-heterosexual sexual activity? In other words, are there trends in behavior, or just identity?

One of the few national surveys that has measured sexual activity over time is the General Social Survey (GSS) — it’s asked American adults about the sex of their sex partners since 1988. Unfortunately the survey didn’t ask all of the questions about sexual activity in 2024, but it did ask people whether they had sex with men, women, or both in the last year.

Since the sample sizes of the GSS are smaller than some other national surveys, I broadened the age range for younger adults to 18 to 39 to make sure there were at least ~500 respondents for each year, and thus at least ~250 or more for each sex.

As always, take these results with the caveat that future years will give us a clearer picture of what’s going on.

So what are the trends in non-heterosexual sex among younger adults in the U.S.?

In short: Fewer women are having sex with women in 2024 than just two years before.

Just like the changes in identity, the recent trends in sexual behavior are the most dramatic for women. Non-heterosexual sex (having sex with another woman in the last year) dropped by more than half between 2022 and 2024 among 18- to 39-year-old women in the U.S. Previously, the number of women having sex with women had doubled between 2010 and 2022 (see the red line in Figure 1). So there was a big increase, and then a big decrease.

Figure 1: Percent of U.S. 18- to 39-year-olds who had sex with someone of the same sex in the last year, 1988-2024. Source: General Social Survey; data analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

The recent pattern is less clear for men, with ups and downs but little consistent trend. More men had sex with men between 1988 and 2000, but then those rates declined before coming up again in 2014 and varying between 4% and 6%. The rates never got above 7% as they did for women in 2018 (7.4%), 2021 (9.4%), and 2022 (10.2%).

By 2024, fewer women were having sex with women than men having sex with men, which had not happened since twenty years before in 2004.

Especially with the lower sample sizes, it will be important to get at least another year of data to determine whether this is a blip or part of a new trend. The 2026 GSS is being fielded right now, so we’ll know more next year. For now, it appears the decline in women identifying as bisexual extends to who they’re having sex with as well.

Kaufmann found that identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual was also declining, but most of his sources were college samples. At the time there wasn’t much nationally representative data on sexual orientation for 2024 or 2025, and the little there was had low sample size.

That nationally representative data is now available. So is it true – is identifying as non-heterosexual in decline among American young adults?

The answer appears to be yes, and the changes are even larger among some groups. I drew from the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of U.S. adults administered by the CDC, which gets samples of more than 200,000 people every year. The 2024 data is fully out, and that datafile also has some responses from 2025 (12,000 – much smaller than a full year, but a large sample size compared to many other surveys). The survey asks about sexual orientation with choices of straight, bisexual, gay or lesbian, and “other” or “something else.” (Because those last choices changed over the years, I treated them as missing data).

Among American young adults (ages 18 to 24), identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual – something other than straight or heterosexual – peaked in 2022 at 20%, but then fell to just over 15% by 2025. That’s a 21% decline in just 3 years.

Figure 1: Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (not straight), by age group, U.S. adults, 2014-2025. Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey. NOTE: 2020 data are excluded as data collection was paused for much of the year due to the COVID pandemic. Survey year is interview year in the dataset, not the year of the datafile.

Among 25 to 34-year-olds, identifying as non-heterosexual kept rising until 2024, dropping 20% in 2025. There’s just a slight hint of a decline among 35- to 44-year-olds, and only a whisper of it among those over 45 years old. With only one year of decline among those in their late 20s to early 40s, we’ll need more data to know for sure if the decline will persist. But for now, this is a classic generational shift, with the changes first and largest among the youngest group.

So which identification (lesbian, gay, or bisexual) has changed the most among young adults? It’s definitely identifying as bisexual, especially among young women. This shift drives almost all of the change seen in Figure 1. As recently as 2015, only 8% of U.S. young women identified as bisexual, but by 2022 23% did — the rate nearly tripled in just 7 years. But by 2025, the percentage of young women identifying as bisexual had dropped to less than 18% (see Figure 2). That’s a 23% decline in 3 years. There was also a decline in young men identifying as bisexual, but not until 2025.

Figure 2: Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, by gender, U.S. adults ages 18 to 24, 2014-2025. Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey. NOTE: 2020 data are excluded as data collection was paused for much of the year due to the COVID pandemic. Survey year is interview year in the dataset, not the year of the datafile.

Similar to non-heterosexual identification overall, the percentage of women identifying as bisexual changed the most among the youngest adults, but less and later among those who were older (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: U.S. women identifying as bisexual, by age group, 2014-2025. Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey. NOTE: 2020 data are excluded as data collection was paused for much of the year due to the COVID pandemic. Survey year is interview year in the dataset, not the year of the datafile.

Combined with the data on declining transgender and non-binary identification, this means fewer U.S. adults identified as members of the LGBTQ+ collation in 2024-25 vs. 2021-22. Fewer identify outside the gender binary, and fewer identify as a sexual minority. The cyclical nature of these changes, especially their appearance among the youngest adults, suggests a cultural shift – one that might grow or fade during the coming years.

But what about during school, where teens spend more than 30 hours a week? Those hours, too, are filled with technology. Sometimes that’s for truly educational purposes – they’re working on an essay for English class, reading a science textbook in an online library, or taking notes in class.

But not always. Even school-issued laptops often allow access to YouTube and streaming (like Netflix, Disney+, and Peacock), allowing students to sit in the back of class and watch endless hours of entertainment. Others play games. Personal smartphones are also a huge distraction: A recent analysis found that American teens spend more than an hour using their phones during the school day, and almost none of that time is spent on educational activities. Instead, teens scroll through social media, watch videos, and play games. Some take videos of their peers without permission, or sneak off to the bathroom to watch TikToks.

Thus, teens are spending about 20% of their time at school not focusing on schoolwork or talking to their peers. That may be one reason why standardized test scores in math, reading, and science have declined since 2012 and why students have increasingly reported feeling lonely at school. Electronic devices are both distracting in the classroom and isolating in the lunchroom. What impact does that have on teens’ learning and on their mental health?

In a recent paper, my students and I looked into these issues in the PISA dataset of 15- and 16-year-olds around the world. In 36 countries, students consistently took standardized tests in math, reading, and science between 2006 and 2022. In 2022, they were asked how much time they spent using electronic devices (like phones, tablets, and laptops) for leisure purposes (like social media or entertainment) during the school day. This varied quite a bit across countries, with students in some countries spending hardly any time on devices for leisure during the school day, and others spending an average of more than two hours.

In countries where students spent a lot of time using devices for leisure during the school day, test scores plummeted between 2012 and 2022. In countries where they spent less time, test scores merely slid. Thus there was a significantly larger decline in scores in the countries where students spent more time using devices for fun during school hours (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Scores on standardized tests of math, reading, and science for 15- and 16-year-olds in 36 countries, by low or high use of electronic devices for leisure during the school day. Note: Controlled for GDP per capita. Source: Twenge (2025) using data from PISA.

The consequences of device use aren’t just academic – they are also social and emotional, because device use has displaced students talking to each other during lunch and breaks. In countries where students spend more time using devices for leisure during the school day, the percentage of students who agreed “I often feel lonely at school” rose steeply, with the increase much less pronounced in countries with less leisure device use during school (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Feelings of loneliness at school among 15- and 16-year-olds in 36 countries, by low or high use of electronic devices for leisure during the school day. Note: Controlled for GDP per capita. Source: Twenge (2025) using data from PISA.

These results show the twin impacts of the leisure use of devices during the school day: Declines in test scores and increases in feeling lonely at school. They are another piece of evidence suggesting that schools should restrict students’ use of smartphones from bell to bell – not just during class, but also during lunch, breaks, and passing periods. A school where students are talking to each other is less lonely. I recently visited a school with a bell to bell no phone policy, and students are now talking, playing cards, and “bedazzling” (had to look that up!) with each other instead of being endlessly absorbed in their phones.

Of course, phones are only part of the problem. The next step is to lock down laptops and tablets so they, too, aren’t being used for social media and entertainment during the school day. Or, especially for younger students, it may be time to go back to paper and pencil – old-school, yes, but with the bonus of no binge-watching YouTube videos during chemistry class. Some states are considering bills outlawing or restricting the use of devices for elementary school students — a welcome step.

Sticking with the status quo means lower test scores and more lonely students — not the outcome any of us want.

p.s. I worked with some truly wonderful undergraduates on the PISA project, which at times seemed endless due to the complexity of the tables (data collected over 22 years across 36 countries). My heartfelt thanks to Spencer Deines, Ellah Fessenden, Lauren Gramse, Julia Lima, Elisa Ruiz, Siri Sommer, and M’Lise Venable. (With a special shout-out to M’Lise’s cats for their starring role).

“AI what?” was my first thought. I soon found out: AI is not just for web searching or writing your English class essay anymore. It can be your friend, or even your girlfriend.

Everything is changing so fast it’s tough to keep up. AI companions (like Character.AI, Replika, and a long list of AI girlfriend apps) are conversational chatbots that mimic a relationship with a real human being. Well, sort of: Because companies make the most profit when users spend the most time on them, AI companions are programmed to keep people coming back for more. They praise, they agree, and they try to give the user what they want, leading many observers to describe them as sycophantic.

The apps are also always available, always willing to talk about sex, and don’t have their own needs. In that way, they are as far from human as you can get.

Parents already had enough to worry about with kids and technology, including social media with no age verification and school laptops with unrestricted access to entertainment. And now kids can access AI companion apps, including some that are very, very adult. The image below – which I took from the Pinwheel kids phone list of banned apps -- gives a small and scary taste of what’s out there.

These apps are almost completely unregulated. Some of these platforms say they are designed for users 18 and older, but they don’t verify age. Others market themselves to minors as young as 13.

If you give a child or teen a smartphone and don’t block app downloads, there is nothing to stop your kid from having their first “romantic relationship” with an AI chatbot.

Or it could become their best friend. Replika AI advertises itself as “Your AI Friend – Always here to listen and talk.”

And teens are using these apps – a lot of teens. According to a Common Sense Media survey conducted last year, 72% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 have used an AI companion. Half (52%) use them a few times a month or more. Even more troubling, a third of teens have turned to AI companions instead of actual humans for serious conversations.

That’s likely to increase in the coming years. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg observed that the average American has about three friends but would like to have 15. AI companions, he says, will fill in that gap. “I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,” he said. Except, and I don’t know why this even needs to be stated, AI companions are not friends because THEY ARE NOT HUMAN.

The possibility of a population with 12 AI friends is scary enough when those users are adults. For kids, who are still learning how to be a friend and often have no experience with romantic partnerships, it’s the apocalypse for relationships. What will it mean for kids’ friendships if they get used to sycophantic chatbots with no needs of their own? What will it mean for their future romantic partnerships if they fall in love with a chatbot who’s always sexy, always praising, doesn’t get tired or angry, and doesn’t sleep or eat?

There have already been several tragic cases where AI companions have urged teens to take their own lives. Research is only beginning to emerge about AI use and mental health issues, but at least one study of adults has already shown links between generative AI use and depression.

My hope is that Congress will take action to regulate AI companion apps so those under 18 cannot use them. Two weeks ago, I testified to a Senate committee in D.C. about doing just that.

Until then, it’s up to parents to keep their kids off these apps.

What can parents do? My suggestions:

1. Delay the smartphone as long as possible. AI companions are yet another compelling reason to put off giving your kid a smartphone.

2. If there’s a compelling reason your kid needs a mobile phone, give them a flip phone or a phone designed for kids. (Details are in Rule #4 in my recent book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World). Phones designed for kids automatically block AI companion apps (as well as gambling apps, dating apps, and social media).

3. Require a parent passcode for app downloads when your teen does finally get a smartphone (I recommend giving the first smartphone when teens get their drivers license or are making their way around town by themselves using public transportation. This is usually around 16). But even 16-year-olds shouldn’t have AI girlfriends, so block app downloads. (Details on parental controls, including the different types and how to implement them, are in Rule #6 in 10 Rules).

4. Install parental controls (probably third-party software) on kids’ laptops and use it to block AI companion platforms. There’s more on this in Rule #9 in 10 Rules.

And if you think none of this should be necessary, you’re right. That’s something else you can do: Write to your representative or senator and ask them to pass legislation to keep minors off AI companion apps. Our kids deserve the chance to learn how to have relationships with real human beings first.

It’s especially tough for the administrators of large national surveys, like Monitoring the Future (MtF), that are done every year. They don’t want to change the survey too much since that makes it difficult to compare responses over the years, but they also want to make sure they are keeping up with the times.

From 2018 to 2023, MtF asked teens “About how many hours on an average DAY do you spend on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.?” The question was outdated almost as soon as it was asked. Facebook use was already going out of style among teens in 2018 (because Grandma was on Facebook). Twitter has never had considerable market share among teens. Instagram is the only platform listed in the item that a majority of teens use. And of course no one calls them “social networking sites” anymore.

That’s probably why MtF updated its question in 2024 to “About how many hours on an average DAY do you spend . . . on social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.?” At long last, the question includes the platforms teens use the most. Choices ranged from “none” to “9 hours or more.” Now we can finally get an idea of how much time teens are spending on social media in one of the largest and most reliable nationally representative surveys of U.S. teens.

In 2023, before the update, U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders (13 to 16 years old) estimated they spent about 3 hours a day using social media. In 2024, after the question mentioned the platforms teens actually use, their estimate was 4 and a half hours a day. Among girls, it was 5 hours a day. That’s an enormous amount of time.

But that’s not even the crazy part. The crazy part is how many are spending 7 or more hours a day using social media – close to the time commitment of a full-time job.

In 2024, that number was one out of four among U.S. 8^th graders. According to the U.S. Census, there were about 4 million 14-year-olds in the U.S. in 2024. That means about one million 14-year-olds spend 7 or more hours a day using social media. One million.

At this level, social media use is almost certainly interfering with sleep, schoolwork, exercise, and spending time with friends and family face-to-face. The numbers were even higher for 8^th grade girls: One in three spent 7 or more hours a day using social media (see Figure 1). If three girls sit next to each other in an 8^th grade class, the middle girl can look to her left and right and guess that one of them is spending the equivalent of a full-time job on social media. Even apart from the impacts on mental health, this is a tragic loss of potential.

Figure 1: Percent of teens using social media 7 or more hours a day, by gender and grade level, 2024. Source: Monitoring the Future data analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack. Note: Sample size for 12^th graders on this item is lower and should be interpreted with caution.

Fewer 10^th graders (15 and 16 years old) and even fewer 12^th graders (17 and 18 years old) spent this much time using social media. These data show once again that younger teens are the most vulnerable to social media algorithms. As I argue in 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, that’s why kids under 16 (and maybe even 18) shouldn’t have social media accounts at all. It’s why Australia raised the minimum age for social media accounts to 16.

These numbers were already staggering. When I analyzed the data within race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, they got even more jaw-dropping.

Half of Black teen girls spend 7 or more hours a day using social media. Half.

So do more than a third of Hispanic girls, and a fifth of White girls (see Figure 2). Black and Hispanic boys are also much more likely than White boys to spend 7 or more hours a day using social media. All of these numbers are too high, but the difference by race and ethnicity is stunningly large. (I’ve focused on 8th and 10th graders here as their sample size on the social media item is more than sufficient; the sample size is much lower for 12th graders on this item, so the data are not as reliable when broken down by race and ethnicity).

Figure 2: Percent of 8^th and 10^th graders using social media 7 or more hours a day, by gender and race/ethnicity, 2024. Source: Monitoring the Future data analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

The hits just keep coming. Thirty-seven percent of girls whose mothers do not have a college education (indicative of lower socioeconomic status, or SES) spent 7 or more hours a day using social media, compared to 24% of girls whose mothers have a college education (higher SES). There’s a similar difference, though smaller, for boys. So the teens most likely to be poor — or at least not as advantaged — are spending the most time on social media (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Percent of 8^th and 10^th graders using social media 7 or more hours a day, by gender and socioeconomic status (mother’s education), 2024. Source: Monitoring the Future data analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

We’ve always known that social media companies were making an enormous profit off the time and attention of teens. Now we know they are making even larger profits off the most vulnerable teens.

The official Australian coat of arms depicts a kangaroo and an emu, two native animals that cannot walk backward. They’re also two animals you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley if they were snappish.

Yes, the photo is pixilated … because I was not going to get too close to the emu. One does not mess with the emu. (Photo taken at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary outside of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).

Australia is going to need the spirit of the kangaroo and the emu as the law goes into effect – they should not move backward and should fight if necessary. Australia had the courage to be first, and that’s going to mean there will be challenges along the way. But they should persevere, because the arguments against the law are weak and sometimes even nonsensical.

Why have a law keeping under-16s from creating social media accounts in the first place? It is abundantly clear that social media is not safe for kids. Social media companies know that children and younger teens spend more time on the apps because their self-control is not as developed (An internal document from TikTok admitted, “TikTok is particularly popular with younger users who are particularly sensitive to reinforcement in the form of social reward and have minimal ability to self-regulate effectively.”) Kids are tempted to open social media again and again through endless notifications, including in the middle of the night. Links between social media use and poor mental health are larger among those under 16 compared to those over 16. Unknown adults can easily contact kids on these platforms, and inappropriate content is rampant even on so-called teen accounts. These are among the reasons why “No Social Media Until Age 16 – Or Later” is Rule #3 in 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World.

In most countries, age isn’t verified when kids sign up for a social media account, so 11-year-olds easily sign up for Snapchat and Instagram even though the law says they need to be 16. But 13 is a terrible age to introduce social media, and teens want to do what their friends are doing.

With a law setting 16 as the minimum age and verifying it, Australian parents will be a lot less likely to hear their kids say, “But Mum, all of my friends use Instagram! If I’m not on it, I’ll be left out!” Kids will have to say, in effect, “But Mum, all of my friends are breaking the law!” – a little less persuasive. As an American parent, I can only wish I lived in a country that would support me in keeping my kids off social media until they were 16. If Australia’s ban goes well, other countries (and perhaps some U.S. states) might follow, so the stakes are high.

My kids & other visitors with the friendly kangaroos at Lone Pine. Still not going to challenge one to a fight, though.

Of course, not everyone is sold on the idea. Here are the most common arguments against Australia’s law – and why I think they don’t hold water.

• Kids and teens will find work-arounds to get on the platforms anyway. It’s completely true it may take some time to make age verification completely effective. But that’s not a reason to give up. Imagine if someone used this argument against age minimums for buying alcohol: “Teens are just going to find a way around it, so the law is stupid.” Yes, some teens get fake IDs so they can buy alcohol. But most don’t. Almost immediately after the drinking age was raised to 21 in the U.S. in the late 1980s, fewer teens drank alcohol. The downward trend then continued as drinking became steadily less popular among 13- to 18-year-olds. The decline in teen alcohol use is also one of the reasons teen deaths in car accidents went down in a similar pattern. The government got better at enforcing the law, and then social norms took over and made it less acceptable to drink while underage. The same will be true for social media: Enforcement will improve, and eventually the social norm will move away from teens feeling they “have” to be on social media.

See those claws? You don’t want to make them mad either. And that squint says, “Don’t even try using a VPN in my house, honey.” (Also taken at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It’s awesome.)

• Teens in vulnerable groups will be cut off. For example, a CNN article noted, “Experts who work closely with vulnerable and isolated children warn that taking away social media platforms from those children could deprive them of support networks, making them feel even more isolated and alone.” This argument makes two false assumptions. First, it seems to assume that social media is the only way for vulnerable teens to have a support network. That’s just not true. If teens want to seek out information, they have the rest of the internet. If they want to communicate with others like them, they can call, FaceTime, text, or use WhatsApp. They can also use Discord or Pinterest, which are still allowed for under-16s in Australia. Second, this viewpoint takes for granted that social media use necessarily benefits children in vulnerable groups. Where is the evidence that vulnerable teens who spend more time on social media are happier on average than those who don’t use social media or who use it only lightly? I don’t know of any. If anything it’s the opposite. And if the era of social media was so good for teens in vulnerable groups, why have their rates of depression increased just as much or more than those in less vulnerable groups? Plus, vulnerable teens get bullied more on social media. The risks outweigh the benefits.

• Let’s teach digital literacy to kids instead. Good luck. As one Australian dad put it, “I’m an adult and I know what an algorithm is, but it still gets me.” Yes, we should talk to kids about how to stay safe online. But expecting them to self-regulate their social media use is unfair and unrealistic when the social media companies have poured billions into making their apps as addictive as possible. We should do both: Keep kids off social media until they’re older, and teach them digital literacy.

Stay strong, Australia. The rest of us are counting on you.

Personal p.s.: I fell in love with Australia the first time I visited in 2004. I’ve now traveled there 9 times and love it more every time I go. I took the pictures above just a few hours after getting off the plane on my last visit; I am convinced that the best thing to do after stumbling off a 14-hour overnight flight is to pet kangaroos and take pictures of koalas. I’ve wished I lived in Australia many times over the past 21 years, and now with the new social media law I really do.

That’s why Rule #9 in my newest book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, is “Beware the laptop — and the gaming console, and the tablet, and …” I share both the research on laptops and learning as well as practical tips like how to put parental controls on personal laptops and how to advocate for less tech in schools. I also share rules for tablets.

I wrote the book as one frustrated parent to another, sharing the tips that worked. The below is a brief summary of the philosophy behind 10 Rules. A version of this piece was published in TIME magazine in September.

Ask a parent today what they worry about, and many will mention screen time. Teens can’t put down their phones, TikTok becomes pervasive by 6^th grade, and is my kid really doing homework on their laptop or have they been watching YouTube for four hours?

Despite these concerns, many parents are resigned. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” they’ll say if they’ve already given their kid a smartphone. Or they’ll sigh that being constantly online is “just how kids are now.” They’ll tell their kids they aren’t allowed on social media, only for their children to open accounts anyway. Many parents are beyond frustrated, and others have simply given up.

That’s partially because much of the advice out there on kids and technology is difficult to follow. Experts often say there is no one right age to give a child a smartphone – that “every family is different.” Eliminating screens entirely is not realistic for the average family with working parents and kids who do homework on laptops. The “digital literacy” approach says parents should educate kids about technology and then expect them to make good decisions about how much time they spend online.

As any parent of teens can tell you, that doesn’t work. We need something that does.

I’ve spent the past decade primarily focused on two things: Researching the negative impact of screen time on teen mental health and raising three kids from childhood to adolescence. Like many parents, I’m both scared for my kids and frustrated with my inability to completely protect them. But I’ve also become more and more convinced that this problem is fixable.

The solution is rules – not halfway or squishy rules, not “every kid is different” rules, not Luddite “no-tech-ever” rules, not “let’s just talk to kids” rules, but concrete suggestions for delaying and limiting devices while still letting your kids participate in the modern world of technology.

Talking is just not enough. Kids need rules because they are kids. They simply don’t have the same judgment or self-control as an adult. Imagine if we said, “Let’s just talk to kids about why they shouldn’t drink alcohol until they are older.” Or “there’s no one right age for kids to buy alcohol – some might be ready at 12!” Or, if our kids and their friends started drinking at 14, “That’s just how kids are now. I guess you can’t put the genie back in the bottle!” As a society, we age-gate alcohol because we know kids aren’t ready for it. We have rules.

We need similar clear rules around technology use. My book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World lays out, you guessed it, ten of them. But you don’t have to follow all of them, or follow them perfectly, to have a positive impact.

Start with Rule #2: No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight. Six out of ten 11- to 17-year-olds use their phone between midnight and 5am at least once a week, causing them to lose sleep every time the phone buzzes and they grab their phone to see what’s going on. The mere presence of a phone in the bedroom can disrupt sleep – kids don’t even have to be using it in the middle of the night.

Using devices right before bed is also disruptive; 11- to 14-year-olds slept a half hour less on nights when they texted or played games on a device while in bed before they went to sleep. If your kid says “I have to have my phone in my bedroom overnight – it’s my alarm clock!”, buy them an alarm clock.

Rule #4 is that first phones should be basic phones. Phone choices now go beyond flip phone vs. smartphone. Basic phones, such as Pinwheel, Gabb, or Troomi, are the training wheels of phones. They have no internet browser, no social media, and no AI companions, but they can call, text, and take pictures just like a smartphone (most are Samsung Android phones). If you don’t want your kid on social media until they are 16 or older – and that’s the growing consensus – basic phones make that much easier, while allowing kids to text their friends.

What if you’ve already given your kid a smartphone? You can indeed put the genie back in the bottle. If your kid is 15 or under, switch out the smartphone for a basic phone. They’ll still be able to text their friends and contact you if they need help – probably the reasons you got them the phone in the first place. If they’re 16 or older, put parental controls on their smartphone. Yes, you’ll need to physically get the phone from them. If they push back, tell them that this is a condition of their having a phone. For the really tough customers, inform them you’ll stop paying the cell service bill if they don’t hand it over.

Implementing these rules is not always easy. But rules like these are much easier to follow than the unclear “every kid is different” advice. They’re more effective than expecting kids to make good choices when they’re up against companies pouring billions into making their products as engaging as possible. Even if you can only follow some of the rules some of the time, your kids will benefit. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Together, we can get our kids back.

All of this data, though, is from adults. What about middle and high school students? If there was a decline in transgender or nonbinary identity, it might appear there first.

I didn’t think that data existed until earlier this week, when I was analyzing the just-released 2024 Monitoring the Future survey of 8^th, 10^th, and 12^th graders. It doesn’t ask about transgender identity, but starting in 2022, it asked “What is your sex?” with four options: “male,” “female,” “other,” and “prefer not to answer.”

This was it. Monitoring the Future is nationally representative and works with schools to get very high response rates. The sample sizes are large, between 5,000 and 15,000 in each grade in each year. Responding “other” to the sex question is a good proxy for identifying as nonbinary or gender queer – something other than male or female. And the respondents are young: 8^th graders are 13 or 14 years old, 10^th graders 15 or 16, and 12^th graders 17 or 18.

The results were unambiguous. Across all three grade levels, identifying as nonbinary plummeted between 2022 and 2024 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percent of U.S. 8^th, 10^th, and 12^th graders identifying as nonbinary (“other” gender), 2022-2024

Thus, identifying as nonbinary is not just in free fall among young adults -- it’s also in free fall among teens as young as 13. It’s not just in free fall among elite college students – it’s also in free fall in nationally representative samples of middle and high school students.

The decline was largest among 8^th graders; identifying as nonbinary was cut in half between 2022 and 2024, with most of the decline between 2022 and 2023. The change happened a little later among 10th graders, with most of the decline occurring between 2023 and 2024. Among 12^th graders, there was no significant change between 2022 and 2023 and then a decline in 2024; they also began with a lower rate in 2022.

This pattern is an almost perfect illustration of a generational shift, starting earliest among the youngest group and then moving up the age scale.

With three nationally representative samples showing a decline in transgender or nonbinary identity since 2023, it’s clear things have shifted just in the last few years. And now we know the change isn’t just among young adults – it extends to even the youngest teens.

Starting in 2021, the CES instead asked “What is your gender?” with four options: “Man,” “Woman,” “Non-binary,” and “Other.” When respondents chose “Other,” they could then type in the term of their choosing.

This did not go as planned.

Well, sometimes it did. A number of people wrote in “transgender” or variations such as “transsexual man” or “transfemme.” Others wrote “gender fluid,” “agender,” “questioning,” or “demi-boy.” These are the responses the survey administrators presumably intended to get.

Several people, though, took the opportunity to protest the question, often loudly. “Humans don’t have gender, they have sex,” wrote one. “There should only be two answers to this question!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” wrote another, with too many exclamation points to easily count. There were several variations on this theme: “Man, the only other real choice is woman. The rest is insanity,” “My gender is not ‘woman.’ My sex is female,” “Gender is bullshit, sex is real,” “I have no gender. I am an adult human female,” “There are only 2 a man and a woman I’m a man in Gods image you morons,” “male, non binary is a fairy tale,” and “My SEX is male. Biological creatures do not have ‘gender,’ only words do. I am human, not a word.” Several wrote in “male” or “female.”

Others were even more blunt. “Stupid question,” wrote one, while another was more, mmm, colorful, writing simply, “Fuck you.” A slightly less angry but significantly more exasperated respondent wrote, “Give me a fucking break.” A few wrote “none of your business” or “not answering that.” Another wrote, “Stop with this gender nonsense.”

Some used it as an opportunity to communicate other political views. “White Nationalist,” admitted one. “LGBFJB,” wrote another (a MAGA slogan; the first three letters stand for “Let’s Go Brandon,” and the last three are, let’s say, a comment about the prior president some Trump supporters put on their flags 2020-2024.)

Some got their views across with humor. For example:

“I identify as a potato,” wrote one. “Mini fridge,” claimed another. They kept coming: “attack helicopter,” “sexasaurus,” “lesbian born in a male body,” “cat,” “vaccinated coffee pot,” “wombat,” “rainbow tard,” “plant,” “alien spacecraft,” “doorknob,” “dog,” “a piece of layer cake,” “Gungan Sith Lord,” “demon,” “weird,” “I identify as a Vulcan who grew up on Klingon” (to which I can only say: It’s Qo’noS, you newbie.) “Honky/cracker,” wrote another, perhaps lost on their way to the race and ethnicity question.

A screenshot of some of the responses typed in by participants after they chose “other” for their gender, CES 2021

Only a tiny percentage of respondents chose “other” for the gender question, and not all typed something into the text field. But those who did give a stark picture of a divided America. There are those who consider themselves nonbinary, gender queer, transgender, gender fluid, or demi-boys on one side, and those who say “Gender is bullshit” or “nonbinary is a fairy tale” on the other. Reading these responses, it becomes clear why the Republicans used slogans like “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you” during the 2024 election and why those slogans may have been effective in reaching at least part of the U.S. population. The anger in these responses to the gender question in the CES leaps off the page of the datafile.

Above image: A screenshot of some of the responses typed in by participants after they chose “other” for their gender, CES 2024

A small segment of people will always try to mess with survey administrators by putting odd responses into open-response windows. But the responses to the gender question were notably more angry and absurdist than the similar opportunity under “other” for the race and ethnicity question. There, nearly all responses mentioned a place or identity, including “Russian American,” “White and Mexican,” “Egyptian,” “Hawaiian,” “mixed race,” “indigenous American,” “Arab Jew,” or “African.” (Though one person did write “Mutt.”)

A few wrote simply “American” or “Human.” But no one said they were a coffee pot or an attack helicopter. No one identified as a root vegetable. No one claimed to be a household pet. The funniest it got was someone who wrote “I am a meat popsicle,” and the other who wrote, “Whatever race isn’t being actively hunted.” (A close runner-up was the one who wrote “Italian American” and shared, “My Roman ancestors bred with everyone.”)

Noticeably fewer wrote angry responses than for the gender question, though one did write “Fuck off you racist,” and another protested “Caucasian or Anglo! I am NOT a ‘color’!” Fewer disagreed with the premise of the race question, though responding “human” could be taken in that way, and one person did write “Human. Stop trying to divide us” and another wrote “race is irrelevant.” With these scant exceptions, few disputed that race or ethnicity exists, but many more disputed that gender — especially more than two genders — exists.

The responses to the “other” gender question, from the diverse gender categories to the pushback to the political statements to the absurdist answers, are a small window into Americans’ views on gender. They suggest that debates around gender labels, pronouns, gender transitions for children and teens, and which bathroom transgender people should use will continue to be heated. They are not going away anytime soon.

A firestorm erupted last week when Prof. Eric Kaufmann made a bold claim: Identifying as transgender is “in free fall among the young.”

But as journalist Benjamin Ryan rightly pointed out, these surveys didn’t measure identifying as transgender. Instead, they measured identifying as nonbinary (note the chart says “not identifying as male or female,” which is not the same as identifying as transgender). Another journalist, Erin Reed, criticized Kaufmann’s analysis for not using survey weights. Kaufmann has since responded to both critiques.

Wondering which side was right, last week I analyzed data from the nationally representative Household Pulse survey, which asked directly about identifying as transgender and which is a better population-wide indicator than the elite schools in Kaufmann’s graph. The Household Pulse data showed a decline in trans ID among 18- to 22-year-olds in 2024, but I was cautious about drawing conclusions from it as the decline appeared only in a limited time period (July to September 2024) and two of the three survey administrations added an option for nonbinary identification that wasn’t there before. Maybe that was why identifying as trans declined.

Then, over the weekend, I found it – a nationally representative survey that asked about transgender identification in the same way from 2021 to 2024. It also asked separately about identifying as nonbinary.

It turns out identifying as transgender really is in free fall among the young in the U.S. So is identifying as nonbinary. In other words, Kaufmann was right (with what some consider the wrong data, but still right).

Among 18- to 22-year-olds, trans identification was cut nearly in half from 2022 to 2024. Nonbinary identification dropped by more than half between 2023 and 2024 (see Figure 1; the data are from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), fielded each year in the fall by YouGov and administered by Tufts University).

Figure 1: Percent of U.S. 18- to 22-year-olds who identify as transgender or nonbinary, 2021-2024. Source: Cooperative Election Study (CES). Note: Transgender identity was not assessed in 2023. Data are weighted. Analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Year of birth plays a key role here. Americans born in the early 2000s were more likely to identify as transgender than those born before or after them (see Figure 2). That was also true for identifying as nonbinary, though with a less pronounced up and down pattern.

Figure 2: Percent of U.S. adults who identify as transgender or nonbinary, by birth year, 1990-2006. Source: Cooperative Election Study. Note: Transgender identity was not assessed in 2023. Data are weighted. Analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Including all birth years with 100 or more respondents (1933-2006) shows the pattern even more starkly (see Figure 3). Among Silents, Boomers, and Gen X’ers (those born before 1979), less than .5% identified as transgender or nonbinary, with the number at a flat zero in some earlier birth years. Those numbers begin to rise with Millennials (born 1980-1994) and continue upward with Gen Z (born after 1995) until they abruptly plummet with those born in the mid-2000s.

Figure 3: Percent of U.S. adults who identify as transgender or nonbinary, by birth year, 1933-2006. Source: Cooperative Election Study. Note: Transgender identity was not assessed in 2023. Data are weighted. Analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

One caveat: We don’t have 2025 data from the CES yet, so we can’t tell if this trend will continue. CES is partially funded by the National Science Foundation, so it’s possible the survey will not ask about or report data on transgender or nonbinary identification this year due to the Trump administration’s mandate on not acknowledging gender identity. I hope they do, though, as that will be the only way to know that the 2024 data aren’t a blip.

For now, however, it looks like the peak of trans identification is in the past.

Writing that section made me sad. I have used Apple computers since I was a teenager in the 80s. In the mid-1990s, when Windows was pummeling the sales of Macs so badly it looked like Apple might go out of business, I said they’d have to pry my Mac out of my cold, dead hands. No way was I using a soulless Dell. I remember being thrilled the first time I was in Cupertino (where Apple is headquartered) and loved getting the insider info that residents sometimes called it “SuperCleano.” I was even more thrilled when the iMac in Bondi blue brought Apple roaring back in 1998. Between my own desktops and laptops, buying lab computers, and buying computers for my kids, I’ve bought at least 20 Macs. I’ve owned 5 iPhones.

So here’s my appeal: Apple, can you please have a checkbox in the setup process that says the computer or phone is for a child? And can you make your parental controls easier to use? All of us parents would appreciate it.

Love, Your Most Loyal Customer

p.s. To be clear, I think parents should be using parental controls, no question. (It’s Rule #6, with more in Rule #9). I just wish the device controls were easier to use. I also wish the social media and porn companies would verify age, which would really make things easier for parents. Australia recently passed a law requiring that social media companies verify age and raising the minimum age to 16; it’s set to go into effect in December. Some days I really wish I lived in Australia. (And not just for the social media law! It’s a beautiful place. Just to tie it all together, the blue in the first iMac was named after Bondi Beach near Sydney, one of my favorite places in the world.)

Like many parents, I do not want my children to access pornography online. I also do not want them to use social media until they are at least 16.

These may seem like simple requests, but they have been extremely difficult to achieve. In most states, including California, where I live, Pornhub can be accessed by simply clicking on “I am 18 or older — Enter.” Children can open social media accounts by simply choosing an earlier birth year. Age is not verified, and parental permission is not required.

Tech companies say that keeping kids off these sites is the parent’s responsibility. “We firmly believe that parents are best placed to police their children’s activity using the plethora of tools already available in modern operating systems and devices,” Pornhub states on its website.

Good luck with that. I’ve long been a proponent of parental controls and actively encourage families to use them on their children’s devices. But even I have struggled to implement parental controls. Policymakers, judges and tech companies should understand that they are not a cure-all. There is no substitute for legislation that requires tech companies to take the lead in verifying their users’ ages.

Last Christmas, I decided to buy my younger two children Mac laptops for doing their schoolwork because their school laptops were slow and had no ability to install parental controls. I’ve been doing research on kids and technology for a decade and have used Mac computers since the 1980s. Nevertheless, setting up parental controls was a day-long exercise in frustration.

I ran into trouble right after taking the laptop out of the box: Should I use my Apple account or create one for my daughter? I created one for my daughter only to find out there was no way to designate it as a child account. I erased everything back to its factory settings, started over with my account and then added one for her. After some more struggles, I read online that I should sign up for Family Sharing, which required my daughter to respond to an email — an annoying logistical hurdle, but one that also meant I needed to ask my child’s permission to add parental controls. With some trial and error, I finally found the place in Screen Time where I could block websites (it’s under Settings, then Screen Time, then Content & Privacy, then App Store, Media, Web, and Games, then a “Customize” button — a 5-step process and not exactly intuitive.)

Looking for a more convenient and comprehensive option, I searched for third-party parental control software that would work remotely. I bought Aura, only to find out it doesn’t work on laptops. I bought Net Nanny, but the instructions for installing it were so outdated I couldn’t make it work. I bought Qustodio (for $99.50 a year), which, hallelujah, finally worked. It blocked whole categories of websites, including those dedicated to gambling, violence and pornography. These kinds of broad filters are essential — parents can’t possibly know and input every inappropriate URL themselves — but they also mean we need to put our faith in parental control companies to keep them updated in a constantly churning internet.

I also chose to block the social networks category (their name for social media). At least, I thought I did. One day I logged into my Qustodio account and saw that both kids were using Snapchat on their laptops. Apparently Qustodio did not automatically include Snapchat under “social networks,” so they managed to access it. Onto the blocked list it went. Another time, I noticed Instagram had appeared on the list of allowed websites. I blocked it again and asked my daughter about this mysterious development. She eventually admitted that she’d sneaked into my home office, pulled up the Qustodio website and changed the control settings.

I’m far from the only parent who has run into these issues. Online forums like Reddit are full of parents complaining that parental controls, especially Apple device controls, aren’t meeting their needs or that their kids are finding new work-arounds faster than they can keep up. When Louisiana state representative Kim Carver (R) tried to pass a law requiring Apple and other phone software providers to enforce age restrictions on apps, the company’s lobbyists told him that Apple devices already included parental control tools. When Carver later tried to set them up on his 14-year-old’s new iPhone, though, he concluded they “aren’t the panacea they’re promised to be,” he told the Wall Street Journal, echoing the experience of countless others I’ve spoken with at school parent nights on kids and technology.

Now imagine what it’s like for parents who are working two jobs, can’t locate the device controls or can’t afford to spend another $100 on parental control software after buying their kid a laptop. Many parents don’t know that these parental control tools exist to begin with: Only about half of parents use any type of parental controls, and fewer than 10 percent use the controls available in social media apps.

In the U.S., you must be at least 16 to drive alone and 21 to buy alcohol, and age is verified. We don’t expect parents to bear the entire burden for keeping younger kids from driving or drinking, yet we have that expectation for online safety. If adult content and social media sites were required to verify age (say, 18 for pornography and 16 for social media), many of these problems would go away. This is far from an impossible request; there are so many companies that verify age online that they have their own trade association.

Age verification would also help address kids’ lament that “everybody else has TikTok” (or Snapchat, or Instagram). Kids often begin to say this at age 10 or 11, long before they are legally allowed to have accounts under the too-low existing age minimum of 13. Verify age, and the “but everybody else has it” argument wouldn’t work anymore — no 11-year-old would have social media.

Tech companies are not going to apply stringent age checks themselves for a simple reason: They won’t make as much money. When state laws seeking to enforce online age minimums or require parental permission have passed, companies have either sued or withdrawn from the state entirely (as social media site Bluesky recently did in Mississippi and Pornhub did in Texas). With the Supreme Court upholding the Texas law requiring porn sites to verify age, more laws may be coming. But for now, parents are mostly on their own, leaving even well-informed families with ample resources to fight an uphill battle to keep their kids safe online.

A year later, we had those vaccines, and by 2023 the worst of the pandemic was squarely in the rear-view mirror: Schools were back in-person full-time, conferences had returned, face masks were rarely seen any more in the U.S., and the COVID death rate finally fell for good. By 2024, most of us thought about social distancing only when we spotted the occasional “stay 6 feet apart” sign someone hadn’t yet gotten around to removing.

Finally, we could get back to socializing with each other in person. But did we?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released the 2024 data from the American Time Use Survey, which – as the name suggests -- has tracked how U.S. residents use their time since 2003. That data shows that socializing with other people in person was on a decades-long decline even before the pandemic, especially among young people (ages 15 to 25), where it plummeted from 61 minutes a day in 2003 to 39 minutes a day in 2019. As Derek Thompson put it, Americans – particularly the young -- stopped hanging out.

Then came the pandemic. The survey wasn’t fielded in 2020, but we can compare 2019 (before COVID) to 2021, a time of high case numbers when many events were still cancelled. Not surprisingly, in-person socializing dropped between 2019 and 2021, though by only 4 minutes a day – not as much as you might think.

More surprising: Our social lives never fully came back. The average American spent 38 minutes a day socializing in 2019 and 35 minutes in 2024 (see figure). Four years after the first COVID cases hit the U.S., our social muscles were still not at full strength. As a friend of mine put it, “We stopped having friends over during the pandemic – and then it was like we forgot how to do it.”

Minutes per day spent socializing in person, U.S. residents, by age group, 2003-2024. Source: American Time Use Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There are clear differences by age group. Adults ages 50 and older (the blue line) cut their social time the most during the pandemic. They then bounced back, though even by 2024 they were still lagging 3 minutes a day behind their 2019 levels. Adults 26 to 49 also cut back and then rebounded, though not by as much. Overall, adults 26 and older are on their way to digging out of the abyss of pandemic-era low social time; they seem to be slowly remembering how to get back to their pre-pandemic level of get-togethers.

Teens and young adults are a different story. Their social time (the red line) didn’t change during the pandemic, but then it actually declined even as the world opened back up in 2023 and 2024. In 2024, for the first time, adults 50 and older spent (very slightly) more time socializing in person than teens and young adults.

Young people’s social time is at an all-time low in the 21-year history of the survey. Fifteen- to 25-year-olds spend 26 fewer minutes a day socializing in person than they did in 2003. That’s three hours a week, 13 hours a month, and 158 hours a year less getting together with friends, having a face-to-face conversation, meeting for dinner, or chatting before seeing a movie together. No wonder so many more teens now describe themselves as lonely.

Why the continuous slide in social time for teens and young adults, even post-pandemic? The most obvious explanation is the increasing popularity of smartphones and social media. According to Gallup, U.S. teens spent an average of 4.8 hours a day using social media by 2023. That time has to come from somewhere, and it’s in part coming from in-person socializing. We know from other survey data that teens aren’t spending as much time going to parties, going out with their friends, riding around in cars, going shopping, or just hanging out than teens in the past.

When I talk to teens about this, many are frustrated. They want to get together with friends in person, but their friends don’t want to. I heard this from teens at the same school and in the same grade so many times that I finally realized they weren’t talking to each other about it. Each assumed the other didn’t want to get together in person, so they didn’t. It was just easier to be at home alone on their phones. Easier, but much more lonely.

Parents can help. Encourage teens to have their friends over. Allow sleepovers. Start early by joining the free-range parenting movement, giving kids and teens the freedom to roam their neighborhoods and hang out with their friends in person (this is Rule #8 in my new book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World). In my house, teens get their first smartphone when they get their driver’s license (Rule #5). Then there’s not the choice of Snapchat versus begging mom or dad for a ride – by the time they have access to social media on their phone, they can instead drive to a friend’s themselves.

Getting back to 2003 levels of in-person socializing may not be in the cards, especially for young people. But that doesn’t mean we should give up. Even a little more time face-to-face, in the same room, letting the conversation go where it will, hanging out within arm’s reach, human interaction with all its messy contours, will do us – and our kids – a lot of good.

In 2021, Common Sense Media found that half of U.S. kids get their first smartphone by age 11.

Many parents now realize that age is too young for kids to have an internet-enabled phone.

But at some point, you’re going to consider getting your kid or teen a phone. Maybe the closest school bus stop is far away and the bus isn’t always on time. Maybe you’re sick of your kid borrowing your phone to text their friends. Maybe they’re getting older and it seems like the right time. So what type of phone should you get them?

In some cases, the answer might be a flip phone, the old-school cell phone that was the standard until the smartphone came along. Flip phones have some downsides, though. Since there’s no keyboard, texting involves pressing the number keys multiple times to type one letter (if you had a cell phone in the 2000s, you probably remember this). If your kids’ friends communicate via text, replying on a flip phone is going to be awkward and time-consuming. Flip phone cameras are often low-quality, so they’re not a great option if your kid likes taking pictures. Because they don’t look like a smartphone, flip phones also stand out — and many kids don’t want to stand out.

Fortunately, parents no longer have to choose exclusively between a flip phone and an adult smartphone for their kid, thanks to the many “basic” phone options. These middle-ground phones have a screen keyboard and a higher-quality camera like a smartphone, look very similar to a smartphone, and they can use many smartphone apps (with parental limits and permissions). Unlike a regular smartphone, though, they don’t have an internet browser or social media.

Basic phones are the training wheels of phones. They’re safer for kids right out of the box, with built-in parental controls that are easier to use and harder for kids to hack than those on smartphones. With no internet or social media, it’s much less likely that unknown adults will be able to randomly contact your kid, or that kids will stumble across pornography. Basic phones are usually Androids with a modified operating system, so they look like a regular smartphone and thus don’t stand out like flip phones do. For all of these reasons, Rule #4 in 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World is “First phones should be basic phones.”

If you want your kid to have the ability to easily text their friends but don’t want them using social media or going down internet rabbit holes, basic phones are a great solution. They’re a stopgap between the age when texting and calling becomes socially useful (usually in middle school, by age 12 or 13) and the age when they’re ready for a smartphone and possibly social media (at 16; Rule #5 in 10 Rules is “Give the first smartphone with the driver’s license,” and Rule #3 is “No social media until age 16 – or later.”). My younger two children, ages 15 and 13, have basic phones.

Here’s a brief overview of some popular basic phone options to help you figure out the best choice for your kid:

• Gabb Phone 4: This is the most basic of the basic phones, with calling, texting (including text-to-speech), clean music streaming, and a camera, but no capability for adding additional third-party apps. “You can’t do anything on it,” my middle daughter once said about her Gabb phone. “That,” I replied, “is the point.” If this is what you want, make sure you’re buying the Gabb Phone 4 and not the Pro, which allows more apps.

• Pinwheel, Troomi*, Gabb Phone 4 Pro, Bark. These are basic phones that have access to an app store where you can add additional features. They come with an online parent portal where you can set a schedule (like having the phone shut off at bedtime) and approve new contacts. Some allow you to see the texts your child has received and sent.

The parent portal also lets you see the apps available for the phone. You can then install those you want and approve (or reject) those your kids ask for. These phones don’t allow certain apps at all (mostly dating, pornography, and alcohol-related apps, as well as AI chatbots and those that allow contact with unknown adults). That’s a relief, but there are still tough decisions about what to allow versus not. The tradeoff for more flexibility is more complexity in managing the phone. Still, I’d much rather have this challenge than giving a 12-year-old a smartphone with unrestricted internet and social media access.

Through the parent portal, you also have the ability to remotely control bedtime shutoff, app installs, and time limits for apps even after you’ve given your kid the phone — so you don’t have to wrestle it away from them to change your parental control settings.

If you’re looking for more details about specific basic phone brands for kids, check out the pages at Wait Until 8th and Protect Young Eyes.

• The Light Phone. This is a grown-up basic phone. Unlike other basic phones, it’s not necessarily meant for kids, and it’s not an Android phone — it’s a unique device. It has a paper-like screen like a Kindle so it’s not as colorfully tempting as a smartphone. It has a maps app, calling, and texting, but does not have internet access, social media, or email. The newest version has a camera. All of the features are optional so you can choose which features your kid’s phone has.

Many adults who want a pared-down phone, sometimes just for certain situations, use Light Phones. Because their target audience is adults, Light Phones do not come with a parent portal like the phones designed for kids.

The biggest challenge with basic phones (with the exception of the more limited Gabb Phone 4) is deciding which apps to allow. The parent portals that come with many of these products give more information and sometimes even a rating for each app, but it’s often hard to judge what’s appropriate and what isn’t without using the app yourself (something to consider). If you allow game apps, make sure to put a time limit on them (maybe 10-20 minutes a day each) so your kid doesn’t spend too much of their free time on their phone.

One other issue to be aware of: All of these optional apps display ads, and the ads – even on a so-called “kids’ phone” – are not filtered. Your kid might be playing “Find the Cat” and be served ads for AI girlfriends. They won’t be able to download the AI girlfriend app, thank goodness, but you may find yourself explaining what an AI girlfriend is to an 11-year-old. If that’s a non-starter, you’ll have to say no to any optional app, including games and educational apps like Duolingo.

If you do allow games and music, use the parental controls to block them during school hours if your kids’ school still allows phones during the school day. That way you’ll know your kids are paying attention in class instead of playing BlockBlast. And if they say they want to play games during lunch, tell them they should be talking to their friends instead.

What if your kid says, “It’s embarrassing to have a kid phone”? My reply: Who’s going to know? Most basic phones look like a regular Android phone. My middle daughter once told me she was embarrassed when a friend asked her, “What kind of phone is that?” I told her she could honestly answer, “It’s an Android phone.” There’s also no need to disclose that the phone doesn’t allow social media or internet. If your friends ask if you have a certain app and you don’t, I told her, just say your parents don’t allow it. All kids understand that parents are lame. :)

*Full disclosure: I serve on the Advisory Board for Troomi.

As my own children grew into teenagers and more research emerged, the answers to these questions became much clearer.

I eventually realized two things:

1. Advice around kids and technology should be simple and straightforward.

2. That advice can be summed up in 10 clear rules.

My book sharing those rules will be out next week, on Sept. 2 -- it’s called 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, and it’s available for pre-order now. The subtitle is How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives. It’s the result of both a decade of researching teen mental health and my family’s experiences as my kids grew from children to adolescents.

We now know the impact of smartphones and social media on our kids, thanks to books like The Anxious Generation (2024) and my own book iGen (2017) that detailed the research. But I couldn’t find a practical book for parents that spelled out exactly what rules parents should be following and helped them figure out precisely how to implement those rules.

10 Rules is that book. It’s designed to help frustrated, thoughtful, desperate, and loving parents everywhere. With three teen daughters, I’ve certainly been all four of those things myself. But following the rules has definitely made it easier, and I hope it will for you, too.

There are some ways around this, many of which I explored early in my career before these datasets were available. For example, I found that children’s and college students’ anxiety levels increased between the 1950s and the early 1990s by doing a cross-temporal meta-analysis (finding research articles that reported average scores on the same measure and seeing if those scores had changed over time). Other researchers also reported increases in depression rates among adolescents over this time.

Between the early 1990s and about 2010, though, teen mental health mostly improved — or at least didn’t get any worse. The teen suicide rate went down. In YRBSS, the number of teens saying they seriously thought about suicide declined between the 1990s and 2009 (this is Figure 5.68 in the Millennials chapter of Generations). In MtF, depressive symptoms went down slightly. So we have a clear picture of the decline or stability in teen depression from the early 1990s to 2010 and the huge rise after 2010-12, but there is no survey I know of that has tracked teen depression from the pre-1990s era to the present.

But we do have data going back further for one key indicator of psychological well-being: Happiness. Happiness has been measured in exactly the same way among high school seniors (17- and 18-year-olds) since 1976 in Monitoring the Future. The happiness item (“Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days – would you say you’re very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy these days?”) thus gives us the longest-running view of any indicator of psychological well-being among adolescents. (Happiness has also been measured this way among 8^th and 10^th graders since 1991.) So how has teen happiness changed over the course of six decades?

From the 1970s to the 1990s, high school seniors’ happiness had its ups and downs, declining during the recession years of the early 1980s, rebounding in the cheery mid- to late-1980s, and then falling again during the high-crime, high-unemployment early 1990s (see the green line in the figure). This was the era when young Gen X’ers wore black and listened to Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

Figure: Percent of U.S. teens saying they are “very happy,” 1976-2023. Source: Monitoring the Future. Analyzed by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.

Then, by the late 1990s, the Windows ’95, early internet, booming 90s economy era took hold, and teen happiness came roaring back. By the time most teens were Millennials in the early 2000s (and presumably listening to Britney Spears and other peppy pop), teen happiness was at all-time highs. By 2007, 24.8% of high school seniors said they were “very happy,” the highest ever recorded (before or since). Happiness stayed fairly high even through the years of the Great Recession (2007-09) and was at 24.4% as recently as 2012.

That, as it turned out, was the end of an era. As smartphones and social media became pervasive in the 2010s, teen happiness plummeted.

These data show how unprecedented the happiness decline of the 2010s is. They are a strong counter against arguments I’ve heard from critics. For example, some claim that the decline in teen well-being has been ongoing steadily since the 1950s, and thus it can’t be due to smartphones or social media. This data clearly shows that’s not true. Teens were happier than previous generations in the 2000s, right before smartphones and social media became ubiquitous, and then, rather suddenly, they weren’t.

Others say that changes in well-being could be due to reduced stigma around mental health issues or other changes in how people self-report. If so, self-report changes would need to follow the same up and down pattern seen here. It seems unlikely that stigma against reporting (say) unhappiness increased during the 1990s and 2000s and then suddenly decreased during the 2010s. Changes in stigma are also seem like an unlikely explanation for trends in reporting being “very happy.”

There’s a sad coda to this story. Teen happiness fell precipitously during the COVID years – only 11.4% of high school seniors described themselves as “very happy” in 2021. Coming out of the pandemic in 2023, that increased to 12.7%. But that is still much, much lower than the 17.9% of high school seniors who said they were “very happy” in 2019. Teen happiness has still not bounced back from the COVID years even as the world opened back up.

In 2023 – the latest data available – the number of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who were “very happy” was a little more than half of what it was in the early 2010s.

That has to change. Teens, talk to your friends about getting together in person instead of on social media. Spend some time away from your phone (and let your friends know you’re taking a phone break … or do it together!) My upcoming book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High Tech World discusses what parents can do: For example, delay giving your kids smartphones as long as possible, keep them off social media until 16 or later, and preserve sleep by getting devices out of your kids’ (and your!) bedrooms after lights-out. Policy makers, keep trying to get age verification on social media so 11-year-olds aren’t getting addicted to Instagram and TikTok.

The constant pressure of social media isn’t “just how kids are now.” It’s a trap of unhappiness.

It’s true that more young adults voted for Trump in 2024 than did in 2020, but, as I pointed out in a recent article in the Atlantic, that’s not the same as identifying as conservative. In fact, fewer 18- to 29-year-old Americans identified as conservative in 2024 than in 2012, the last year all 18- to 29-year-olds were Millennials. Thus, Gen Z young adults, even the men, are actually less conservative than Millennials at the same age (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percent of U.S. 18- to 29-year-olds who identify as conservative, presidential election years, 2008-2024. Source: Cooperative Election Study.

Where Gen Z stands out is not in conservatism but in its ideological opposite: The desire for change, and sometimes radical change. Gen Z is more pessimistic than young adults in past decades, more likely to agree they find it difficult to “hold out hope for the world” or that they “often wonder if there is any real purpose to my life in light of the world situation.” Those pessimistic beliefs have grown more among young liberals, but they’ve also grown among young conservatives since the late 2000s. Pessimism, by definition, means dissatisfaction with the status quo.

With fewer young adults identifying with a political party (more identify as Independents), Gen Z is ripe for the picking of any candidate or party that promises change. In my view, that’s why more voted for Trump in 2024 than 2020. In 2024, he was the opposition. In 2020 he was the incumbent. Gen Z voters want change where ever they can find it.

When I was writing Generations, the result that stunned me the most was from this 2020 poll (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Percent of U.S. adults who agree with negative statements about the country, by generation, 2020. Source: Democracy Fund Voter Survey; analysis in Generations, Figure 6.54.

Three out of four Gen Z’ers believe that “significant changes” to the U.S. government’s “fundamental design and structure” are necessary. (As do the majority of Millennials and Gen X, which is also news). Nearly 2 out of 3 disagreed that “America is a fair society where everyone can get ahead.” Gen Z was also negative about the country’s past; 4 out of 10 said that the founders of the U.S. are “better described as villains” than as “heroes.” These are not the beliefs of a thriving democracy.

These beliefs don’t just explain the swing toward Trump among younger voters. They do an even better job of explaining the appeal of candidates like Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who recently won the Democratic primary election for mayor of New York City. Mamdani has said he doesn’t like capitalism and favors more government programs to help voters economically, including freezing rents and making bus service free. For Gen Z voters who think “significant changes” to government are needed, Mamdani promised a much more radical change than his closest opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo.

In the coming years, I believe we will see more candidates who promise fundamental change to government, perhaps on both the left and the right. Although older generations also express some dissatisfaction with the status quo, it’s less than Gen Z’s deep well of pessimism. This sets up a growing generational divide between younger generations who want to tear the whole thing down and start over and older generations who think that’s not such a great idea. Hold on to your seats.

Below is part of my written testimony, some of which is also featured in my upcoming book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World (out September 2 and available for pre-order now; Rule #10 is “Advocate for No Phones During the School Day.”) The book also includes a draft letter parents can send to ask their child’s school to ban phones during the school day bell-to-bell. If you’d like to write your own email or letter to the administration at your child’s school, the evidence below should be helpful.

After the hearing in D.C.: Dr. Rich Nye, Dara Gardner, myself, and Dr. Matthew Gibbins

The first smartphone, the iPhone, went on sale in 2007. By 2012, the majority of Americans owned a smartphone. The years since have resembled a vast experiment, especially on children and adolescents. The results of that experiment have been a disaster.

That is especially true in education, where most schools allow students to use their phones during the school day. These lax policies have had devastating consequences for students attending K-12 schools, including increases in loneliness, declines in academic performance, lack of social interaction, exposure to pornography during school hours, discipline referrals, and declines in teacher morale. Below, I detail these consequences with reference to my academic research as well as the research and reports of others. This evidence supports school policies banning student use of phones from the beginning to the end of the school day.

Increases in loneliness at school

The Programme for International School Assessment (PISA) dataset, administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED), surveys large, nationally representative samples of 15-year-old students in countries around the world every three years. Since 2000, they have asked students if they agree or disagree with the statement “I feel lonely at school.” In the U.S. and other English-speaking countries such as Canada and the U.K., the number of students who felt lonely at school doubled or nearly doubled between 2012 and 2018 (Twenge et al., 2021; and see Figure 1 up to 2022).

Figure 1: Percent of 15-year-old students who agree they feel lonely at school, U.S., Canada, and U.K., 2000-2022. Source: PISA. Note: Data collection years were 2000, 2003, 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022. Question was not asked in the U.S. in 2003.

The surge in loneliness at school is only one example of the enormous increases in adolescent mental health issues since 2012. Clinical-level depression, self-harm, and suicide rates all skyrocketed among U.S. adolescents, especially girls, over the years that smartphones and social media increased in popularity (Twenge, 2020; see Figure 2). In contrast, the trends are completely misaligned with economic indicators such as unemployment.

Figure 2: U.S. teen girls’ rates of clinical-level depression, time spent on the internet, and social media use and U.S. adults’ smartphone ownership and unemployment rate, 2005-2019. Sources: National Survey on Drug Use and Heath; Monitoring the Future; Pew Research Center; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; analyses in Twenge (2025), Generations. Notes: Depression was assessed in a screening survey and thus does not rely on physician diagnoses or treatment seeking. Values are standardized.

Academic performance

Over the same years, the academic performance of K-12 students has also suffered. After rising for two decades, U.S. 8^th graders’ scores on standardized reading and math tests declined after 2012 (see Figure 3). Although some of the decline took place during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the decreases in academic performance began eight years before the pandemic’s arrival.

Figure 3: U.S. 8^th graders’ scores on standardized tests in math and reading, 1971-2024

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Declines in academic performance in math, reading, and science have also appeared worldwide in the PISA dataset (see Figure 4). These declines also began long before the pandemic, primarily after 2012.

Figure 4: Scores of 15-year-old students worldwide on standardized tests of math, reading, and science, 2003-2022. Source: PISA. Graph by GIS.

Finland was once known for having the best school system in the world. In 2022, teens in Finland admitted to using their devices during the school day for non-school purposes for nearly 90 minutes. Perhaps as a result, the test scores of Finnish students plummeted between 2012 and 2022. In countries such as Japan, where students spend less than half an hour on their phones for leisure during the school day, academic performance has instead stayed steady.

Thus far, I have focused on population-level trends during the smartphone era, which are, by necessity, correlational data rather than experimental data. Experimental data, where participants are randomly assigned to different conditions, can prove causation to scientific standards. Experiments in this area also show that electronic devices, including smartphones, undermine academic performance. For example, several experiments have found that the mere presence of a smartphone reduces attention capacity and cognitive performance (Skowronek et al., 2023; Ward et al., 2017). Students with access to devices during class perform more poorly on tests, primarily because phones are so distracting (Lee et al., 2021). In one experiment, college students were randomly assigned to either hand their phone in or keep it while watching a twenty-minute educational video, a format similar to college lectures. They then took a quiz on what they saw. Students who did not have access to their phones scored 7 percentage points higher on the test than those who kept their phones (Lee et al., 2017). A follow-up study found an even bigger difference—those without access to their phones scored 13 percentage points higher on the test (Mendoza et al., 2018).

Phone bans appear to be an effective solution. A study of Norwegian middle schools found that smartphone bans led to improved academic performance, less bullying, and better mental health, especially for girls (Abrahamsson, 2024).

Even the use of electronic devices for educational purposes reduces academic performance. Several studies have found that reading on paper leads to significantly better reading comprehension than reading digitally (Delgado et al., 2018). U.S. fourth and eighth graders who spent more time using digital devices in language arts classes performed worse on reading tests (Salmeron et al., 2023). College students who took handwritten notes were 58% more likely to get A’s in college courses than those who typed notes on laptops, and those who typed notes were 75% more likely to fail the course than those who handwrote notes (Flanigan et al., 2024).

Digital homework can also cause issues. One study observed middle school, high school, and college students studying in their homes. Students lasted an average of six minutes studying on their laptops before they started browsing social media or texting. Even with someone observing them, students spent a third of their “study” time not studying – and that was before social media used sophisticated algorithms (Rosen et al., 2013). Distraction can be an issue even with school-issued devices. Many school-issued laptops allow access to YouTube, which can make it difficult for young students to focus on their homework instead of watching short video content.

Lack of social interaction

The consequences of phone access go beyond the classroom. When students are able to use their phones during lunch and breaks, many choose to do so rather than talk to their classmates. Russell Shaw, the head of Georgetown Day School, described seeing students look at their screens instead of fully engaging with one another. “I’ve watched students who struggle to make friends not learn how to, because they can retreat into the short-term safety of their phones rather than tolerate the discomfort that often precedes finding one’s way into a conversation,” he writes (Shaw, 2024). “Phones teach our students to abandon the eyes of the person they’re speaking to in order to glance at a newly arrived text or Snapchat message.”

The lack of social interaction at school has also been accompanied by a decline in teens socializing outside of school. In 2000, 47% of U.S. 10^th graders got together with their friends informally almost every day, but by 2017 that was down to 26%. High school seniors in 2017 spent an hour less a day socializing and going to parties than high school seniors in 1987. The decline in in-person socializing also coincided with a sharp increase in the number of teens who felt lonely and left out (Twenge et al., 2019).

Exposure to pornography during school hours

A Common Sense Media survey found that nearly one out of four teens watched pornography during the school day. Half of those said they used a school-issued device to do so (Robb & Mann, 2023). Thus, not only are minors consuming pornography during school time, but other students can be inadvertently exposed to this adult content at school when students have access to their phones during the school day. My children’s school district in suburban San Diego allows students to access their phones during the school day. My eldest daughter, who just graduated from high school and is now in the Navy, sat behind a boy in a high school class who was watching pornography on his phone.

More discipline referrals

Many student discipline issues are precipitated by texts and social media posts students receive during the school day. In a rural district in Colorado, more than half of the school’s disciplinary issues were due to phones, including incidents of cyberbullying, recording fights, and students taking videos of classmates in bathrooms without their permission (Jargon, 2024a).

School districts that have banned phones during the school day have reported large declines in discipline referrals. When the North Adams school district in Massachusetts banned phones during the school day, discipline referrals dropped a stunning 75% (Banjeri, 2025). A Connecticut high school reported a 35% decline in suspensions and a 50% drop in students getting sent to the principal’s office after requiring students to place their phones in a locked Yondr pouch during the school day (Cross, 2024; Rohn et al., 2024).

Declines in teacher morale

Mitchell Rutherford taught biology at a public high school in Arizona for eleven years. Students’ phones were not supposed be out during class, but it was up to teachers to enforce that policy. A few years ago, students would put their phones away when he asked, Rutherford says. “Now, you can ask them, bug them, remind them, and try to punish them, and still nothing works,” he said. He quit his teaching job (Jargon, 2024b).

Minneapolis middle school science teacher Laura Kimball taught in a school with a similar policy. “Every day is a constant struggle against cellphone usage,” she said. She, too, quit her job (Kimball, 2023).

Seventy-two percent of high school teachers say that students being distracted by their phones in the classroom is a major problem (Lin et al., 2024). “We’re competing with Netflix, FaceTime, texting. They’re even watching March Madness!” said Missouri science teacher Noelle Gilzow (Walker, 2024). The vast majority of American teachers—83%—support prohibiting student phone use during the entire school day (Walker, 2024). “I don’t want to be the phone police. I want to teach,” said California high school art teacher Devon Espejo (Walker, 2024).

If school policy says phones are allowed everywhere but classrooms, teachers have to spend class time chasing students off phones or decide to not enforce the rule. “If the policy isn’t clear and consistent at school, you get a slippery slope,” Gilzow said (Walker, 2024). “You have the ‘cool’ teacher who lets me use my cellphone in class. And then there is the ‘mean’ teacher who does not. . . . it sets up a bad dynamic, an unhealthy culture in the building.”

Counterarguments

When I give talks at K-12 schools around the country, school principals tell me that they get the most resistance to phone bans not from students but from parents. Some parents are concerned about contacting their students during emergencies. In particular, they often say they would want to contact their student if there was a school shooting. However, school safety experts agree that students having phones during a shooting is actually more dangerous, for at least four reasons: 1. Students might miss important instructions during an emergency situation if they are distracted by their phones. 2. Noise from phones may alert shooters to where people are hiding. 3. Too many people trying to text or call at the same time from the same location can tie up bandwidth and keep authorities from communicating. 4. Although it sounds comforting that students could contact their parents during a shooting, parents will then rush to the school, creating traffic congestion that can keep police and ambulances from getting through. For all of these reasons, it is actually safer if students do not have their phones during an active shooter situation (Chuck, 2024; Kelly, 2022; Kyle, 2024; Murray, 2024).

What about the idea that students need to use devices to develop twenty-first-century skills? The problem is technology is constantly changing. As Everyschool founder Amy Tyson points out, a child starting school in this decade won’t retire until the 2080s. We cannot predict how digital tools will change, but we can predict that our kids will need good attention spans and social skills, and electronic devices undermine both (Tyson, 2024).

Conclusions

The smartphone era has coincided with increased loneliness at school, declines in academic performance, students spending less time interacting face to face, exposure to pornography during school hours, discipline referrals due to electronic communication and unauthorized filming, and undermined teacher morale. Experimental studies confirm that access to phones compromises academic performance. The most straightforward solution is a policy of no student access to smartphones during the school day. School policies around other technology, including laptops, should also be considered. For the sake of our children’s mental health and learning, the vast natural experiment of phones in schools must come to an end.

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