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In exam rooms across the country, pediatricians are seeing a troubling trend: a rising tide of anxiety in children and teens. While the COVID-19 pandemic amplified mental health challenges for youth, many experts say the spike began long before lockdowns and masks—around the time smartphones became a fixture in daily life.
“It’s a significant increase,” says Dr. Jeffrey Jensen, a pediatrician with Utah Valley Pediatrics working out of the Provo University Office. “We talk a lot about anxiety and depression spiking during the pandemic—which was true—but if we look back, we can really trace a spike back to when the smartphone came out and started to be widespread.”
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 44 percent of US parents cite social media as the most harmful factor affecting teen mental health, with 48 percent of teens themselves acknowledging its mostly negative effects—up from 32 percent in 2022.
Additionally, 46 percent of teens aged 13–17 say that social media negatively affects their body image, and 59 percent report having experienced cyberbullying, leading to increased feelings of fear and anxiety.
Dr. Jensen is quick to point out that, while smartphones and social media aren’t the sole causes of teen anxiety, their influence is striking.
“It’s significant and definitely more common in teenagers,” he says. And while he acknowledges that there’s no single number that captures the magnitude, his day-to-day interactions with patients and families leave little doubt.
To raise awareness about this growing issue, Utah Valley Pediatrics is shining a light on the link between myriad teen issues and teen use of smartphones and social media. Today, we’ll look at the symptoms and causes of teen anxiety and what parents can do to alleviate the side effects of too much screen time.
One often overlooked part of the problem of teen anxiety is recognizing how early and often screens are introduced.
“Screens have become such an ubiquitous part of our lives that we don’t even really think about it,” Jensen says. “I’ll see parents where the baby cries, and they’ll pull up something on the phone and stick it in front of the baby’s face.”
While it may seem harmless in the moment, using screens as a soothing strategy—even in infancy—can have long-term consequences.
“We’re using the dopamine from a screen, not to call it a sedative, but as a calming strategy,” Jensen explains. “The roots of anxiety go back to whenever we start replacing self-regulation and human interaction as a way to soothe and calm ourselves with the light from a screen.”
As kids grow, those early habits can harden into coping mechanisms.
“If you’re not able to develop the competence of calming yourself down and then also interacting with other people, normal life becomes a lot more anxiety-producing,” he says.
Unlike earlier technologies like desktop computers or even laptops, smartphones follow us everywhere. The need to be constantly available 24/7 to respond on social media can cause depression, induce anxiety, and reduce sleep quality for teenagers.
“The main thing with the smartphone is that it doesn’t have to be tied to one particular place,” Jensen says. “Now you see everybody’s got their phone. So even when you might be out in public, on a bus or a train, or in a waiting room, and you might talk to the person next to you, more often than not, people are going to be on their screen.”
That constant connection can displace real-world experiences that are critical to childhood development. Face-to-face communication, spontaneous play, even boredom—these aren’t just quaint ideas. They’re essential to developing imagination, social skills, and emotional resilience.
“It affects skill development, which I think is probably a reflection of brain development,” Jensen says. “It affects the development of social skills, of self-soothing. It affects creativity and imagination. Because at the same time, the other part of this is about things that are not being done as the phone is being done.”
For teens, especially girls, the emotional impact can be compounded by how they use social media.
“The girls tend to use social media a little bit more and a little bit differently,” Jensen notes. “They’re more focused on the comparisons, and they tend to use social media more.”
Research supports this observation. Studies show that girls around the age of 15 are more vulnerable to the negative effects of social comparison, especially through image-based platforms like Instagram and TikTok. These platforms are engineered to highlight curated, often unrealistic portrayals of life and appearance. Scrolling through a feed filled with filtered selfies, edited videos, and influencer content can distort a teen’s perception of what’s normal or attainable. Over time, this exposure can chip away at self-esteem and increase anxiety—especially for girls in the middle of forming their identities and sense of self-worth.
Compounding the problem is the feedback loop of likes, comments, and shares. Girls often report feeling pressure to post photos that earn positive attention, and they may tie their value to the response they receive. When that feedback falls short of expectations—or invites criticism—it can reinforce insecurity and make social media feel more like a minefield than a source of connection.
One way parents can assess whether their child’s screen use may be contributing to anxiety is to watch what happens when the device is taken away.
“When it’s time for the screen to go off, what kind of reaction are you getting?” Jensen asks. “If you are getting a rage reaction, that is the withdrawal of that dopamine—and that’s kind of a version of a panic attack.”
He advises parents to be on the lookout for other signs of concern in their teens’ behavior, too: Is your teen avoiding social situations, losing interest in previously enjoyed activities, sneaking devices, or engaging in secretive online behavior? These are all potential indicators of anxiety.
“Kids are smart,” Jensen says. “They can find ways around a lot of things, so just kind of expect that your kids are likely going to be pretty technologically savvy—but that can also land them into things that they’re not prepared for.”
So what can parents do?
“I think the overall thing would be to be intentional in screen use and conscious of what’s going on,” Jensen says. “Technology is cool, and of course we want to adopt this and use it, and it can be very useful. So it’s not really realistic to say, ’Just don’t have any screens.’”
Instead, he offers several practical recommendations:
As for smartphones and social media, Jensen recommends holding off until kids are emotionally ready. “The book The Anxious Generation recommends 16, but there are 16-year-olds that probably aren’t quite ready for that yet,” he says. “Some of our kids got smartphones at about 16, and it didn’t seem like they were quite ready, so they just kept their flip-phones until they were an adult. And that was OK—and it was probably better for them.”
Finally, he encourages parents to model healthy tech habits themselves and to approach this journey with compassion.
“Extend kindness, patience, and grace to yourselves and your children while learning to help them navigate these spaces,” Jensen says. “Remember that most learning involves some mistakes. Giving ourselves anxiety in the name of preventing anxiety in our children will be less helpful than modeling our own emotional regulation as we learn together.”
For further questions on teen anxiety, consult any of our 33 pediatricians at 12 convenient locations across Utah Valley and beyond.
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