Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens.<\/p>\n
In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless \u2014\u00a0classic symptoms of depression<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13-to-18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.<\/p>\n In a new paper<\/a>\u00a0published in Clinical Psychological Science, my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression, suicide attempts and suicide appeared among teens from every background: more privileged and less privileged, across all races and ethnicities, and in every region of the country. All told, our analysis found that the generation of teens I call \u201ciGen<\/a>\u201d \u2014 those born after 1995 \u2014 is much more likely to experience mental-health issues than their millennial predecessors.<\/p>\n What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens\u2019 lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.<\/p>\n