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Smartphone Ownership and High Schoolers Persistently Sad or Hopeless · U.S.
Top: adults who own a smartphone, %. Bottom: high school girls and boys persistently sad or hopeless in the past year, %
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Smartphone ownership from Pew Research Center surveys of U.S. adults; Pew Research Center bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here. Teen measures from the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey of high school students every two years (use does not imply CDC endorsement). Sad or hopeless means almost every day for two weeks or more in a row, enough to stop some usual activities. The two panels have their own scales. Lines moving together do not show that one caused the other. Researchers disagree about what smartphones and social media do to young people's mental health: Jonathan Haidt argues they are a major cause of the rise in teen anxiety and depression; Candice Odgers and Amy Orben argue the evidence shows small or unclear effects.
Smartphones spread through American adults after the early 2010s; over the same years, the share of high school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness rose, most of all among girls. The chart shows the timing. It does not show cause, which researchers dispute.
What this chart reads
- Adults Owning a Smartphone · U.S. (Pew)as “Adults with a smartphone”behindlatest 2025-06-18
- High Schoolers Persistently Sad or Hopeless · Girls · U.S. (CDC YRBS)as “Girls persistently sad”
- High Schoolers Persistently Sad or Hopeless · Boys · U.S. (CDC YRBS)as “Boys persistently sad”
Sources
Adults Owning a Smartphone · U.S. (Pew). Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet (surveys of U.S. adults, 2011–2025). Values are Pew's published figures, dated by survey. Citation: "Mobile Fact Sheet." Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
High Schoolers Persistently Sad or Hopeless · Girls · U.S. (CDC YRBS). Source: CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), national high school estimates: data.cdc.gov svam-8dhg (DASH YRBSS High School, question H25, through 2017) and nu3s-3dwd (YRBSS Mental Health Indicators, 2019 onward), https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/. Public domain; source: CDC. Use does not imply endorsement by CDC, HHS or the U.S. Government. The data are available from data.cdc.gov at no charge. Refreshed monthly by cdc-yrbs-sync.
High Schoolers Persistently Sad or Hopeless · Boys · U.S. (CDC YRBS). Source: CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), national high school estimates: data.cdc.gov svam-8dhg (DASH YRBSS High School, question H25, through 2017) and nu3s-3dwd (YRBSS Mental Health Indicators, 2019 onward), https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/. Public domain; source: CDC. Use does not imply endorsement by CDC, HHS or the U.S. Government. The data are available from data.cdc.gov at no charge. Refreshed monthly by cdc-yrbs-sync.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.