Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

Does your teenager spend too much time on electronic devices? How about you?  Jean Twenge is a Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and she says that teenagers who spend too much time on their digital devices are in danger of depression and decreasing happiness. She points to four large studies of teens from the U.S. and U.K.  All of them show that  happiness and mental health are "highest at a half-hour to two hours of extracurricular digital media use a day," And for those who spend the most time on digital devices "well-being steadily decreases," with "twice as many heavy users of electronic devices being unhappy, depressed or distressed as compared to light users. It's not just teens we should be concerned about either, but we ourselves as well.