Children Given Phones Before 13 Face Increased Suicide Risk, Study Finds
A sweeping new global study has found a stark and troubling link between early smartphone ownership and serious mental health problems in young adulthood.
The research, published in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, analyzed data from over 100,000 young adults aged 18 to 24, primarily from Generation Z, and found that the younger a person was when they received their first smartphone, the worse their mental health tended to be by early adulthood.
Among the most alarming findings: nearly half of young women who got their first smartphone at age 5 or 6 now report experiencing suicidal thoughts. In contrast, just over a quarter of those who waited until at least age 13 reported similar struggles.
Researchers found that mental wellbeing scores, which measure emotional, social, and cognitive functioning, drop dramatically with earlier smartphone ownership, falling from 30 points for those who received phones at age 13 to just 1 point for those who started using them at age 5.
The study, conducted by Sapien Labs’ Global Mind Project and led by neuroscientist Tara Thiagarajan, is one of the largest investigations into how early technology exposure affects mental health later in life.
Rather than tracking participants over decades, researchers asked young adults to recall when they first got a smartphone and compared that to detailed mental health assessments. The findings point to a powerful correlation between early smartphone access and later struggles with emotional regulation, self-worth, hallucinations, and even detachment from reality.
Girls and young women were especially vulnerable, showing significantly higher rates of emotional instability, poor self-image, and suicidal ideation. Boys, while also affected, showed greater struggles with emotional calmness and empathy.
The negative mental health impacts were not confined to any single region but were especially pronounced in English-speaking countries like the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia.
Researchers suspect this may be due to earlier exposure to smartphones and the nature of English-language online content, which includes more hyper-sexualized, aggressive, or exploitative material than many other linguistic environments. Algorithms that prioritize engagement over safety may be serving the most damaging content to the youngest and most impressionable users.
Social media emerged as the strongest factor linking smartphones to mental health decline. Access to these platforms accounted for about 40% of the relationship between early phone ownership and mental distress.
The study also found that early smartphone users are more likely to experience cyberbullying, sleep disruption, and poor family relationships, factors that contribute further to mental health struggles.
Based on the findings, the researchers are calling for sweeping changes to how society manages children’s access to technology.
Among their proposals: enforcing meaningful age restrictions for smartphone and social media use, providing mandatory digital literacy education before access is granted, and offering restricted-use phones for children under 13. They argue that smartphones and social media should be treated like alcohol, tobacco, or driving, age-gated to protect developing minds.
With mental health challenges now appearing consistently and severely across countries and cultures, the question is no longer whether smartphones are affecting children, but how much harm is being done, and what can be done to stop it. The study serves as a stark warning to parents, educators, and policymakers: early unrestricted access to digital devices may be shaping a generation’s mental health in deeply damaging ways.
