Youth Mental Health and School Smartphone Bans: Early Evidence -- by Henry Saffer

This paper is the first to examine the causal effects of school smartphone bans on the mental health of youth in the US. Time series data show that the mental health of youth has been declining for the past decade. Several researchers argue that easy access to social media and other internet sites provided by smartphones is to blame. To provide causal evidence of the effects of these bans, I rely on synthetic difference-in-difference models and the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) from 2016 to 2024. Currently, there are data for only one state with two post-ban periods and two states with one post-ban period, which makes the results preliminary evidence only. The outcome variables are screentime and measures of psychological wellbeing. Overall, these early results provide no clear evidence that the school ban policy reduced screentime or improved psychological wellbeing. Future studies with additional years of data, when they are available, are needed to increase power and to estimate the longer-term effects of school bans on youth mental health.