What's causing mental health problems?
9 May 2026
What’s causing our kids’ mental health problems?
Is there something we can do about it?
A new report sheds concerning light on the growing mental health problems of young people around the world and the factors that are contributing to it – including wireless devices.
Called, ‘Global Mind Health 2025’, the report assessed people’s capacity to navigate life’s challenges and function productively. Information obtained from surveys assessed ‘47 cognitive, emotional, social, and physical capacities and problems that enable or diminish our ability to function effectively in daily life.’ From this, the authors developed mind health ratings (Mind Health Quotients).
The report found that younger generations rated far worse than other generations. ‘Today almost half suffer mental health challenges of clinical significance that substantially impact their ability to function productively in daily life,’ said Chief Scientist behind the research, Dr Tara Thiagarajan. ‘This is over four-fold higher than their parents and grandparents. Altogether this presents as a pattern of diminishing mind health in each younger generation. As these younger adults grow older, what will society become?’
It’s an important question – and the answer may have a lot to do with the technologies they’re using, especially smartphones.
According to the research, smart phones were one of the four major causes of lower mental health in young adults aged 18 to 34. ‘A younger age of first smartphone ownership is associated with increased suicidal thoughts, aggression, and other problems in adulthood,’ the report said. It may be no coincidence that smart phones arrived around the time that the decline in young people’s mental health began.
It pointed out that, because children are now being given smart phones at a younger age, the outcomes may be worse for young adults of future.
‘GenZ is the first generation to grow up with a smartphone. Among this group, the younger they acquired their first smartphone in childhood, the more likely they are to have struggles as adults. These struggles extend beyond sadness and anxiety to less discussed symptoms, such as a sense of being detached from reality, suicidal thoughts, and aggression towards others. The effects arise through disruption of sleep, increased risk of exposure to harmful online content, predators, and explicit material as well as increased probabilities of cyberbullying during crucial developmental years. Excessive time spent on smartphones also diminishes the development of social cognition that requires learned interpretation of facial expressions, body language, and group dynamics. The negative impacts are particularly sharp below age 13.’
‘Overall, young people today are merely enduring life in sharp contrast not only to their parents and grandparents generations today, but also to young adults in the early 2000s who reported the greatest wellbeing of all age groups,’ it said.
Global Mind Health in 2025, February 2026, Sapien Labs, https://sapienlabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Global-Mind-Health-in-2025-Report.pdf