Sapien Labs‘ “The Youth Mind: Rising aggression and anger” report indicates a decline in mental health among adolescents, with younger age groups showing worse outcomes than older ones. The report links this trend to increasingly early smartphone ownership among children and highlights rising aggression, anger, and hallucinations as significant concerns.
In the United States, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been documenting growing rates of both sadness and suicide among 10–18-year-olds since 2010, particularly in girls. While their latest data shows that rates of persistent sadness recently plateaued in this age group, they report rising rates of violence and fear for physical safety. In India too, the National Mental Health Survey from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) has documented an increase in suicide rates among young people. Why is this happening?
This report, based on comprehensive profiles of the mind health & wellbeing of 10,475 Internet-enabled adolescents in the United States and India in 2024, describes trends among this age group and provides some crucial perspectives. As in older GenZers mind health continues to decline significantly with each younger year of age from 17- and 13-year-olds. Most significantly, among the 47 aspects of mind health queried, feelings of aggression, anger and hallucinations are rising most sharply with each younger age and are associated with the progressively younger age at which children are acquiring smartphones. Whereas today’s 17-year-olds typically got a phone at age 11 or 12, today’s 13-year-olds got their phones at age 10.
Read the full analysis from Sapien Labs.
