TED Talks Daily
What we're getting wrong about teens and tech | Candice Odgers | Your Body on Tech
23 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. Hello, I am Manoush Zomorodi. I'm a journalist, an author, a two-time TED speaker. I also host NPR's TED Radio Hour podcast. And this week, I'm taking over for Elise Hu with a special series of episodes all about how you can live a healthier life in our high-tech era.
So this past April, I curated a session at TED2026 full of speakers whose work will make you think differently about your body, your technology, and what is keeping us human in this digital age. Every day this week, you're going to hear one of these talks and then a deeper conversation that I had with these incredible speakers. Really, they are incredible.
Today, we're talking about the relationship between kids, screens, and social media. It's a fraught topic. Most of us have heard how harmful tech can be for kids and their mental health. But child psychologist Candice Odgers says that much of what we've been told is not based on solid science.
In our longitudinal studies, social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health. Many others find the same, including, and I'm going to quote, that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting teen mental health.
Candice researches teens and screens at UC Irvine. She has spent years interviewing them and tracking them — with their permission, of course — seeing what they do on their phones and in their daily lives. And I came across her work when I was trying to learn more about how we could be most effective in coaching kids to use their devices responsibly and spend less time on them.
But the more I dug into Candice's work, the more I started to wonder if we should be looking less at the tech and more at everything else the kids are dealing with. It's a difficult idea to wrap your head around. Maybe parts of social media are awful and it is harmful for certain teens. But on the whole, maybe social media isn't damaging a generation. And why do we even think that?
Scary stories sell. They always have. And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents. We are an anxious lot. And the more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true.
Candace Odgers' talk and our fascinating conversation is coming up right after a short break.
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Chapter 2: How does Candice Odgers challenge common beliefs about teens and technology?
Since 2008, we've been working with thousands of 10- to 14-year-olds, getting information every day from their phones on how they're feeling, how they spend their time, who they're with. With their consent, we look at their school records, we track their sleep data, we look at their step count, and we see what they're doing online.
Importantly, we listen to them about what upsets them and what they need to be well. It has been a really incredible and at times wild ride. It's also been an illuminating one.
Because one of the most consistent things we have found is that the stories that you and I are told repeatedly every day about teenagers today, that they are lost, that they are worse off than ever, that somehow smartphones and social media have destroyed them and their brains, it doesn't match the data. And it doesn't match what they tell us. There is a massive gap.
And as I've tried to make sense of this gap, I keep coming back to a simple truth that we all know. Scary stories sell. They always have. And the more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true. I'm going to say it again. The more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true. Right?
And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents. We are an anxious lot. The hypervigilance, it hits us. When we hold that tiny baby in our arms, our entire world changes. It hits again when they hit puberty, and they begin to change in these dramatic and rapid ways, when our sense of control over them and what comes next begins to feel less certain. I get this.
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Chapter 3: What does research say about the relationship between social media and teen mental health?
My 15-year-old is six foot four. My 12-year-old is embracing independence like she's leaving for college next week. But the good news is that the real story about teens today is far more positive and far less frightening than the stories we all read. They have made remarkable progress on metrics that really matter, and we know a lot about how to keep them happy, safe and well. OK, the bad news.
The bad news is we are in the middle of an adult mental health crisis. And caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of teen mental health by far. So if we are concerned about teens today, we need to invest in real and meaningful ways in the adults around them. Many of them are simply not OK.
So I'll come back to that, but first I want to share with you a few science-based facts about kids today, and I'm going to focus on American teens because that's where a lot of the stories that you and I are hearing come from. So in the past 20 years, we've had some major wins. Rates of teen violence, alcohol use, pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows.
You are looking at the most educated generation ever in terms of high school graduation. Young people are inventors, they're activists, they're leaders, they're amazing singers, they are Olympians. They're amazing. But they're also telling us that they're sadder and they're more worried about the world that they're growing up in.
So they report increased concerns about safety at school, climate change, racism, their future. In our studies, what we find is the most frequently reported stressors are conflict in their home and pressure to do well at school. And those are also the things that predict their mental health day to day. Now, Since 2008, we've seen an uptick in youth suicide risk.
But perhaps this shouldn't be surprising, because adult suicide has been increasing dramatically in the United States since 1999. Remember when I said that adult mental health and caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of child mental health? Between 2011 and 2021, the rate of overdoses due to drug use among parents more than doubled.
People ask me all the time, what could have happened during this period other than social media coming online? The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying. OK, let's go back to that elephant in the room. Social media and smartphones also increased during this period. But here's the weird thing.
In our longitudinal studies, social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health. Many others find the same, concluding, and I'm going to quote, that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting teen mental health. For most adolescents, like boys, There's no association.
And for girls, what we find is that girls that are depressed go on to use social media more, but not the other way around. Social media does not meaningfully predict future mental health problems. Now, despite this, adults are quickly converging on banning social media for under-16s as a simple and singular solution to solving the youth mental health crisis. And here is the crazy part.
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Chapter 4: Why is the adult mental health crisis significant for understanding teen issues?
Childhood depression, anxiety, depression is one of the leading causes of disability in the world, right? And so we need to have a clear-eyed view on what the causes of that are and what we can do that can actually help prevent mental health problems early on. Because it has always been the case that the first signs of mental health problems are emerge in early adolescence.
And that was true long before smartphones and social media came on. So we have this window of opportunity and we need to use it. But instead, if we allow ourselves to tell a story that social media or time online damages children's brains.
We are sending messages that are not based on evidence, right, that are shaming our young people and that are really allowing us to bypass the harder work that has to be done in order to actually support young people and address mental health issues.
We're going to take a quick break. We will be right back.
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Chapter 5: What are the historical trends in teen behavior over the last two decades?
So, at this point, one might be listening and thinking, okay, well, fine, what do you want me to do as a parent, as someone who cares about young people, at least with getting phones out of schools or banning kids from social media. These are clear, concrete rules that, like, nobody has to be the most amazing parent, you know?
Like, yeah, sure, I'd love to have deep conversations with my kids, but maybe that's not happening.
So we know that the bans are coming, that they're hugely popular. And those are really normative and value-based judgments. I mean, adults and parents want their kids on technology less. They don't trust tech companies with this, right? So they want a different reality for the young people in their lives.
And that, I am not here to tell anybody how much screen time their child should have or how they should make these decisions in terms of what they want kind of normatively.
But if you're doing this from a position of fear and you're being told that you should do this because social media causes all of these things, for example, you know, that's a that's a message that's not supported by the science. I wouldn't make them from a place of fear where your child is going to fall into that.
Or that they're going to get addicted like if they start smoking cigarettes.
Yes. So the addiction frame is kind of a whole other really big problem right now in terms of how we're thinking about this.
You mean using that word like a diagnosis.
To describe behavior that's very normative. Right. And to tell young people that they're addicted to this and to frame it in that way when it's clearly not in the clinical sense that we would use it. But I think you're right. It's a tough, tough spot for parents to be in who want something different and don't know how to get there.
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