Stephen Neely: Gen Z, High Anxiety And Screens - January 12, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal space-time continuums. The Last Show with David Cooper. Gen Z is a little anxious, and by that I mean very anxious compared to other generations. And that thing in their pocket on their nightstand and in their hand is making it worse. What is that thing? You'll never guess. It's their phone. If you don't believe me, I'm here with somebody whose study shows a connection between screen time and anxiety levels for young people. His name is Stephen Neely, and he's an associate professor of public affairs at the University of South Florida. Stephen, welcome to the program. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. Before we get into screens and TikTok and all that, when you looked at the data, what surprised you most about the anxiety levels of young people?
Not necessarily what they're doing to cause it.
So I think that what really stands out is that this is the third in a series of survey projects we've done on this topic.
What is causing high anxiety levels in Gen Z?
And some of them have focused more on political stress. Some of them have focused more on clinical conditions such as anxiety and depression. But what we continue to see over and over... is that the highest rates of anxiety, regardless of the context, be it political, be it financial, be it life in general, the highest rates are coming from Gen Z, and not just from Gen Z, but specifically from young women in Gen Z. They are exhibiting substantially higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, and we do see very strong correlations within that data to their actual use of social media, and not just their time on social media, but how and why they use social media.
When I think of my grandparents, my parents, this is not a generation that talked a lot about mental health. I'm a millennial. I know my generation probably did more than Gen X and boomers. Could it be that young people have more language and they're just talking about their own mental health more? Or of course, did your study correct for that?
How does screen time impact Gen Z's mental health?
So there's absolutely an issue there that young people are more willing to acknowledge and discuss mental health concerns. And that's a really good thing. It's a really positive thing for society that we're reducing the stigma around mental health. But there are some ways to get around that question of whether what we're seeing is actually an increase in mental health concerns or just a greater willingness to talk about it. If you read The Anxious Generation, very popular book that's been out recently, You'll see that there's one of the ways around that is to look at the rates of self-harm. Really, really dark topic, but rates of self-harm among young people. Are they tracking up along with these perceived increases in anxiety and depression?
And the answer it's shown in that book alarmingly is absolutely yes. Got it. In our data, we didn't measure that, but what we tried to measure was the correlation between the dose and the dose-response relationship with social media usage. So if Gen Z is just more willing to talk about mental health concerns, anxiety, depression, so forth, then that would be blanket across Gen Z. It wouldn't be correlated or wouldn't step up with increased uses of social media, and it wouldn't step up with different perceptions of social media. And we see both. We see that social media, even when we break the data down to just look at Gen Z and millennials, social media is correlated with higher rates of anxiety and depression.
Okay, so for those that are hearing Gen Z has the highest anxiety out of generation, out of any generation for the nth time, I myself am one of these people. What does your study do to actually help us understand why this is happening? Of course, phones is what I talked about in your intro here.
What surprising findings emerged from the anxiety study?
Tell me about how that's working. Why is it that screen time is causing more anxiety?
So it's really easy to kind of demonize social media in this conversation because there's clearly very strong links. I mean, obviously, some of the companies, Meta, Facebook, Instagram, they've been outed even by their own employees who have leaked internal studies showing that they recognize the harm that these platforms are causing, particularly to young women.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:03
2
What is causing high anxiety levels in Gen Z?
1:03–2:05
3
How does screen time impact Gen Z's mental health?
2:05–3:51
4
What surprising findings emerged from the anxiety study?
3:51–9:58
5
How does social media usage correlate with anxiety levels?
9:58–10:15
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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