The Last Show with David Cooper
Stephen Neely: Gen Z, High Anxiety And Screens - January 12, 2026
13 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: 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.
Chapter 2: 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?
Chapter 3: 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.
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Chapter 4: 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.
So it's really easy to demonize them. But let's remember that every single technology, every major advance comes with its pros and cons.
A lot of benefits, whether it's helping grandparents stay more connected with their distant grandkids, whether it's facilitating civic engagement to, you know, very pronounced examples like the Arab Spring or like disaster responses where people have been rescued because Twitter worked when the phones didn't. So we don't want to just throw out the baby with the bathwater here.
What we're looking at is very specific patterns of social media usage. And where we see the most significant impacts are when we get into, in academics, we use this term called uses and gratifications of media. Hopefully that doesn't put anyone to sleep. But uses and gratifications are why we use the media we use and what benefit we receive from them.
When we look at people who just use social media to stay connected with friends and family, they actually have lower on average rates of anxiety than those who use social media for other reasons. Where are the highest rates of anxiety in social media usage? It's people who say they use it to stay on top of trends and culture.
to follow news and current events, to learn about health and fitness and beauty trends. So what we see here is two through lines. One is social comparison. People who use social media in ways that facilitate social comparison exhibit higher rates of anxiety. And then the other is kind of the outrage machine.
And this is where, if you've watched The Social Dilemma or other documentaries about how social media works, you know that the algorithms that determine what you see when you log into Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, whatever it might be, the algorithms that determine what you see are designed to maximize your engagement. And nothing engages you more than anger. And so...
Feeding outrage, feeding sensational stories about the news, sensational conspiracy-based stories, whatever it might be, those increase engagement very effectively in terms of what the algorithm rewards. The algorithm doesn't care if you engage with something because you love it or because you hate it. It just cares if you engage.
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Chapter 5: How does social media usage correlate with anxiety levels?
The twist is going to open a Pandora's box. Now I see Zach Brown on Survivor. Welcome to Survivor. Mr. Beast. Feels a little like a high school reunion meets a massacre. Survivor 50th season. Wednesday, February 25th on Global. Stream on Stack TV.
Thank you.