Back to the directoryFind in the timeline
Orben and Przybylski on screen time and adolescent well-being
Orben and Przybylski (2019) found a small negative association between technology use and adolescent well-being in three large datasets. Whether average associations are the right measure, and whether causal harm is shown, is disputed. This record gives no medical advice.
- Where it sits
- Academic psychologyResearch published for other researchers and students.
- Evidence level
- ContestedThe evidence conflicts or is disputed, for example after failed replications.
- Sources inspected
- 4 of 43 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 1 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
In February 2019 Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski published a paper in Nature Human Behavior that applied specification curve analysis to three large datasets with 355,358 participants in total. The Oxford Internet Institute names them as Monitoring the Future and the Youth Risks and Behavior Studies in the US, and the Millennium Cohort Study in the UK. The authors report a negative but small association between digital technology use and adolescent well-being, explaining at most 0.4 per cent of the variation.
The psychological idea
Specification curve analysis runs a full range of reasonable analytic choices instead of one selected result. The Institute's release quotes Orben saying the datasets allowed over 600 million possible ways to analyze the data, of which a large sample was calculated. The data are surveys, so the result is a statistical association, not a test of cause. The abstract concludes that the effects are too small to justify policy change.
In practice
To give scale, the Oxford release reports that regular potato eating showed a similar negative association and wearing corrective lenses a worse one. Being bullied and smoking marijuana were about 4.3 and 2.7 times more negative than screen use, and sleep and breakfast had much stronger associations. These are averages. They do not say screens are harmless or harmful for any individual, and this record gives no medical advice.
Why it mattered
In its account of the dispute over Haidt's 2024 book The Anxious Generation, Platformer quotes Przybylski comparing the average correlation between screen time and well-being with that between wearing glasses and well-being. The 2019 paper sits on one side of an argument about average associations versus experimental evidence.
Limits and qualifications
Contested. Platformer reports that Candice Odgers, in a Nature review of 29 March 2024, found a mix of no, small and mixed associations, mostly correlative. Haidt replied on 9 April 2024 that 16 of 22 experiments found harm or benefit from quitting social media, and 8 of 9 quasi-experiments found harm, and that Odgers's alternative causes do not fit the timing or countries. Przybylski calls such counting vote counting. The 2019 paper is survey-based and cannot settle cause. Odgers's review itself was not opened.
Evidence behind the claims
Orben and Przybylski applied specification curve analysis to three datasets totalling 355,358 participants and found a negative but small association, explaining at most 0.4 per cent of variation in well-being, and conclude the effects are too small to justify policy change.
The Oxford Internet Institute release, dated 22 January 2019, names Monitoring the Future, the Youth Risks and Behavior Studies and the Millennium Cohort Study, and quotes Orben on over 600 million possible ways to analyze the data, of which a large sample was calculated.
The release reports potato eating with a similar negative association, corrective lenses with a worse one, bullying and marijuana use with associations 4.3 and 2.7 times more negative than screen use, and sleep and breakfast with much stronger associations.
Platformer reports that Odgers wrote in Nature on 29 March that the suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring children's brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science, and describes her view as a mix of no, small and mixed associations with most data correlative.
Haidt's post of 9 April 2024 lists 22 experiments (16 finding significant harm or benefits from quitting social media) and nine quasi-experiments (eight finding harm), and argues Odgers's alternative explanations do not fit the timing or the countries involved.
Platformer quotes Przybylski saying the average correlation between screen time and well-being was analogous to that between wearing glasses and well-being, and that it does not matter if 19 studies point one way and three another if the three are done well; it reports him describing the approach as vote counting.
Platformer presents the causal question as contested and unresolved: Haidt says he has shown causation, Odgers says the evidence is mostly correlational, and the article concludes the evidence is mixed.
People involved
- Amy Orben. Co-author, Oxford psychologist
- Andrew Przybylski. Co-author
- Jonathan Haidt. Author of The Anxious Generation (2024), argues social media causes harm
- Candice Odgers. Psychologist at UC Irvine whose Nature review disputes Haidt's claims
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 2.3: Analyzing FindingsChapter 2, Psychological Research. Method. The section discusses this topic.The analyzing findings section explains correlation versus causation and experiments, the core of this dispute; effect size is not covered there.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
4 of 4 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology useOrben, A; Przybylski, A. Nature Human Behaviour 3(2): 173-182 (record on IDEAS/RePEc), 2019. Journal article. Primary source.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the abstract and publication details on IDEAS/RePEc. The Nature paper itself was not read.
- [2]Technology use explains at most 0.4% of adolescent wellbeingOxford Internet Institute. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 2019. News report. Secondary account.Relevant text checkedRead the university press release as returned by the fetch tool: datasets, comparison items and author quotes. The comparison figures come from the release, not the paper.
- [3]Inside the debate over The Anxious GenerationPlatformer. Platformer, 2024. News report. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedRead the article as returned by the fetch tool: summary of Odgers's Nature review, Haidt's rebuttal, Przybylski's quotes and the framing of causality. Odgers's review itself was not opened.
- [4]Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental IllnessHaidt, J. After Babel, 2024. News report. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedRead Haidt's post as returned by the fetch tool: experiment counts and arguments on timing and countries. It is one party's own account and does not include Odgers's response.
Access note: Odgers's Nature review and the Nature paper were not opened. Comparison items come from a university press release, not the paper. Haidt's post is one side's account.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.