Xiao, Y., Meng, Y., Brown, T. T. et al. (2025).
JAMA.
Key Points
Question Are addictive screen use trajectories associated with suicidal behaviors, suicidal ideation, and mental health outcomes in US youth?
Findings In this cohort study of 4285 US adolescents, 31.3% had increasing addictive use trajectories for social media and 24.6% for mobile phones over 4 years. High or increasing addictive use trajectories were associated with elevated risks of suicidal behaviors or ideation compared with low addictive use. Youths with high-peaking or increasing social media use or high video game use had more internalizing or externalizing symptoms.
Meaning Both high and increasing addictive screen use trajectories were associated with suicidal behaviors, suicidal ideation, and worse mental health in youths.
Here are some thoughts:
The study identified distinct patterns of addictive use for social media, mobile phones, and video games. For social media and mobile phones, three trajectories were found: low, increasing, and high-peaking. For video games, two trajectories were identified: low and high addictive use. A significant finding was that nearly one-third of participants had an increasing addictive use trajectory for social media or mobile phones, beginning around age 11. Almost half of the youth had a high addictive use trajectory for mobile phones, and over 40% had a high addictive use trajectory for video games.
The findings indicate that high or increasing addictive screen use trajectories were associated with an elevated risk of suicidal behaviors and ideation compared to low addictive use. For example, an increasing addictive use of social media had a risk ratio of 2.14 for suicidal behaviors, and high-peaking addictive social media use had a risk ratio of 2.39 for suicidal behaviors. High addictive use of mobile phones was associated with increased risks of suicidal behaviors and ideation. Similarly, high addictive video game use was linked to a higher risk of suicidal behaviors and ideation.
This research underscores the importance of considering longitudinal trajectories of addictive screen use in clinical evaluations of risk and in the development of interventions to improve youth mental health.
