I appreciate the work this team is doing and they have significantly impacted my views on teenage girls using smartphones.
That said, I find their inquiry to mirror a pattern of ignoring the known drivers of childhood trauma & the impact on self-reporting (upon which all of this depends) by people in religious communities.
Until those factors are more thoroughly explored, I’m deeply skeptical of their main conclusion and the explanatory power of their analysis.
This is in part because I have significant personal experience with religious communities across a spectrum of wealth. Mental health issues were hidden systemically & the ingroups were cognizant of the need to under-report their issues on surveys like this.
But far more significantly this smacks of the same analysis that argued that children who had non-conforming sexual identities were in danger of mental health issues and therefore there was a causal link. With time we learned that a lack of acceptance of their non-conformity had far more explanatory power for their subsequent issues.
As convenient as it may be to explain poor mental health as a “rich, liberal” person’s problem, that’s also the group much more likely to be aware of their issues, share them openly, and seek help for them.
Mental health is a crisis and a rising one, but phones are not the only reason our children have less social/play time. Our schools & parents’ regimented approach to childhood development are as culpable, if not more so.