The answer to the question in the title.
The generation is different, and a correlation does not imply causation. I personally find the connection pretty far fetched. After all, while the smartphone is also common in the EU, the teen suicide rates did not change that much. (slide 9: https://www.escap.eu/bestanden/Research/alan_apter_on_youth_... )
Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide."
TFA says Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased.
The slide you cite ends in 2005.
I can't find any data post 2011 for the EU as a whole (eurostat wants to update that statistic next year), but at least in the UK (office for national statistics [3], figure 6) the suicide rate among people aged 10-29 has odd fluctuations, but overall doesn't change much between 2007 and 2015 (algough it has ended the steep decline that was present 1997-2007).
If smartphones are really responsible for increased suicide rates, we would expect to see similar effects all over the developed world. Maybe an effect on EU teenage suicide rates is hidden by an overall decrease in teenage suicides, but that's not apparent from the data at all (the decease until 2007 might just be a return to the "normal" levels of the early 1980s, for all I know).
1: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
2: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
3: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Bad argument. Gun ownership in Canada is higher than the USA's, yet their firearms murder rate is massively lower. That doesn't mean that gun ownership in the USA isn't a problem worth addressing.
There is something in the intersection of smartphones and teens and the USA which is causing a measurable deleterious effect on the '07-'12 generation. The thing that's changed is smartphone ownership (and the services they can access). So clearly it is worth investigating.
Well, that, yes, but there's also the GOP shifting into full-on "destroy Obama by any means" wilful destruction of the USA's political structures which may give them a less than rosy view on their futures.
The articles adresses this issue and talks about research into correlation.
> Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."