This article/researcher makes claims that: a) there is a mental health crisis among teenagers which is not parallel to other comparable generations, and b) that crisis is linked to mobile phones.

I'm not convinced by either claim.

In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If teens are more able to clearly and openly express the fact that they are sad, does that mean they are more sad? I think not.

Teenagers face far greater economic insecurity than before, and are more acutely aware of it. What will the workforce look like when they graduate highschool? Jobs that teenagers would have been invited to do are being replaced with automated checkouts and computer vision algorithms. Teenagers are required to go into more debt than ever, to escape this lack of opportunities via education.

The article identifies that today's teenagers: get in less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent - and presents this all as bad because it is different than what came before. Is it bad? Would people 20 years ago have thought this was bad?

The author expresses great surprise that people sleep with their phones beside their bed - whereas, it is a great surprise to me that she doesn't. It has an extremely useful function as an alarm clock.

I suspect that she would find that a vast majority of her generation of 47-year olds also sleeps with their phone within an arm's reach.