Lynne Malcolm: What's going on with the kids of today?

John Protzko: For a couple of years now I've been excited by this idea of the complaint about 'kids these days' essentially, and how for millennia humankind has complained about the children of the day and how they are going to be the downfall of civilisation. What's interesting and exciting about the delay of gratification test, the Marshmallow Test, is that it's one of the few tests that we actually have many, many decades of research on and a relatively standardised way of administration. And so we can actually ask the question; can kids wait, can they delay gratification better over the past 50 years?

Lynne Malcolm: John Protzko, post-doctoral scholar at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

You're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm.

John Protzko's research into a famous psychological measure of childhood self-control first conducted during the 1960s, shows a very surprising trend today. More about that later.

Meanwhile, are today's teens any happier than they used to be?

Jean Twenge is Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, and she's author of iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.

Professor Twenge has been doing generational research in the United States for 25 years.

Jean Twenge: Right around 2012 I started to notice some pretty big shifts in teens; emotions, how they said they were feeling, how they said they were spending their time, and I realised there was a pretty big generational shift there between the millennials and those who came after them. That led back to those born around 1995. So I define iGen as those born 1995 to 2012, and they are the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smart phones.

Lynne Malcolm: Jean Twenge draws from several large nationally representative surveys of young people in the US. One of them, called Monitoring the Future, has looked at teenagers every year since 1976. She's observed some clear differences between millennials (those born from the early '80s and through to the late '90s) and the younger group she refers to as iGen.

Jean Twenge: So there's a number of pronounced shifts. Really the most striking break between the two generations is in how they say they feel and in their basic view on life. So millennials are very optimistic, very happy, happier than previous generations, at least when they were teens, had very high expectations, high self-esteem, even entitlement, just a lot of positivity.

But then right around that 2012 time period, happiness started to fall, life satisfaction started to fall, self-esteem plummeted. More and more teens started to say that they felt like they couldn't do anything right, that they felt useless. These are classic symptoms of depression. More started to say they felt lonely and left out. So there is this a real breakdown in well-being among teens that shows up among other big government screening surveys as well in terms of clinical level serious depression increased by 50%, the suicide rate has doubled among teen girls. So we went from a generation that was very optimistic and positive and happy, at least for the most part, to one that is not as happy, even depressed, has a lot more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions.

Lynne Malcolm: So before we look at the possible causes of this, what are some of the other aspects or characteristics of the iGen that perhaps are more positive and not as serious as this?

Jean Twenge: iGen has a very strong work ethic, say compared to teens five or 10 years ago. They are more likely to say that work is important to them and that they are willing to work overtime. They are very practical in their jobs, their outlook on jobs and their outlook on the workplace, and their expectations are not quite as high as the millennials were, so they've come down to earth a little bit which has some advantages.

iGen is also not growing up before they are ready. So as teens they are less likely to drink alcohol, to have sex, to go out without their parents, to have a drivers licence and to have a paid job compared to previous generations when they were teens. So that's with some trade-offs. There are some things that are very clearly good there, like fewer teens drinking alcohol and fewer teens having sex. But then working and driving, there are some advantages to that certainly in terms of safety, but it also has the potential downside that they might end up going to university or into their first job without as much experience with independence. But still, a lot of advantages for safety. iGen is probably physically the safest generation ever.

Lynne Malcolm: Whilst it may be that teens in the iGeneration behave in more cautious ways, Jean Twenge is very worried about their mood and mental state. The research she's drawn on was conducted in the United States, but there's similar concern in Australia. Mission Australia's latest Youth Survey which came out at the end of last year, showed that one in four young people are at risk of serious mental illness and it warned that this is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. In America, Jean Twenge says, the iGeneration is on the brink of a mental health crisis.

Jean Twenge: Yes. So there's a national screening study that looks at major depressive disorder, so that's the most serious form of depression, and the percentage of teens in the US who fit the criteria for that and have suffered from that in the last year. That increased by 50% in a very brief period of time, between 2011 and 2015. The suicide rate has doubled among teen girls, among teen girls ages 12 to 14 it has tripled.

The Centres for Disease Control who keeps track of these type of public health statistics, published a paper in November showing a very large increase in emergency room visits for what's called intentional self-injury, so it's self-harm like cutting or taking too many pills, and that tripled among girls aged 10 to 14. So I think those statistics, all from government funded sources, do unfortunately paint a picture of a mental health crisis.

Lynne Malcolm: And you suggest that much of this deterioration in the mental health of young people could be traced to their phones. What's the evidence for that and what is the mechanism that causes it?

Jean Twenge: Most of this shift happened between 2012 and 2015, a pretty short period. This is a very unusual pattern for shifts in characteristics among young people. Usually you get changes that roll out over a longer period of time. So the advantage of that is it's such a short period that you can say…ask the question; what changed during that time that might explain why teens' mental health suddenly fell apart? So the economy here in the US was improving over that time, so it seems unlikely that that was the cause. There are economic things like income inequality had been growing since the 1980s.

Really by far the biggest change in teens' lives in that pretty brief three- to four-year period is the growth of smart phones and social media and teens spending more time online. So the smart phone was introduced in 2007 with the first iPhone, and at first it was just a few people who had it and then it grew right at the same time teens' health started to fall in 2012, that's when the smart phone gained market saturation, it was the end of that year, that's when the percentage of Americans with a smart phone crossed 50%.

So that period of 2012 to 2015 is when the phone went from being something that a minority of people had to something almost everybody had and had in their hands all the time. Perhaps as a consequence, over that same time period, teens started to spend less time with their friends in person. In-person social interaction for teens had been declining for a while, but it really, really accelerated as smart phones became common and teens started to spend a lot more time communicating through social media.

Lynne Malcolm: The Monitoring the Future Survey, which is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the United States, has surveyed teens since the mid '70s. The data showed a clear relationship between the amount of time young people spend on their screens and their degree of happiness. Jean Twenge:

Jean Twenge: There what you see is if you look at all the different ways teens can spend their time and see how that correlates with their level of happiness, pretty much everything that you can do that is not on a screen is linked to more happiness; spending time with friends in person, going to religious services, sports and exercise, even homework. Everything is; off a screen, more happiness. Everything that is on a screen is linked to less happiness; social media use, internet, texting, television, all of it. It's a really, really stark pattern.

So it's not just happiness though. In another survey, it's one administered by the Centres for Disease Control, of high school students, they ask about four questions that are risk factors for suicide; feeling depressed for two weeks or more, thinking about suicide, making a plan to commit suicide or actually having attempted suicide in the past, these are all clear risk factors. And they also ask about the amount of time that teens spend on electronic devices. So teens who spend five hours or more a day on electronic devices are 71% more likely to have at least one of those suicide risk factors compared to teens who spend less than an hour a day.

Lynne Malcolm: There is also a very big concern about the level of anxiety that teens have, I know in the United States but there is also a concern here in Australia about anxiety. How is anxiety fuelled by smart technology?

Jean Twenge: We know from surveys of college students that levels of anxiety are increasing in much the same pattern, with the increases really kicking in after 2012. We don't have great data from these surveys that look at electronic device use and relating them to anxiety. However, anxiety and depression are very, very closely related to each other, they are kind of two sides of the same coin. So if you are seeing these links between electronic device time and depression and unhappiness, it is a pretty reasonable guess that you'd see them with anxiety as well.

Lynne Malcolm: So what evidence is there that use of smart technology actually causes a decline in teens' mental health?

Jean Twenge: So the studies that I've been talking about are primarily correlational, and in that case it is difficult to tell whether it it's screen time causing screen time or depression causing screen time. Maybe depressed people are more likely to spend time on social media or on screens. But there are several studies that suggest that is not what happens, at least most of the time.

So there is, for example, two studies that follow people over time and they find that spending a lot of time on social media leads to unhappiness, but being unhappy doesn't lead to spending more time on social media. Another randomly assigned people to give up their Facebook page for a week, or not. And those who gave up Facebook ended the week happier, less depressed and less lonely. Those are just three studies, there are many others. There's one out of a natural experiment where people had to give up Facebook for work, and, especially among the young adults, they were happier. And then there are several other longitudinal studies of both adults and of teens that show when screen time is increased, then lower well-being tends to follow. So all of those studies get a lot closer, and in the case of the experiment, do a pretty good job of really showing that there is definitely causation from the social media and screens to unhappiness. There could be some going the other way around, but most of these studies point in the other direction, that it really is the screens that are the cause, although we do need more research to try to better answer that question.

Lynne Malcolm: Over history there has always been a bit of a tendency for older generations to be critical of younger generations or to despair about the decline of younger generations in some way. Is it possible that this is an example of that tendency, just being concerned about the kids of today?

Jean Twenge: No because these are surveys of teens themselves and their own behaviours. So, for example, the rise in self-harm and the rise in suicide, that's based on the behaviour of teens and the increases in unhappiness and in depression and in loneliness. That's what teens are saying about themselves, so I don't actually see how that relates at all.

Lynne Malcolm: So do you think teens themselves are seeing the links between their technology use and their mental health?

Jean Twenge: So in the interviews that I did for the book, for iGen, it was a very interesting how many teens, even those young enough to not even be able to remember a time before the smart phone, they were aware of the downsides of being on your phone all the time, even though many of them did it and felt it was mandatory, just based on the way teen social life is now. But many of them told me how much they hated it when they were trying to talk to a friend and their friend was looking at her phone. Adults complain about the same thing. Many of them said, 'Yeah, you know, we just don't go out. My parents tell me these stories about all the fun they had when they were teenagers, and we just sit at home and watch Netflix.' So I think many of them are aware of some of these downsides, but it's difficult because they feel compelled to participate in social media with this immediacy that is almost mandatory these days.

Lynne Malcolm: Jean Twenge, psychologist from the University of San Diego. Her latest book is called iGen. You'll find details on our webpage.

You're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm. We've heard from Jean Twenge about the effect of smart technology on the mental health of teenagers. But what about young kids' level of self-control? Has that changed over generations?

Woman: Okay, so I have one marshmallow for each of you. And here's the deal, you can either eat it now or you can wait until I get back and you can have two. Okay? So eat it now, or wait till get back and you can have two. I'll be back…

Child: If we wait you'll give us two?

Woman: Yes, if you wait you'll get two, or you can eat it now, whichever you want. Okay, I'll be back in a little bit.

Child: If you wait until she gets back, she'll give you two. She still won't give you two because you ate it.

Child: But I didn't eat a single one…

Lynne Malcolm: A recording of kids being given the famous Marshmallow Test. It's from a series of studies which were first conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s at Stanford University. John Protzko:

Woman: Oh, what happened?

Child: She ate hers.

Woman: Oh, okay. You waited, you get two. Good job. You can eat it.

John Protzko: The Marshmallow Test, as it's called, is a test of children's ability to delay gratification. So the set-up is generally the child is seated down at a table with a treat that they get to choose ahead of time, so it's not always a marshmallow. You give an array of treats to the child and let them choose their favourite. And then you have a plate with one of those treats and a plate with two of those treats and then the researcher says that they have to leave the room, and if they can wait until they get back they can have the two treats but if they can't wait, they ring the bell or they just go ahead and eat the one treat but they only get the one treat. And the amount of time that the child waits until breaking, essentially, is an index of how well they are able to delay gratification.

Lynne Malcolm: John Protzko, psychologist at the University of California. He explains that this study of children's ability to delay gratification is still going on today.

John Protzko: It's very interesting research to see the long term, decades later, associations or correlations between how long the child was able to wait when they were four and a half years old and measures like propensity to engage in crime, how much money they make, drug use, things like that. So the correlation between their young ability to delay gratification and later positive outcomes is very exciting work.

Lynne Malcolm: And so it's indicating from that early work that if they are able to delay gratification then they have a better journey ahead in life?

John Protzko: That seems correct. The thing is, we don't actually know if it's causal. We know that it predicts, we know that ability to delay at a young age predicts a lot of these positive outcomes later in life. What we don't know yet is that it's causal. So we don't know if you change a child's ability at, say, five years old to delay gratification, if that has any downstream effects. That research just hasn't been done and it is I think probably one of the great places for this research to go.

Lynne Malcolm: So if I were to ask you whether you think kids are better or worse at delaying gratification today than they were 50 years ago, what would you say?

Psychologist John Protzko decided to investigate.

John Protzko: What's interesting and exciting about the delay of gratification test or the Marshmallow Test is that it's one of the few tests that we have many, many decades of research on, and a relatively standardised way of administration. Intelligence tests, IQ tests have a longer history, and that research has been done by Jim Flynn and now dozens and dozens of other researchers. But for a lot of the questions that we have we just don't have that long of a history administering the same tasks. The Marshmallow Test is one that we do, and so we can actually ask the question; can kids wait, can they delay gratification better over the past 50 years?

So we looked at all of the published and even unpublished literature that we could find. So we reached out to people, reached out to the developmental psychologists and we aggregated all of the data on people who administered this delay of gratification test, this Marshmallow Test. And we analysed, after taking into account age, because this is something that you get better with as you get older, so we took that into account when we analysed the data; has this delay time actually changed over the past 50 years? And it turns out it has and it hasn't been going down. If anything, kids are getting better at this test and they are being able to delay gratification for longer than they were 50 years ago.

Lynne Malcolm: And in the process of that you asked experts to predict what they think the result was going to be. How correct were they in their predictions?

John Protzko: So this is my favourite aspect of this entire study. Everyone is very excited about the fact that delay times haven't been going down, if anything they have been going up. But to me the more exciting thing was before we analysed the data…so we didn't know what the results were going to be. We asked 260 experts in cognitive development to predict whether they thought delay times would go down, meaning kids are getting worse at delaying gratification, whether they would stay the same or whether they would go up. About 52% of these cognitive developmentalists thought that delay times would go down, and about another third thought that there would be no change. So overall the vast majority of experts essentially thought that they agreed with this 'kids these days' idea, that kids these days must be getting worse at delaying gratification, and it turns out that that wasn't the case. So to me that shows that this idea that we keep thinking the worst in kids even affects the experts who study cognitive development, who work with children, even they are affected by this tendency to just think that society is going down.

Lynne Malcolm: And so what have you concluded from the results that you saw as to why kids are getting better at delaying gratification?

John Protzko: I wish I knew, to be honest. So as I said, we've known about Flynn effects, so the fact that IQ scores are increasing for about 30 years now, and there's still not a definitive answer as to why it's happening. There are a lot of candidates but we don't have the answer yet. And so when I saw the fact that delayed gratification scores were increasing, my first thought was maybe it's the same cause. Whatever is causing IQ scores to go up, whatever that is, could be affecting delay of gratification ability as well. But it's too new to make a firm statement on what could possibly be driving this.

So some of the biggest candidates for IQ scores going up involved changes in nutrition, prenatal nutrition and early life nutrition. Another one is schooling, differences in schooling and the way schooling approaches IQ tests. So if you look at maths textbooks over the past few decades, elementary school maths textbooks, you see earlier in time they focused on maths, on addition, subtraction, multiplication. And as you get more recently you see maths textbooks essentially putting in items from IQ tests. So that's an interesting partial explanation for why you see changes in IQ scores.

The interesting thing about changes in IQ scores is that it has now been studied in many different countries and some countries it is still going up, some countries it has stalled, some countries it has even reversed and is going down. So questions like that help narrow down the range of possibilities for IQ scores.

Unfortunately, for delay of gratification we really don't have that data. Almost the entirety of the data that we used in our analysis was from America. There's a couple of studies in England, there's one in China, there's a couple of other countries here and there but if it is done in another country we generally have one data point from that country, so we just don't know if scores are changing in specific countries. So definitely taking a new look at delay of gratification over time and over generations even I think will in the future help us understand at least some of the possibilities for why it's happening.

Lynne Malcolm: It's a fairly common assumption that kids' ability to delay gratification may have diminished these days because of the influence of modern technology, like phones and iPads. John Protzko isn't so sure.

John Protzko: So technology is always the villain in these stories, at least in the modern era. We now point to smartphones and tablets and children and that's got to be the reason that the children are in decline. When I was a child it was home video game systems. Before that it was television, before that it was radio, before that it was cars, before that it was novels. We always seem to latch onto the new technology and say this is the reason. But to me the interesting thing is we start off with the idea that kids are worse, and then we go looking for a reason, so we grab onto technology.

There are associations between certain types of technology use and certain psychological measures, but in the same vein we don't know that it's causal. People don't really do the experiments, we don't really have enough data essentially, enough experiments to really know; what happens if you just don't let kids use tablets or any electronics for six months, what actually happens to them? That's another good point of research. But I think technology is always painted as the villain in modern times, and I think the reason is it's what's most saliently different between when I was a kid and when young children are kids. So it is the most obvious thing that we can point to and say, ah, this is what is different and so this is what must be causing kids to be worse.

Lynne Malcolm: John Protzko's main research focuses on interventions to increase intelligence, but recently he's exploring how societies throughout history tend to perceive the kids of today.

John Protzko: So in the context of this 'kids these days' study and delay of gratification, my interest has really been on why do we keep thinking this. It's a claim about the decline of society because of children that you can see repeated for millennia, literally millennia, so it's not just something about modern technology. People in ancient Greece were complaining about this, people in what is now ancient Iraq were complaining about children. So clearly to me it seems that there is something about the way that the human mind works that makes us think this, that we look at children and just think, wow, that's it, this is where it all goes down. And that's my new interest in this, has been trying to figure out why do we do this and are there ways that we can prevent people from having this bias, this 'kids these days' bias. And so we've started some new research on this. not enough data to really have an answer yet. So the two goals there are why does it happen, and can we do something to change it?

Lynne Malcolm: So it's a psychological phenomenon that you want to get to the bottom of.

John Protzko: It doesn't seem to me like it could be cultural, since it's been happening for millennia. So it's possible that it's just an outcropping of the way that the mind works. There's something about maybe memory, the way our memories work that causes us to have this belief.

Lynne Malcolm: John Protzko from Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

You'll find more information from today on the All in the Mind website.

Thanks to producer Diane Dean and sound engineer Isabella Tropiano. I'm Lynne Malcolm, thanks for your company, till next time.

 

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