IGeneration: teenagers affected by phones One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone   she has had an iPhone since she was 11   sounding as if shed just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. We go to the mall, she said. Do your parents drop you off? I asked, recalling my own middleschool days, in the 1980s, when Id enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. No   I go with my family, she replied. Well go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we are going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes. Those mall trips are infrequent   about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, a smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. She told me she had spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That is just the way her generation is, she said. We didnt know any life other than with iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, todays teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They are markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinkings attendant ills. Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It is not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones. However, in my conversations with teens, I saw hopeful signs that kids themselves are beginning to link some of their troubles to their ever-present phone. Athena told me that when she does spend time with her friends in person, they are often looking at their device instead of at her. Im trying to talk to them about something, and they dont actually look at my face, she said. Theyre looking at their phone, or theyre looking at their Apple Watch. What does that feel like, when youre trying to talk to somebody face-to-face and theyre not looking at you? I asked. It kind of hurts, she said. It hurts. I know my parents generation didnt do that. I could be talking about something super important to me, and they wouldnt even be listening. Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who was texting her boyfriend. I was trying to talk to her about my family, and what was going on, and she was like, Uh-huh, yeah, whatever. So I took her phone out of her hands and I threw it at the wall. Though it is aggressive behavior that I dont support, on the other hand   it is a step towards a life with limited phone use. So, if I were going to give advice for a happy adolescence, it would be straightforward: put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do something   anything   that does not involve a screen. The fact that Athena threw away her friends phone proves that ... 1)  smartphones can cause mental health problems. 2)  teenagers know the problems caused by phones. 3)  smartphones make teenagers more aggressive. 4)  her friend thought she was doing the right thing.