Life On Mars #9
Smartphones (and when a phobia is not a phobia), new and surprising links between mental health and socioeconomic status, and normalised appearance preoccupation
This edition of Life On Mars takes a sceptical look at research on ‘no mobile phone phobia’. It covers a new study showing less decline in mental health over adolescence in teenagers from low-income families and possible reasons these findings differ from earlier research, and at the implications of a study showing that appearance preoccupation seems to be normalised by young adulthood.
There’s a smartphone-related ‘phobia’ that may not be a phobia at all
Study title: Nomophobia, Psychopathology, and Smartphone-Inferred Behaviors in Youth with Depression: Longitudinal Study (February 2025)
My suspicion of naming new phobias has been activated by the latest: ‘no mobile phone phobia’, also known as ‘nomophobia’. The NHS describes a phobia as ‘an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal’. While most of the teenagers and young adults described in studies about this phenomenon probably feel anxious about being separated from their phones, I suspect that it’s perhaps not quite to phobia levels. If we approach the ‘phobia’ part of the word lightly, though, it may describe something useful (and perhaps recognisable to any parent who has informed their beloved ahead of a camping trip that most campsites lack charging points and WiFi).
This is an Australian study that tracked 41 sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds with depression for two months, noting their screen use and where they went. They were also given various questionnaires. The one that assessed nomophobia includes statements that seem some distance away from debilitating phobia: ‘I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so,’ or ‘If I did not have my smartphone with me, I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.’
Researchers found that nomophobia (I am valiantly avoiding inverted commas) was linked to higher levels of depression, as was spending a long time at home or in the location most visited by participants. The longer young people spent in a single location, the higher their levels of nomophobia. According to the research team, ‘This implies that the more an individual is confined to their home or the more concentrated their geolocation to a particular location, the greater their sense of dependency on their smartphone.’ I’d argue, though (see below) that there are other possible explanations.
Takeaways: feeling depressed may make teenagers feel more dependent on their smartphone, smartphone dependency may make them feel depressed, or perhaps both of these are at play. And it may be a lack of social connections and/or movement that partly explains the link between spending a lot of time at home and nomophobia – teenagers who spend less time out may have fewer friendships and interests, sparking both feelings of depression and a smartphone dependency that compensates for a lack of other positive inputs.
My other takeaway from this research would be that in the creation of new phobias that are based on agreement with fairly anodyne statements, we risk trivialising genuine conditions.
Adolescents from low-income families see less decline in mental health
Study title: Associations Between Socioeconomic Status and Mental Health Trajectories During Early Adolescence: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (February 2025)
There’s a well-described link between socio-economic status and child mental health – those from poorer families are more than twice as likely to develop mental health problems than those from wealthier backgrounds. There are many possible reasons for this link, including access to resources, family financial strain and local environments – poorer children may breathe more polluted air, have less access to green space and grow up in areas where crime is common.
Mental health trajectories (how mental health changes over time) and their link to socioeconomic status have been less well studied, however. This research attempted to fill a gap using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study in the United States. Almost 10,000 ten- to thirteen-year-olds reported their mental health at six different time points, and this was linked back to their families’ socioeconomic status.
The research team discovered two things. The first we already know – more advantaged children have, on average, better mental health. The second was a new finding, and one that conflicts with earlier research: children from poorer backgrounds show lower increases in mental health symptoms over adolescence than their wealthier peers. In other words, puberty is linked to a sharper fall in mental health for children with higher socioeconomic status.
It’s possible that the pandemic was a confounding factor, and children from higher-income families experienced more of a pandemic-related hit than their peers. Another possibility is regression to the mean (a statistical phenomenon that doesn’t mean the shape of the relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health has genuinely changed). A third possibility is that changes to parenting and wider culture have affected families differently according to their income brackets – for example parents in higher income brackets may have developed a more overprotective parenting style in recent years, which is potentially linked to worse mental health in children. Or, the researchers suggest, there may be beneficial effects of growing up in low-income communities that only start to emerge through adolescence – feeling rooted within strong local communities, for example.
Takeaways: there are lots of feasible explanations and no research yet that tells us which is most likely to explain lower falls in adolescent mental health among low-income families and why this conflicts with earlier research. I’m most interested in the idea that higher-income families have become caught up in overprotective helicopter parenting, but that probably highlights my own bias.
The short takeaway: more research is needed.
Appearance preoccupation appears to be normal by young adulthood
Study title: Online Appearance Preoccupation in and Beyond Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study of Social Media Use, Anxiety, and Depression as Correlates of Growth and Stability (February 2025)
There’s a second Australian study this week, this time looking at how ‘online appearance preoccupation’ changes over time. 565 teenagers and young adults were asked to complete three surveys over a five-year period that assessed their appearance preoccupation along with how much time they spent on social media and their emotional health.
Appearance preoccupation was defined in this study as ‘an excessive concern about perceived physical flaws’ and ‘excessive engaging in negative thoughts about one’s own appearance’. Connecting social media to the traditional teenage fixation with looks contributes to a preoccupation with how they present themselves online.
Those who were very preoccupied with online appearances at the start of the study remained so, found the researchers. Among those who started with less of an appearance-related fixation, their preoccupation grew over time. This led the research team to conclude that ‘a moderate or high level of online appearance preoccupation becomes almost mainstream as youth move into young adulthood’. Girls and young women were more likely to suffer from appearance preoccupation, but they didn’t seem more at risk than boys and young men for this increase in preoccupation levels over time.
Takeaways: we don’t yet understand how this increase in appearance preoccupation links to future levels of body dissatisfaction. As with all things, it’s likely that some kind of balance is probably needed – in my book, I cover research showing that ‘adaptive appearance investment’ (having an interest in grooming and clothes in a way that supports self-expression while avoiding coupling appearance with self-worth) is probably healthier than ignoring appearance altogether. But we do need to develop a better understanding of links between appearance preoccupation and mental health, as well as long-term trajectories, given just how common it now appears to be.
A recording is available of my talk with Prof Ellie Lee and Dr Ashley Frawley at the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies last week on ‘Is there a teenage mental health crisis?’, linked under the event title here.
Please comment below and share this Substack with anyone you think might find it interesting. In a message that will be on self-repeat this year: if you have read and haven’t yet reviewed my book about teenagers, I’d be incredibly grateful if you were able to do so here.