Screen addiction among teenagers doesn’t just hurt their mental health. It can also kill them on the road, according to a study that digitally tracked the smartphone use of newly licensed drivers.
A University of Pennsylvania-led research team employed a telematics app to monitor the phone and driving habits of 119 teens in the Philadelphia area who received their licenses in the past year.
As participants ages 16 and 17 drove thousands of miles, the study detected that 34.1% were using phones in their hands while driving. That distraction led to sudden accelerations in 43.1% of their 12,360 trips over 60 days and to risky incidents such as hard braking in 10.9%.
Writing Thursday in JAMA Network Open, the researchers noted that their findings added to studies showing that teens who use their phones while driving are likelier to cause a fatal crash.
Teens in the study were 2½ times likelier to slam on their brakes or accelerate rapidly while distracted by their smartphones, said Catherine McDonald, lead study author and chair of the Department of Family and Community Health at Penn.
“We identified that teens who have not had their license for all that long were using their cellphone while driving, as well as speeding,” Ms. McDonald said in an email. “We know that cellphone use and speeding can contribute to crashes, so we want to start addressing these risky behaviors early on in the teen driving phases.”
She said the results highlight the need to prevent teens from being distracted while learning the rules of the road.
The study comes as public health officials have flagged increased screen addiction since the pandemic as a public health crisis threatening teen academic performance, mental health and decision-making skills.
Multiple studies have found post-pandemic teens likelier than previous generations to spend their free time scrolling through social media websites alone in their rooms and less likely to indulge in social risks such as having promiscuous sex or using tobacco.
Nearly half of teens ages 13 to 17 said they use the internet “almost constantly,” roughly double the 24% who said the same in 2014-15, the Pew Research Center found in a survey released in December. And nearly 1 in 5 said they used YouTube or TikTok “almost constantly.”
The study published Thursday suggests that makes them as dangerous on the road as people who drive after drinking or using mind-altering drugs.
“We want safe teen drivers on the roads, for themselves and those who share the road with them,” Ms. McDonald said.
Her team examined the smartphone habits of 60 girls and 59 boys, with 1.5% of the trips occurring at night and only 9% involving rain.
They found the gender of participants, nighttime driving, rain and having a license for less than six months made no difference to the tally of risky road incidents. Only smartphone use did.
In response, the researchers recommended wider use of smartphone apps “to observe behaviors as well as surveil changes due to intervention efforts” with risky teen drivers.
“Using a smartphone telematics app to detect both cellphone use and [risky driving] events while driving without the need for in-car monitoring or direct observation provides a broader opportunity to reach large-scale populations of adolescent drivers who may be hesitant for in-vehicle video monitoring,” they wrote in the study. “In addition, a smartphone app does not contain the bias often typically associated with self-report.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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