Youth Mental Health
Villa La Fonte – European University Institute (Fiesole)
09:00-17:30
The Annual Conference of the Fondazione Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti, titled “Youth Mental Health”, was held in Fiesole on Saturday, September 6th, 2025
In the opening session, David Blanchflower (Dartmouth College) and Alex Bryson (University College London) presented their report ”The Changing Age Profile of Distress”, providing an in-depth overview of the evolving age distribution of mental distress. The research shows that the traditional U-shaped pattern of mental distress across the life course — where distress peaked in mid-life — has disappeared in recent years. In its place, a steady decline of distress with age has emerged globally. This shift is mainly due to a sharp and sustained deterioration in the mental health of young people, especially those under 25 and young women. The trend began before the COVID-19 pandemic and appears linked to multiple factors, including the lasting effects of the Great Recession, under-resourced mental health services, and most notably, the growing use of smartphones and social media.
This was followed by three brief presentations by Michelle Acampora (ETH Zurich), Roger Prudon (Lancaster University), and Ana Rodríguez-González (Universitat de Barcelona), based on contributions from a special session held at the EALE conference in Bergen in September 2024 on youth mental health.
The morning session concluded with a talk by Olivier Marie (University of Rotterdam) entitled “The Mental Health Cost of Cheap Data: Evidence from Around the World”, which examines the global impact of smartphone usage on mental health.
The afternoon session opened with the presentation of the study “Exposure to Social Media and Youth Well-Being” by Giovanni Abbiati (University of Brescia) and Marco Gui (University of Milan-Bicocca), which focuses on two studies on early smartphone and social media exposure among adolescents in Lombardy. The first shows that students who begin using social media in middle school – especially in grade 6 – perform worse in Italian and math by high school, with stronger effects for boys. This decline is partly linked to frequent smartphone use during daily activities like studying or before sleep. The second study, based on a survey of 6,500 parents, reveals a gap between actual parenting practices and what parents believe is appropriate, suggesting that social pressure drives early access. The authors see this as a collective issue and call for coordinated efforts to delay and better manage digital use.
The conference closed with a panel discussion titled “What Did We Learn?”, moderated by Tito Boeri (Bocconi University and FRDB) and featuring Matteo Lancini (psychologist and psychotherapist), Simona Malpezzi (Senator of the Republic and Vice-President of the Parliamentary Committee on Childhood and Adolescence), and Tommaso Nannicini (European University Institute).
The recording of the live stream of the event is available below.
Allegati
