Smartphone Use and Adolescent Brain Function: Scoping Review Highlights

A recent review maps how existing studies have examined associations between smartphone use and adolescent brain functioning. Using PRISMA-ScR methods, the authors synthesized 104 included studies identified from a search conducted in February 2025, with publication limits set to 2022–2025. Across the included literature, the paper describes reported links between smartphone exposure (including problematic patterns of use) and outcomes spanning cognition, affective processes, sleep, and social-emotional functioning.

The scoping review grouped included studies into five themes, reported by the authors as psychological disturbances (52 articles), sleep (43), socioemotional functioning (23), executive functioning (14), and sensory processing (1). Psychological disturbances encompassed subtopics such as depression/sadness/suicidality, anxiety/stress, mental well-being and quality of life, loneliness, and body image–related concerns. Sleep-focused articles were organized around domains including sleep quality, sleep duration/disturbances, sleep onset, daytime functioning, and social jetlag. The socioemotional theme was framed around emotional regulation, social connectedness/emotional support, and social participation, while the executive function theme covered attention, impulse control, language/memory, decision making, and critical thinking. This organization functions as a taxonomy for how the contemporary literature has approached “brain function” outcomes in relation to smartphone use.

Within the executive functioning theme, the authors describe included studies linking higher smartphone or mobile screen time with attention-related outcomes, including reports of inattentiveness and attention regulation challenges in adolescents. They also summarize findings connecting problematic or excessive use with self-regulation constructs such as impulse control, along with studies examining cognitive domains including language and memory, decision making behaviors, and critical thinking performance. The socioemotional functioning theme, in turn, compiled studies that operationalized adolescents’ socioemotional skills as processes supporting emotional and social functioning with self and others. Across that set of studies, the review highlights research reporting associations involving emotional regulation (including phone use for emotion management) and social connectedness or support, alongside papers addressing social participation. Together, these two themes capture the range of cognitive-control and relational outcomes the included studies have examined in relation to smartphone use.

Sleep-related findings included reports linking smartphone use—particularly use close to bedtime or at night—with poorer sleep quality, shorter sleep duration or more disturbances, later sleep onset, and measures related to daytime functioning such as sleepiness or school engagement. The authors also describe how some included studies discussed overlap between sleep disruptions and psychological disturbance constructs, for example noting that depression and anxiety were described as relating to sleep quality in the included literature. In the paper’s overall synthesis, the authors characterize the aggregated findings as “primarily negative” and note that much of the evidence base is observational (often cross-sectional or survey-based), which they present as a constraint on causal inference and directionality. They note that further research is needed to determine whether smartphone use has a causal relationship with adolescent brain functioning, and suggest that neuroimaging approaches may be particularly helpful for examining this relationship. The authors’ bottom-line framing is that a broad set of associations has been reported across domains, while questions about causality and pathways remain unresolved.

Key Takeaways:

• The review organizes studies on smartphone use and adolescent brain functioning into five themes spanning psychological, sleep, socioemotional, executive, and sensory domains.
• Included studies reported associations across executive function (including attention/self-regulation), socioemotional function (including emotional regulation and social connection), and sleep-related outcomes.
• The authors describe a largely observational evidence base and highlight the need for research designed to clarify causality, directionality, and mechanisms, including longitudinal and neuroimaging approaches.