IN MANY ways, teenagers living in rich countries are far better off these days. Compared with teenagers ten or 15 years ago, they get on with their parents better, fight less, get pregnant less often and do less damage to their bodies by smoking or drinking heavily. More will go to university. But there is one big exception. In almost every OECD country, the proportion of 15-year-olds who say that they make friends easily at school has fallen sharply. The decline was especially steep between 2012 and 2015.

Smartphones and social media could be partly responsible. The iPhone was released in 2007, and gradually found its way into more teenagers’ hands. Between 2012 and 2015, the amount of time 15-year-olds spent online on the average weekday jumped from 105 minutes to 146 minutes. The proliferation of screens and social media may have made it harder for teens to make friends, or raised their expectations of how many friends they ought to have. Teenagers may also have been affected by the prolonged slump that followed the great recession, or by hovering parents. Possibly (and, for parents, distressingly) there could be a link between the decline in friendships and the declines in drinking and smoking.

Read more in "The youth of today" from the International section