Scrolling social media on your phone doesn’t just cause you to compare yourself to others. Recent studies suggest it might also fundamentally change you on the molecular level. 

While it’s too early to see a direct correlation between poor digital wellbeing and cancer rates for Gen Z, ample evidence links poor digital habits to cancer predictors. According to a 2024 survey by health data management firm Harmony Healthcare IT, 69% of Gen Z respondents reported being addicted to their phones, averaging 6 hours and 27 minutes of usage a day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that teens with over four hours of screen time per day were more likely to have infrequent physical activity than those who used screens less (45.6% vs 32.1%) and more likely to have weight concerns (37.8% vs 25.3%). Physical inactivity and obesity are well-established correlates of over a dozen cancers, according to the CDC. And a 2023 University of Buffalo study found that high social media use is associated with higher chronic inflammation, which is also associated with cancer.  

I am a cancer researcher and advocate for healthy Gen Z digital habits. I believe that poor digital wellbeing — defined as unhealthy, obsessive relationships with screen time and technology — should be on medical providers’ radar as a potential accelerant for higher cancer rates.      

By the time Gen Z reaches screening age, ever-growing AI misinformation may have grown exponentially, presenting a pathway to rampant diagnostic delays and treatment misinformation. 

Recently I completed the Social Innovators challenge led by LookUp Live, an organization that supports Gen-Z led projects advancing digital wellbeing and fostering healthy relationships with technology. For my project, I interviewed 12 University of Maryland students about how they thought digital dependency could affect young people’s long-term health, including cancer incidence and survival. The interviewees echoed a recent JAMA report featuring Stanford experts who called for stricter guardrails with AI, particularly when it comes to health information. 

Their answers should also be seen in light of a study published this summer by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showing that younger generations are aging biologically faster than their older counterparts, and that this faster aging was linked to early-onset cancers. That study found that biological age — defined as a clinical measure of how old a person’s body appears based on nine blood biomarkers — rose with each successive generation, with Gen X aging faster than Boomers, and Millennials and early Gen Z aging faster than older cohorts. 

Accelerated aging — which researchers attribute to early-life environmental factors, dietary changes, obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and chronic psychological stress —  increased the risk of early-onset lung, gastrointestinal and uterine cancers, independent of genetics. The findings suggest that Gen Z and beyond could face an even higher incidence of these cancers.

Exposure to health misinformation, another indicator of poor digital wellbeing, is also a critical issue, and it’s bound to only get worse in the coming decade as Gen Z approaches routine cancer screening age. In our current digital landscape, cancer misinformation is increasingly common. A 2021 study led by researchers at New York University and University of Michigan found that among the top 55 posts about prostate cancer on TikTok, only 31% contained objective, factual information while 41%     contained misinformation.       

Another NYU study in 2018 found that among the first 150 videos about prostate cancer on YouTube, 77% contained poor-quality information, biased information, or misinformation.       

Prevalence of cancer misinformation is projected to intensify as artificial intelligence takes center stage; researchers at Jena University Hospital in Germany and University of California, Riverside recently published a study on chatbots convincingly delivering erroneous advice, concealing their non-human identity, and perpetuating misinformation about cancer screening procedures. By the time Gen Z reaches screening age, ever-growing AI misinformation may have grown exponentially, presenting a pathway to rampant diagnostic delays and treatment misinformation. 

What Can Be Done?     

To address concerns about tech and cancer, policymakers should support legislation focusing on addressing AI misinformation — such as the AI Labeling Act, a pending piece of legislation requiring social media apps like Instagram to have clear banners indicating when a post uses AI, with especially tight restrictions on health content posting, AI- or human-generated. The bill, introduced in June by Senators Brian Schatz, John Curtis, and Mark Warner, has not yet been voted on. Young people and anyone interested in supporting them should call or write to their representatives urging that they vote in favor of this critical legislation. 

The young people I interviewed emphasized how Gen Z digital dependence is intertwined with social isolation and loneliness, an observation that is backed by a 2024 meta-analysis published in BMC Public Health showing a positive correlation. Both social isolation and loneliness are associated with poor cancer survival; in fact, a 2016 study published in Cancer found that socially isolated women with breast cancer faced a 69% higher risk of mortality compared to those with stronger social networks. 

Excessive screen time should not become the smoking of the future…taking action now on this potential future public health challenge could save lives in the future.

To counter social isolation and loneliness, young people should engage in in-person community events, volunteer organizations like Junior League, book clubs, team sports, and in-person gathering hubs. Meanwhile, parents, teachers, and other adults should support and encourage the young people in their lives to be involved in such activities. 

School administrators should embed strong digital wellness curriculum into K-12 schools and universities with programs such as ReThink Citizen’s Digital Wellness Curriculum, which teaches fundamentals of online safety and responsible digital citizenship to ensure students learn skills for life-tech balance. 

For decades, Americans were unaware of the dangers of smoking, and young people were Big Tobacco’s most consistent target. But since the 1964 landmark Surgeon General report on smoking and health, smoking is generally agreed to be one of the strongest predictors of cancer. This year, the Surgeon General released a report on the harms of screen use, particularly for teens and adolescents, noting that higher levels of media use have been associated with poorer executive functioning and cognitive capacity.

Excessive screen time should not become the smoking of the future. Concrete links between poor digital wellbeing and cancer among Gen-Z may not emerge until decades down the road, but taking action now on this potential future public health challenge could save lives in the future.