Generation Alpha Shows Higher Social Anxiety Than Gen Z as Early Smartphone Exposure Mounts

A new study from Coimbatore, India, has delivered one of the first direct statistical comparisons between the two youngest digital-native generations on a question that increasingly worries parents, teachers and clinicians: does heavier and earlier screen use go hand in hand with anxiety about face-to-face social interaction? The research, published in SN Social Sciences by S. Rama Gokula Krishnan of St. Joseph’s University in Bengaluru and B. Preethi Meena of Kumaraguru College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Coimbatore, compared 100 members of Generation Alpha with 100 members of Generation Z from the same south Indian city. Its headline finding is striking: the younger cohort, children and young adolescents who have never known a world without touchscreens, recorded a significantly higher mean rank of social interaction anxiety than their older counterparts, a difference that reached statistical significance at p < 0.01.

Social interaction anxiety, the fear and distress experienced when meeting, talking with or being evaluated by other people, is more than ordinary shyness. Psychologists treat it as a continuum that can undermine academic performance, friendship formation and long-term quality of life. The Coimbatore study grounded its investigation in the theory of compensatory internet use, a framework proposed by researcher David Kardefelt-Winther in 2014. The theory holds that people do not simply become addicted to screens in a vacuum; instead, they turn to the internet to compensate for unmet psychological needs, including relief from social discomfort. In that framing, the relationship between screens and anxiety can become self-reinforcing: an anxious person retreats into the phone, the phone displaces opportunities to practise social skills, and the resulting skill deficit deepens the anxiety that drove the retreat in the first place.

The research team set out to test whether patterns of internet and gadget use were associated with social interaction anxiety in two generations defined by different technological starting points. Generation Z, roughly the cohort born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s, grew up alongside the explosion of social media and smartphones but still remembers dial-up-era childhoods in many households. Generation Alpha, born from around 2010 onward, entered families in which smartphones, tablets and streaming services were already ambient fixtures of daily life. Because both groups are considered digital natives, the researchers asked which variables best tracked their anxiety levels: hours spent on smartphones and laptops, the age at which a respondent first used a smartphone, and the type of content each respondent preferred most.

Methodologically, the study relied on non-parametric statistics appropriate to its sample size and data distribution. The researchers used the Mann-Whitney U framework, reporting mean ranks to compare anxiety between the two generational groups, and drew on rank-based correlation techniques in the tradition of Spearman’s method to test associations between screen-use variables and anxiety scores across the entire sample. Anxiety itself was measured with instruments derived from the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale, a widely validated measure developed by Mattick and Clarke and later condensed into short forms. The authors secured ethical clearance from the first author’s institution and followed the principles of the Belmont Report and the Declaration of Helsinki; informed consent came directly from the Generation Z participants, while for Generation Alpha children consent was obtained both from the children themselves and from their parents.

The central comparison produced an unambiguous result. Generation Alpha participants showed a higher mean rank of social interaction anxiety than Generation Z participants, with the difference statistically significant at the p < 0.01 level. In practical terms, the youngest generation in the sample, currently at what the authors describe as a vulnerable age for social development, reported more discomfort in social interaction than the cohort just ahead of them. The finding resonates with a growing international literature. Prevalence studies across seven countries have documented substantial rates of social anxiety in young people, and systematic reviews have repeatedly linked higher screen time with symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescents, although the direction of causation remains one of the most contested questions in digital-behaviour research.

Among the study’s secondary findings, one stood out for its breadth: across the combined sample of 200 respondents, early exposure to smartphones was correlated with higher social interaction anxiety. The earlier a person’s life had been touched by a smartphone, the greater their anxiety in social settings tended to be. This aligns with developmental research showing that the years from roughly age three to five are a sensitive period for language acquisition and social learning, and that high smartphone exposure in that window has been associated with behavioural difficulties. It also dovetails with recent post-pandemic studies documenting delays in pragmatic language skills among children whose early years were spent in lockdown, and with long-term evidence linking the COVID-19 era to measurable effects on language development at age three. Generation Alpha’s earliest social worlds were shaped precisely during that period of disrupted schooling and heightened screen reliance.

The study also examined content preferences, hours of use on smartphones and laptops, and their associations with anxiety, situating its results within a body of work that distinguishes passive from active screen time. Research from Canada and across 38 countries has suggested that passive consumption, such as watching video content, carries different psychological risks than active, interactive use, and that both forms relate to sleep quality, psychosomatic complaints and mood. A meta-analysis of social anxiety and internet use has likewise found that socially anxious individuals gravitate toward online environments where they can control disclosure and avoid immediate evaluation, a pattern consistent with the compensatory framework the Coimbatore authors adopted. Parasocial relationships with online creators, documented in research on YouTube use, offer a further illustration of how screens can substitute for, rather than supplement, genuine social contact.

What makes the Coimbatore study notable is its setting and its subjects. Most screen-time research comes from North America, Europe and East Asia; comparatively little has examined Generation Alpha in India, a country with one of the world’s largest smartphone user bases and a young demographic profile. By sampling both generations in the same city, the researchers held many environmental factors constant while comparing cohorts whose technological biographies differ sharply. The authors argue that their results underscore the importance of digital hygiene, the deliberate management of screen habits, especially for Generation Alpha members who are still developing the social competencies that anxiety can erode. They suggest that a reduction in screen time could yield psychological and social benefits for this group, a conclusion consistent with intervention research showing that interaction-based programmes in schools and communities support children’s mental health.

The findings arrive amid a broader scientific debate about how much digital technology actually matters for youth well-being. Some large-scale analyses have argued that the statistical association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use is modest, while others point to specific populations, such as socially anxious adolescents, for whom the effects appear more consequential. Research on socially anxious teenagers shows that their everyday social interactions carry measurable costs for mood and depression risk, which strengthens the plausibility of a feedback loop in which screens both soothe and deepen social fear. The Coimbatore data cannot settle questions of causation, since it is cross-sectional and correlational, but the generational gap it documents, with the more screen-saturated cohort reporting more anxiety, adds weight to calls for precaution rather than complacency.

For parents, educators and policymakers, the study’s practical message is that the age of first smartphone exposure may matter as much as the total hours logged. Delaying that first exposure, modelling balanced device habits at home, protecting sleep and face-to-face play, and teaching children to recognise when screens are being used to escape social discomfort are all strategies consistent with the compensatory internet use framework. The authors, who analysed the data and collected responses respectively, note that Generation Alpha is currently at a vulnerable developmental stage, and that promoting digital hygiene now, before maladaptive patterns harden into adult habits, could pay dividends across the generation’s social future. As the first cohort to grow up entirely within the smartphone era reaches adolescence, the Coimbatore findings offer an early statistical warning that the youngest digital natives may need more deliberate support in learning the oldest of human skills: talking to one another.

Subject of Research: Screen use and social interaction anxiety among Generation Alpha and Generation Z in India

Article Title: Screen use and social interaction anxiety among Gen. Alpha vs. Gen. Z in Coimbatore City

Article References: Krishnan, S. R. G., & Meena, B. P. (2026). Screen use and social interaction anxiety among Gen. Alpha vs. Gen. Z in Coimbatore City. SN Social Sciences, 6(9), Article 418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01718-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01718-9

Keywords: Generation Alpha, Generation Z, social interaction anxiety, screen time, smartphone use, compensatory internet use, digital hygiene, India, Coimbatore, social phobia, adolescent mental health, digital natives