This report was developed at the request of the OECD Health Committee, after being selected as a “Fast Track” paper in December 2025.
This report was developed and written by Emily Hewlett, with research, drafting and editing contributions from Ömer Faruk Sönmez. Particular thanks also go to Lara Fleischer and Danielle Provost for their work on policies and regulation affecting young people’s use of phones, digital devices, and online platforms, which they generously agreed to be used in this report. The authors would like to thank colleagues across the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs for their input, including Francesca Colombo, Frederico Guanais, Christopher Prinz, Marion Devaux, Francisca Vargas Lopes, Anna Perez-Lopes and Lucy Hulett. Thanks also go colleagues across the OECD who have provided comments and reflections to inform the development of the report, in particular to Lara Fleischer and Olivier Thevenon in the Centre on Well-Being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity (WISE), to Lisa Robinson, Molly Lesher, Nicholas McSpedden-Brown and Jeremy West in the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, and to Catharina Gress-Wright, Lucie Cerna and Cecilia Mezzanotte in the Directorate for Education and Skills.
The report has benefited greatly from the expertise and engagement of national delegates to the OECD Health Committee, who provided feedback, shared national experiences, and ensured the relevance of the analysis to the policy needs of OECD countries.
The authors would also like to sincerely thank the expert clinicians and policymakers who contributed to this project through participating in semi-structured interviews. Their knowledge and insights have brought a fresh perspective to this topic, and greatly informed the analysis of the report. In particular, thanks go to Judit Balazs, Ņikita Bezborodovs, Eugenia Caretti, Sophie Davidson, Belén González, Alexander Grabenhofer-Eggerth, Jörg Fegert, Helena Frielingsdorf, Pascale Fritsch, Sara Fritzell, Thomas Gargot, Jo Henderson, Michael Kölch, Katarzyna Kucharska-Pietura, John Francis Leader, Andrea Raballo, Soile Ridanpaa, Sophie Sagerschnig, Wan-Seok Seo, Matthew Short, Anna Szczegielniak, Matej Vinko and Agata Zupančič. Our thanks also go to the European Psychiatric Association, who reached out to their membership to help identify experts to participate in the interviews.