This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Exercise, avoiding alcohol or even getting enough sleep aren't the factors most connected to college students' well-being. Spending face-to-face time with friends and other people is the strongest predictor of their mental health, according to a 2026 study of nearly 80,000 students that I conducted with the help of my students.
This finding matters because young people are spending less time together in person and more time communicating through screens. Between 2010 and 2022, the percentage of U.S. high school seniors who reported seeing friends face-to-face almost every day declined from 44% to 32%. Against this backdrop, mental health challenges among young people have become an increasing public health concern.
Suicide remains the second-leading cause of death among Americans ages 15 to 34. But mental health is about more than the absence of mental illness. My student researchers and I wanted to ask a somewhat different question: What helps young people flourish?
To answer that question, we created a broad measure of well-being that captured more than the lack of mental health problems, such as psychological distress. It also included positive aspects of life, such as having supportive relationships, hobbies and a sense of meaning and purpose. Our research team analyzed responses from 79,246 college students across the United States and Canada.
We examined 51 aspects of students' lives, including their substance use, the discrimination they encountered, their financial stress, any sleep problems and different relationship challenges. We also examined how students spent their free time, whether that meant exercising, studying, socializing, meditating, playing video games or scrolling on social media. We used statistical methods that allowed us to compare dozens of potential influences on student well-being simultaneously, helping us identify which factors were most strongly associated with flourishing.
Among the dozens of factors we examined, six stood out as the most important and influential. The strongest factor connected to student flourishing was remarkably ordinary: spending time with other people. Students who spent more hours socializing with friends, attending student organizations and participating in cultural events tended to report feeling an overall sense of well-being.
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