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.

A range of measures to determine well-being

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.

Time spent with others pays off

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.

The second most important factor surprised us. Students who spent more time on obligations, including paid work and unpaid family responsibilities, also tended to report a greater sense of well-being.

Our results raise an intriguing possibility: Well-being may come not only from leisure and self-care but also from contributing to something larger than oneself.

While problematic substance use, passive screen time and sleep problems tended to compromise well-being, these factors weren’t the biggest detriment. It was difficulty navigating interpersonal relationships, including problems with friends, romantic partners and roommates.

Making friends, maintaining healthy relationships and working through conflicts requires practice, and some of that practice time now competes with communication mediated by screens.

Notably, the contributors to student flourishing were similar among students diagnosed with anxiety or depression and those without these diagnoses. That suggests these everyday experiences may matter across a broad spectrum of mental health.

Helping students thrive

Supporting students’ mental and emotional health is not simply a matter of reducing screen time. It also means making it easier for young people to spend time together in person, whether through clubs, recreation programs, community events or other welcoming spaces.

Counseling and educational programs can likewise help students build friendships, communicate effectively and navigate conflict in healthy ways.

None of this means mental illness can be solved by telling a struggling young person to put down their phone, join a club or get more sleep. Mental health conditions are complex, and people experiencing them need access to effective professional care.

But our findings suggest that helping young people thrive requires more than treating symptoms. It also requires cultivating supportive relationships, healthy sleep and meaningful engagement in work, school and family life.

Roxanne Prichard receives funding from the National Science Foundation.