Looking at the "suicide attempts requiring medical attention" we see a low of 1.7% in 1991, then a peak of 2.8% in 1995, and another low in 1.9%, and then now another peak (but less than 1995).
For actual suicides I found this chart https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm which shows we are well below baseline trends for males. For females we do seem to have an increase lately, so that part seems like the main thing to be concerned about. Although it seems to have started more around 2007 than 2012 which seems a bit early to be blaming social media (almost no one really had smartphones in 2007, let alone teens). So I do think it's worth looking into this but it's easy to try to find data to fit our preconceived notions rather than the truth.
We didn't have smartphones, but we did have cell phones. I was in 7/8th grade at that time and had a cell phone as a lower middle class kid. I mainly used it to call my parents or text with friends. That time was shortly after providers moved to unlimited calls/texts in the US because kids would steamroll through a billion sms messages anyway.
Looking at the "suicide attempts requiring medical attention" we see a low of 1.7% in 1991, then a peak of 2.8% in 1995, and another low in 1.9%, and then now another peak (but less than 1995).
For actual suicides I found this chart https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm which shows we are well below baseline trends for males. For females we do seem to have an increase lately, so that part seems like the main thing to be concerned about. Although it seems to have started more around 2007 than 2012 which seems a bit early to be blaming social media (almost no one really had smartphones in 2007, let alone teens). So I do think it's worth looking into this but it's easy to try to find data to fit our preconceived notions rather than the truth.