A new, large-scale study published in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities reveals how smartphone ownership in childhood may be derailing young people’s mental health.
The study included data from more than 100,000 18- to 24-year-olds living around the globe. Owning a smartphone before the age of 13 was associated with poorer mental health, including diminished self-image, self-worth, and emotional resilience. Additional symptoms included increased aggression toward others, reduced empathy, hallucinations, and feeling detached from reality.
Rates of suicidal ideation were higher the younger an individual owned a smartphone. In young women, 48% of those who owned a smartphone by age 5 or 6 experienced suicidal thoughts, compared with 28% of those who had a smartphone by age 13 or older. In young men, the corresponding statistics were 31% and 20%, respectively. This sex difference can probably be attributed to females’ greater usage of social media.
Factors that worsened the negative mental health effects of early smartphone ownership were access to social media, poor relationships with one’s family, disrupted sleep, and cyberbullying. These findings were more pronounced among developed, English-speaking countries, where children tend to access smartphones and social media at a younger age.
You may be wondering, as I was, who in their right mind gives a phone to a 5-year-old? Most social media platforms require a child to be at least 13 years old to join, but nowadays, nearly half of 8- to 12-year-olds own their own smartphone.
Existing research has shown how chronic sensory overstimulation from excessive screen time can lead to greater incidence and severity of mental illness, addiction, slower learning, and early-onset dementia.
Earlier and longer exposure to electronic media, such as personal devices, computers, and television screens, increases the risk for mood disorders, hyperactivity, and attention problems, as well as delays in developmental milestones pertaining to language, social, motor, and problem-solving skills.
This is true even if a child is watching educational content, and these effects have been observed at more than two or three hours of screen time per day. Children exposed to more than seven hours of screen time per day have shown thinning of the brain. Developmental disturbances could last one’s lifetime.
We can’t assume causation with any of these studies, of course — concluding that screen time caused negative repercussions would require taking a group of same-aged children and giving half of them a smartphone, while isolating the other half from this technology, and comparing their well-being afterward. Nevertheless, this body of research offers a glimpse into why mental health problems such as anxiety are so prevalent in Generation Z, currently 13 to 30 years old.
The authors of the current study predict that a third of children in the future will develop negative mental health outcomes similar to what they found, especially as children receive their first smartphone at increasingly young ages. Waiting until age 13 doesn’t mean a child is in the clear; the researchers cautioned that adolescents aged 14 to 18 still need protection during this developmental window.
The sad reality is that even if parents choose to raise smartphone-free children, they can’t control what a child’s friends, peers, or the wider public do. If more children than not are growing up with mental disorders, cannot control their emotions, and feel dissociated from the world around them, this has spillover effects on everybody.
Be that as it may, it’s never too late to implement lifestyle changes. Harm can be mitigated through better education for children, including digital literacy about algorithmic manipulation, the ubiquity of artificial intelligence and filters, online bullying, and sexual predation. Some parents worry that their child will be socially excluded if they don’t have social media; this is exactly why more needs to be done to normalize keeping children off these platforms.
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Many adults are understandably leery of age verification policies due to fears of loss of privacy and the implementation of digital IDs. Critics believe bad parenting is the root of young people’s mental health issues, not screens or social media.
But the mountain of scientific research evincing otherwise continues growing. The consequences of ignoring this entirely preventable crisis will come back to bite us tenfold.
Dr. Debra Soh is a sex neuroscientist and the author of The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society. Follow her @DrDebraSoh and visit DrDebraSoh.com.