KATE EMERY: Parents need to stop buying young children smartphones. It’s as mentally damaging as smacking them
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
You’ll regret it and you’re doing them harm, raising their risk of depression and anxiety, a shorter attention span and aggression.
If you want to damage their mental health that badly you might as well smack them instead: it’s cheaper.
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I’m not talking to all parents. Owning a smartphone is like getting your licence: at some point, we have to accept a child is responsible enough to be in charge of a potentially deadly weapon. Also to drive a car.
I’m talking to parents who are buying their young children — in some cases their primary school-aged children — smartphones, despite the evidence this is a terrible idea for everyone, except maybe phone manufacturers and psychologists who want to buy holiday homes.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
A survey of 10,000 parents from Australia, the UK and the US found more than half wished they had held off giving their child a smartphone because of how it changed them.
Research by tech group HMD found the average age at which a child got a phone was 11: an age at which no child needs to have the entirety of the world’s knowledge — and porn! and social media! — in their hand.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
The most common regret among parents was that it had negative effects and changed their personality.
Of those surveyed 70 per cent said, since giving their child a smartphone, they spent less quality time together. More than half — 55 per cent — said it was a source of arguments.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
A separate study of nearly 30,000 young people showed a correlation between the age a child got a smartphone and their future mental health.
It found the older a child was when they got a smartphone, the better their mental health. The younger the child, the more likely they were to have suicidal thoughts as an adult.
There’s no perfect age at which every child is old enough for a smartphone. But, in the US, there’s a movement urging parents to “wait for eight”, meaning until their child is in the eighth grade or 14 years old. You could do worse.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
Young people today (my bones crumbled to dust just typing that sentence) communicate via technology. I get it. I’m old enough to have a Pavlovian response to the sound of a dial-up modem and I need smelling salts to bring me round if a friend calls instead of texts.
But there’s a big difference between giving a child access to a dumbphone or a family computer and putting more tech than was used to land a man on the moon in their pocket.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
The fear that your child will be ostracised is real. But some things are simply more important than making sure your child is able to witness, take part in or be the object of whatever fresh new take on social media cyber-bullying school-aged children are dreaming up this week.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
Screen time affects a child’s brain, their sleep and their behaviour. It reduces their attention span and it can encourage aggressive behaviour.
Brain scans suggest that children who spend a lot of time on screens have a premature thinning of the cortex — that’s the part of the brain that processes information from the senses. I’m not a brain surgeon but I don’t need to be an aeronautical engineer to know that it’s a bad thing when the plane’s wing falls off either.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
Research also suggests smartphone use in children may be linked to depression and anxiety in children as young as eight.
Your 8-year-old doesn’t need a smartphone — or a bout of depression. They need (depending on personal preference) a Sylvanian Family play set, the latest Dogman book or a scooter to take them around the block.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
The peer pressure to have a smartphone only exists because of parents who buy their children smartphones when they are absolutely too young to own one. Don’t be that parent: be the parent who says no so other parents can say no too.
Remember in the 1980s when 197 countries came together to ban the use of CFCs to heal the hole in the ozone layer? That was a fun time. We need the parental equivalent of the Montreal Protocol to come together and agree to not buy our children smartphones.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
If you could see my screen-time alerts you’d call me a hypocrite. I’d rather call myself a case study. I’m an adult, with an adult’s impulse control, a busy and fulfilling life and I’m still addicted to the bloody thing.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones.
Every parent knows the temptation to buy their child the thing they want: the ice cream, the book, the toy because we know what joy looks like on their face and how good it feels for us both.
But not buying your child a smartphone when they are too young for it is a better gift than anything you can get at the shops.
Parents: stop buying your kids smartphones. Please?
