Why help children to be more miserable?

THE latest United Nations Index of Global Happiness has established a very strong link between smartphone usage by young people and unhappiness.

Almost every other activity – reading books, playing sports, family interactions – made young people happy, while hours spent on their phones and tablets had the opposite effect.

This finding will not come as a surprise to readers of this newspaper, as we have highlighted similar findings many times before. Where some surveys might be dismissed, though, few can argue with the vast wealth of data pulled in by the UN from all over the world. The results are startling and significant and cannot be ignored.

Largely through the work of this newspaper, we have been promised a new online safety commissioner in Ireland, a move that has been received with something less than enthusiasm in some quarters.

There are a lot of so-called experts, including illustrious academics, who scoff and sneer at the suggestion that we should limit children’s screen time, or even deny them phones at all. Instead, it seems, they think children should have access to the devices almost from birth – their prerogative as ‘digital citizens’– and any attempt to curtail their online lives is seen as Luddism. But no matter where exactly these naysayers stand on this issue, surely they must take notice of the fact that they are defending the right of children to make themselves more unhappy. What sort of contorted logic says it is a good thing to place in a child’s hands a device that makes them miserable and their life worse?

It is time the sceptics on this issue climbed down off their lofty perches and accepted the overwhelming evidence. There is no obligation on the State to guarantee the rights of young digital citizens, but it certainly has a duty to protect them from unhappiness and harm.