Smartphones: too dangerous for children?

Not long ago, anyone who suggested banning smartphones for under-16s would have been dismissed as an alarmist and a Luddite, said Kristina Murkett in The Spectator. But now, the tide is turning. According to a recent poll, 83% of parents with at least one child under 18 think that the devices are harming young people, and 58% would back a ban for under-16s (rising to 77% of those with primary-school-age children). The evidence that smartphones are harmful is “overwhelming”. Studies have found that using them damages “children’s concentration spans, sleeping habits, self-esteem, social interactions, physical exercise, sexuality, mental health, body image and more”. Yet parents keep handing them out (91% of children have a smartphone by the age of 11) because they think their child will be socially isolated without a phone, and/or because they are too busy or too lazy to find other ways of keeping their offspring occupied. So it’s welcome news that the Government is finally taking action, and launching a wideranging consultation on a possible ban.

Actually, the science is far from settled, said Henry Oliver in The Critic. In recent weeks, the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has made a splash with his book The Anxious Generation, which argues that a “firehose of addictive content” on smartphones and social media has damaged a generation of children, making them depressed and anxious. But other researchers think Haidt has overstated his case. If the rise in teenage depression in the US was all down to these technologies, you’d expect the effect to be the same in Europe, but studies have found that it is not. In truth, we don’t yet fully understand how smartphones affect us, and it would be unwise to overlook their “immense benefits” in terms of connecting people and expanding educational horizons.

Every innovation in technology, from the novel to the transistor radio, has led to panics about its impact on the young, said The Guardian. But that doesn’t mean that smartphones are safe. Of course, correlation does not prove causation. But the steep rise in “mental health problems” in members of the first generation to grow up with them cannot be ignored. Parents are at a loss to know how to protect their children from the “tide of ghastliness on social media”, said The Daily Telegraph. In this digital world, it is not easy to take an individual child’s phone away. And it wouldn’t be necessary if Meta and the other tech giants fulfilled their promises to rein in their platforms, and make them safe. “We are not a newspaper that normally favours banning technological advances”; but sometimes a pause is needed. This is such a time.