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Matthew Mountjoy
Published 11 minutes ago
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The hardest decision that a parent has to make nowadays is when to get their kid a smartphone — and having to consider two sides to make their decision. On the one hand is the pleading tween who yearns to connect with their friends online, and on the other are warnings about the potential harms of constant connectivity at a young age. Now a new study adds more weight to the decision to hold off.
A study published recently by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children who had a smartphone by the age of 12 were at a higher risk of depression and obesity and slept less than those who did not have a phone. Researchers looked at more than 10,500 children who participated in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which, according to the New York Times, is the largest long-term look at children’s brain development in the United States to date.
The study found that the younger a child was when they got their first smartphone, the greater their risk for obesity and poor sleep. Researchers also focused on a group of children who hadn’t yet gotten a phone by the age of 12, and found that those who had gotten one a year later developed worrying mental health symptoms and worse sleep than those who hadn’t.
While researchers haven’t discovered a cause and effect between getting a smartphone and poorer health outcomes, they point to previous studies that suggest young people who have smartphones may spend less time socializing in person, exercising, and sleeping.
However, the New York Times noted that the purpose of the study is not to shame parents who have already given their children devices by age 12, especially considering how integrated smartphones are with American adolescence. Dr. Ran Barsilay, lead author of the study and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, noted that the main takeaway should be that what age a child is when they receive a phone truly matters.
“A kid at age 12 is very, very different than a kid at age 16. It’s not like an adult at age 42 versus 26.” - Dr. Ran Barsilay
One solution that Dr. Jason Nagata, a pediatrician with the University of California, provided is for parents to take phones out of a child's bedroom. Nagata pointed to a 2023 study he worked on using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample, which found that 63% of 11- to 12-year-olds reported having an electronic device in their bedroom, with nearly 17 percent of those respondents saying that they had been woken up by a notification within the past week.
Interestingly, major social media companies have also started to limit the ages that can use the platform, as video sharing giant YouTube rolled out a new age-checker back in July. Its parent company, Google, also did something similar, rolling out new AI age verification in order to limit underage accounts. Even some US states have joined the effort, with New York passing a law in June 2024 designed to limit kids doomscrolling on social media.
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