May 18, 2023 – America's fascination and addiction to smartphones seems to know no end – and if you happen to think it's normal for kids to stare at their screens as much as adults, you're right. Several studies have found that more children are using smartphones and similar digital devices (like tablets), and at younger ages.
One 12 months 2020 Pew Research Center According to the report, greater than a 3rd of the 1,600 parents surveyed said their child began using a smartphone before age five, and 1 / 4 said their child began using a smartphone between ages five and eight.
And a survey by Common Sense Media found that greater than half of all children within the United States by the age of 11 have their very own smartphone.
But is that this increasing use of smartphones good for kids’s mental health? new report Sapien Labs' study, released this week, used global data from 27,969 young adults of Generation Z (ages 18-24) to deal with the potential relationship between childhood smartphone use and current mental health. After all, that is “the first generation to live through their adolescence with this technology,” explains Tara Thiagarajan, PhD, founder and chief scientist at Sapien Labs.
The report found that mental well-being “consistently improved with age at first purchase of a smartphone or tablet, with the difference being more pronounced for women compared to men.”
In fact, the proportion of girls reporting mental health problems fell from 74% of those that got their first smartphone at age 6 to 46% of those that got it at age 18. For men, the proportion fell from 42% of those that got their first smartphone at age 6 to 36% of those that got it at age 18.
“The earlier you got your smartphone as a child, the more likely your mental health will be worse as an adult,” Thiagarajan said.
Path of mental health decline
Thiagarajan said her organization was motivated to conduct the study since it “tracks evolving mental health in the world to understand what is causing the current decline in mental health among younger generations.”
Their goal is to “uncover the root causes so that we can develop appropriate prevention strategies to reverse the trend.”
She noted that the “development of the decline we are observing [in mental health] tracks the adoption of smartphones, and there is a lot of literature linking social media and smartphones to negative outcomes, so it was high on the list of potential root causes to investigate.”
She explained that Sapien Labs' Global Mind Project is an “ongoing investigation of global mental well-being, taking into account various lifestyle and life experience factors.” It “collects data using an assessment that includes 47 items covering a broad range of symptoms and mental abilities on a life impact scale, which are combined to create an overall score.”
One of the categories studied is the social self – a “measure of how we see ourselves and relate to others.” It is one of six parts of mental functioning and improves most dramatically with age in young men and young women when they own their first smartphone.
“In women, other dimensions such as mood and attitude, adaptability and resilience also improved significantly” in those who got their first smartphone at an older age. In particular, problems with suicidal thoughts, feelings of aggression towards others, a feeling of detachment from reality and hallucinations “declined most strongly and significantly” with increasing age at first smartphone acquisition in women and men, although to a lesser extent.
Smartphones exacerbate existing mental health problems
Katerina Voci, a 17-year-old student at St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey, has struggled with mental health issues her entire life — particularly anxiety and depression. “I've worked through them and I'm very proud of the progress I've made,” she said.
Although she didn't start using smartphones until early childhood—she didn't get her first one until eighth grade—she believes smartphone use may have exacerbated her mental health issues since then.
“It depended on what media I was using,” she said. “Social media was the most important aspect of my smartphone use.”
Katerina was not surprised by the results of the Sapien report. “There is a certain ideal of beauty that many people, especially women, try to achieve. At the same time, there is a lot of pressure to perform, which is exacerbated by digital devices such as smartphones.”
Additionally, “teasing and bullying still exist online and can affect mental health. It's easier to commit bullying when you're hidden behind a screen because you're less accountable than when you're there in person,” she said.
Katerina, who works as a practical peer mediator and mentor for schoolmates with mental health problems, deleted her social media accounts because she felt that being online was not beneficial to her mental health.
Simena Carey, MA, a certified school counselor at St. Benedict's Prep School, works as a clinician with Katerina and other teens. “Working with the girls, I see that many of them already have feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness, and the phones are exacerbating that.”
Feeling left out is common when using social media, where everyone seems to be on vacation, has a perfect body or is having fun. Young people ask themselves, “Why am I not doing these things?” They end up in “silent competition” with each other, Carey says. The earlier they start, the more this mindset is created and reinforced.
Wave effect
According to Thiagarajan, studies have shown that children spend between 5 and 8 hours online every day. “That's up to 2,950 hours a year! Before smartphones, they would have spent much of that time chatting with family and friends.”
She calls social behavior “complex,” noting that it “has to be learned and practiced so that we can become good at it and build relationships.” But today's children don't get enough social practice, “so they have difficulty in the social world. Social activity on the Internet is not the same [as in-person socializing] because it both distorts reality and eliminates many forms of communication such as eye contact, mirroring body language, touch and sense of smell that are crucial to interpersonal bonds.”
Benjamin Maxwell, MD, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and chair of behavioral health at Rady Children's Hospital, was not surprised by the Sapien study's results.
“At Rady Children's Hospital, we frequently see patients struggling with mental health issues because of their relationship with their smartphone,” he said. “From severe cyberbullying to feeling excluded from social events, we see these issues on a daily basis.”
He stressed the “value of in-person social contact and its impact on our mental wellbeing,” saying that “as more children spend time in virtual and asynchronous interactions, this can have a ripple effect that can lead to problems such as lack of sleep, an increased focus on image and popularity, and ultimately mental health problems.”
By recognizing the impact smartphones can have on mental health, “we can work to find ways to encourage healthy use of technology and prioritize in-person social connections,” Maxwell said.
“Generation Guinea Pig”
“Generation Z was unfortunately a guinea pig generation and their problems are a consequence of the environment they were born into,” said Thiagarajan.
But “the human brain and mind are remarkably malleable and we’re able to learning and changing at any age.” Thiagarajan believes that “being aware of the implications of smartphones is a primary step.”
She advises Generation Z to “understand that they’ve missed many hours of social interaction and to search out ways to make up for it.” With practice, face-to-face interactions “change into easier and more enjoyable,” so “start reaching out to more family and friends, volunteering, or joining an interest group.”
Advice for parents
A Current history of a “heroic” seventh-grader who managed to drive and stop a school bus after the driver was incapacitated is attributed to the fact that he was the only child on the bus who was not using a smartphone.
Instead of staring at a screen, he had been watching the driver for a longer period of time and therefore knew how the driver had stopped the bus. And because he wasn't focused on his phone, he noticed that the driver was no longer able to control the bus and took action.
Thiagarajan urges parents to focus on their children's social development. “It's fundamental to their mental well-being and their ability to navigate the world.”
Parents should “be sure their children spend not less than a couple of hours a day interacting in person with family and friends, with no smartphone involved, and constructing skills and relationships that may help them in life,” she advises.