Photo: Jaromir Chalapala/Getty
LONDON – Evidence is mounting that links smartphone use to damage to children's mental health, and a UK grassroots organisation is supporting parents who are refusing to give their children the devices.
Daisy Greenwell and Claire Fernyhough founded Smartphone-Free Childhood in February, setting up various chat groups for parents locally across the UK, and its membership grew to more than 60,000 within a few weeks, according to its website.
Interest in the movement is driven by concerns about children becoming accustomed to smartphones. By the age of 12, 97% of children in the UK own a mobile phone, according to Ofcom, the government-authorised regulator of telecommunications services in the UK.
Meanwhile, in the United States, 42% of children owned smartphones at age 10, rising to 91% by age 14, according to a 2021 Common Sense report that surveyed 1,306 U.S. teens ages 8 to 18.
In an increasingly online world, parents are giving their children smartphones for a variety of reasons, including entertainment, tracking their location, and staying in touch when they leave the house. However, studies and experts highlight that this opens the door to social media and potential harm to mental health.
SFC aims to unite parents who do not give their children smartphones to relieve the stress and isolation they may feel.
Its success has led to its international expansion with groups established in the United States, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Canada, South Africa and various other countries.
A few days after the SFC campaign was launched, the British government – led by the Conservative Party at the time – issued new guidelines banning the use of smartphones in schools and during break times.
Some places in the United States, such as Los Angeles, Florida and Indiana, have issued bans on the use of cell phones in schools.
Other independent organizations are established around the world, including Wait Until 8th in Austin, Unplugged in Canada, No Es Momento in Mexico, and Heads Up Alliance in Australia.
However, some academics and scientists remain unconvinced that smartphones and poor mental health are linked. Psychology professor Christopher Ferguson told NBC News earlier this year that society tends to react negatively to new technologies and their potential harms, from televisions to video games and, most recently, artificial intelligence.
Worsening mental health problems?
A study by Sapien Labs published last year found that young people have worse mental health outcomes the earlier they get a smartphone.
The study used data from 27,969 people aged 18 to 24 years obtained between January and April 2023 across 41 countries including North America, Europe, Latin America, Oceania, South Asia and Africa.
According to the study, about 74% of women who got their first smartphone at the age of six feel distressed or suffering. However, this percentage dropped to 61% for those who got their first smartphone at the age of ten, and 52% for those who were 15 years old.
For male participants, the percentage who felt distressed or suffering decreased from 42% among those who got their first smartphone at age 6, to 36% among those who got their first smartphone at age 18.
Young people who got their first smartphones at an older age reported better mental health, including fewer problems with suicidal thoughts and feelings of aggression, and fewer problems with detachment from reality.
These findings should motivate parents to take action, said Zach Rausch, a research scientist at New York University's Stern School of Business and the lead researcher on Jonathan Haidt's New York Times bestseller “The Anxious Generation.”
“The mass migration to a phone-dependent childhood has been really detrimental to young people,” Rausch said in an interview with CNBC Make It.
“The research has been strengthened and the evidence of harm has become stronger and stronger year after year. The lid has been lifted off the box and parents are seeing other parents talking about this, so we're seeing this wave of parents coming together,” he added.
It is the combination of smartphones and social media that poses a particularly deadly danger to young people, Rausch said.
The British Millennium Study, which followed the lives of nearly 19,000 young people born in the UK between 2000 and 2002, found a strong link between social media use and symptoms of depression including low self-esteem, online harassment and poor body image.
“When smartphones and social media came together, it created this whole new way of interacting with each other,” Rausch said.
“So now you have social media in your pocket on a smartphone that is designed to increase the time you spend on your phone… and it is designed in a way that is inherently addictive and tries to draw you in.”
In the last years, MetaFacebook, the parent company of social media platforms Instagram and Facebook Inc., has come under fire from lawmakers and parents for exposing children and teens to harmful content on its platforms, including various allegations of child sexual exploitation.
In turn, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on lawmakers to issue more guidelines and regulations to help tackle harmful content online. Under increasing pressure, the tech giant announced in January 2024 that it would limit the type of content that teenage Instagram and Facebook users could see, including self-harm, eating disorders and nudity.
Some tech companies are trying to build kid-friendly experiences on smartphones and social media. Google launched YouTube Kids in 2015, a separate YouTube-like app that offers kid-friendly content and includes parental controls.
iPhone maker apple Apple recently launched a new website to promote the Apple Watch for kids who can’t use smartphones. The device will be managed through parents’ iPhones so they can stay in touch with their kids.
