Preteen smartphone use may be unhealthy. But there are solutions

Research & Discovery

Preteen smartphone use may be unhealthy. But there are solutions

Children given a smartphone before the age of 12 are at higher risk for depression, obesity and insufficient sleep, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.

“The important finding is that kids who got smartphones earlier exercised less, slept less and socialized in person less, and that’s what led to the obesity and mental health problems,” said Claudia Allen, director of the University of Virginia’s .

“It’s simply a fact that kids that age, I’m thinking middle schoolers primarily, cannot – underscore – cannot be healthy without adequate sleep and exercise,” she said. “Those are crucial building blocks during the middle school years.”

Clinical psychologist Claudia Allen leads �鶹�ƽ�� Family Stress Clinic. (UVA Health photo)

Lack of sleep impacts both physical and brain development in children. “Without that, they cannot concentrate as well in school, they cannot regulate their emotions as well, and therefore they don’t learn as much as they need to learn, and they sometimes have more poor interpersonal relationships,” Allen said.

The clinical psychologist highlighted the perils of a lack of in-person interaction, saying it’s not only important for kids’ current mental health, but for the future. She said the effects of isolation during COVID illustrate how less in-person contact can diminish children’s social skills and mental health.

“Middle school kids are learning how to have relationships. They’re learning how to navigate conflict, how to meet new people, how to relate to people who are different from them,” Allen said. “If kids are on their smartphones all the time and not interacting in person, they don’t adequately learn those skills, and that puts them behind, and handicapped really, for their whole lives.”

Some good news and advice

Allen , led by Dr. Ran Barzilay of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and representing the nation’s largest and longest-term look at children’s brain development, found no increased risk of encountering inappropriate content or dangerous individuals.

It’s right to be concerned about those things, but the study reveals other issues as well, she said.

“This study points out a whole different problem. It’s what kids are not doing when they’re on their phones that’s a problem in this study,” she said. “They’re not riding a bike or playing basketball, and they're not getting the nine to 10 hours of sleep that they need.”

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The good news is that the study of more than 10,500 children provides practitioners, parents and guardians with solid reasons to delay introducing smartphones to their children.

“Parents are really faced with this fear that they don’t want to be the ones depriving their kid if everyone else has this, or they don’t want to shut their kids out of a social circle if everyone else has these,” Allen said of smartphones.

This is her advice to them: Develop a community of families who agree to delay giving their children smartphones until a mutually agreed-upon age.

“You have to realize that on a smartphone, the platforms that kids are on, namely Instagram and Snapchat, they are designed to be addictive,” Allen said. “And as adults, we can’t resist them. We have to put our phones away, so how can we expect an 11-year-old to resist these platforms that are designed to keep them hooked as long as possible?”