As I walked out of my family’s favorite Mexican restaurant a few nights ago, I noticed two young giggling girls. They were probably only second or third-graders. They frolicked around the brightly colored lobby to the cheerful sounds of mariachi, delighted by their conversation, oblivious to the world, and waiting for a parent. To my surprise, each of them also struggled to grasp a smartphone whose weight and dimension seemed to far exceed what their little hands could manage. Suddenly, the gigglers peered down at their phones and became instant zombies — entranced, silent, and swiping – their faces awash in the floodlight of cellphone glow.
To be sure, smartphones can dazzle. They can be incredibly useful and even life-saving at times.
The nature of these handheld computers and what they routinely deliver, however, can too often deceive, misguide, and profoundly harm humans of all ages – especially our kids.
In the wake of the barbaric terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, schools and communities have already begun warning parents about protecting their kids from scarring online images of atrocities and war. Many of the gruesome images have initially been posted on Telegram and have spread to other sites.
By now, most American parents know something about the potential risks phones and their payloads pose to young people. As early as 2018, nearly 50% of parents worried their child was addicted to their mobile device, according to a survey from Common Sense Media. In May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a rare and startling advisory warning of the dangers of social media – a product primarily delivered to children through phones. Just last month, NBC News published a story with this headline: “A Common Sense Media report finds about half of 11- to 17-year-olds get at least 237 notifications a day. Some get nearly 5,000 in 24 hours.” And last week, Utah sued TikTok for allegedly luring children into addiction.
Despite these prominent and longstanding warning signs, many parents continue to give their young children phones. It’s worth considering carefully whether that’s a wise decision.
As you weigh whether to give your child a phone — or let them keep one they already have — here are 10 ways these devices can damage your child’s growth, health, and happiness. To give credit where it is certainly due, an ancient decalogue sacred to many of us has informed this list.
The phone will likely become the new power center of your child’s world. Already framed as knowledgeable authorities that know more than any human ever could, smartphones often quickly become false confidants for young people. As a child turns to the device again and again and trusts it to fulfill fundamental needs for security, knowledge, and comfort, the machine takes the throne in your child’s life - a position of ultimate importance, diminishing the influence of faith and other positive influences.
Cultural icons and profiteers can gain a dangerous grip on your child’s gaze. Various types of celebrities and malevolent online merchants seek to gain a child's devotion by offering a false and fleeting sense of fulfillment and belonging. Manipulators encourage kids to to buy, follow, idolize, imitate, and buy again. By giving your child a phone, you give these actors easier access to your child. 24/7 online accessibility can also encourage kid-worship of their own peers or sick adults who wittingly or unwittingly indoctrinate or do harm. Online life can cause kids to become obsessed with themselves, too. The phone’s self-facing camera, which made its first appearance on the iPhone 4 in 2010, catalyzed the rise of the now ubiquitous “selfie” and invites kids to engage in a habitual, destructive inward gaze and performative online existence. These distractions cause children to search for hope in the wrong places.
Phone and social media culture reinforces irreverence and disrespect.
Mockery, scorn, and derision drive clicks and saturate much of the digital world, inviting kids to mimic and imbibe. One need look no further than TikTok and SnapChat. When children adopt such behaviors, other children are the leading victims. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center report, nearly 50% of teens in the United States have been bullied or harassed online.
The machines won’t let children rest.
The Common Sense Media study cited earlier found that 59% of the children surveyed were online from midnight to 5 a.m. on school nights. The development of poor sleep habits unwittingly fueled by a desire for a dopamine rush (i.e., to be loved) can cause children to forfeit vital restorative rest and lose their sense of ordered time.
Obsession with smartphones can invite children to dishonor their parents.
Phone-addicted young people may lie to their parents to conceal their habit. One young person put it this way:
When my parents used to take away my phone, I would stop sleeping all the way through the night. I started being dishonest, pretending to put my phone away but actually keeping it (sorry, Mom).
By creating distance and tension with parents, phones pull children farther from those who can offer genuine love and health.
Phones facilitate the scarring exposure of children to hateful words and violent content.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pippin, the naive and curious hobbit, unknowingly makes himself visible and vulnerable to the evil of Sauron by grasping the spherical palantir and peering into it. Likewise, a child’s natural curiosity may lead him to accidentally encounter hateful language and horrific imagery that cause emotional scarring. In some instances, such exposure has even contributed to murder or suicide.
Phones make kids vulnerable to sexual exploitation and pornography.
“The amount of child sex abuse material online has skyrocketed in the past five years, aided by the ubiquity of smartphones,” reported Teresa Huizar in USA Today in March. And according to another recent report by Common Sense Media, surveyed teens, on average, reported having first consumed pornography at age 12 with nearly 75% having viewed pornography by age 17. Shockingly, 41% of those surveyed had seen it during the school day.
Children’s personal private information can be stolen and their history hijacked.
In May, the Biden Administration announced actions to better safeguard children’s online privacy. The White House warned that “Children are subject to the [online] platforms’ excessive data collection, which they use to deliver sensational and harmful content and troves of paid advertising.” Children who regularly share about themselves online create a semi-permanent autobiographical public history and may lose control of the ability to edit a past they have outgrown, negatively affecting college admissions and job prospects.
Children witness countless lies and misrepresentations online. Platforms often normalize lying and encourage performative rather than honest behavior. Too many adults online model deception for personal gain at the expense of another. For many kids, the very first step to accessing social media is lying about their age. Repeated deception in children can cement destructive habits that may last a lifetime.
Social media encourages children to envy what others have. The theatrical atmosphere and false framing that characterize social media platforms invite young people to compare themselves to others in potentially unhealthy ways. A desire for the talents, beauty, or belongings of others can inhibit a young person’s appreciation of their own strengths and gifts, causing a sense of overwhelming discontent. That discontent can lead to anxiety, eating disorders, depression, and self-harm.
Children who have such powerful portals in their pockets risk losing control of their lives. The hands of the little girls at the Mexican restaurant weren’t strong or mature enough to handle the weight of the phones. I worry their minds and hearts weren’t either.
Until the next post,
Antonette
first, good points and examples, thanks. I especially liked the Palantir one, I am a Tolkien fan, but it never occurred to me it would be a good analogy for smartphones.
Second, to complete what you said, I would add that it is crucial to highlight that saying NO to personal smartphones or tablet before 14 years old does NOT mean at all "saying no to acquiring digital skills"!!!
I covered this specific point in the "root problem, wrong equation" part of my own "Parents, have the guts to say NO to smartphones already" call here on Substack: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/honestly-the-problem-with-children