With a new study revealing poor health markers in young children who own a smartphone, Dr David Coleman says we need to get them out of our kids’ lives
Expecting small children to regulate their smartphone usage is unreasonable – even adults struggle with this. Photo: Picture posed/Getty
Smartphones are ubiquitous. Could we manage our lives without them? Children certainly could, yet the latest CyberSafeKids trends and usage report showed that two out of every five 8 to 12-year-olds have their own smartphone.
A major new study published this month in the journal Pediatrics analysed data from more than 10,500 children and found a worrisome pattern: owning a smartphone at age 12 was associated with significantly higher risks of depression, obesity and insufficient sleep compared with children who did not own one. Crucially, the younger a child was when they got their first phone, the worse some of these health markers were. Parents’ efforts to control use didn’t erase those associations. What mattered most was simply whether the child owned the device.