{"id":259488,"date":"2025-12-31T08:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T08:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259488\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T08:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T08:05:10","slug":"regulating-kids-smartphone-usage-doesnt-work-they-shouldnt-have-one-in-the-first-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259488\/","title":{"rendered":"Regulating kids\u2019 smartphone usage doesn\u2019t work \u2013 they shouldn\u2019t have one in the first place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">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\u2019 lives\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Expecting small children to regulate their smartphone usage is unreasonable \u2013 even adults struggle with this. Photo: Picture posed\/Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/f232778d-e26c-4d18-8aa8-048a2382a7d2.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Expecting small children to regulate their smartphone usage is unreasonable \u2013 even adults struggle with this. Photo: Picture posed\/Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">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\u2019 efforts to control use didn\u2019t erase those associations. What mattered most was simply whether the child owned the device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a new study revealing poor health markers in young children who own a smartphone, Dr David Coleman&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[12618,18,135,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-259488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-david-coleman","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115813150210832471","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}