In an earlier post, I talked about cell phone options and especially options if you wish to delay giving your kids a smartphone for as long as possible. Here’s one post where I’ll talk about why we should delay smartphones.
A recently published global study (May 2023) looked at the association between age at which someone got their first smartphone, and their mental health. The results are compelling – the earlier someone got a smartphone the higher their current rate of mental health problems.
The study looked at data from 27,969 people in 41 countries, with data collected in the first three months of 2023. It is part of Sapian Lab’s Global Mind Project (you can go online and participate if you, like me, feel compelled to participate in research projects). The charts in the report are compelling – on every measure, current mental health is negatively associated with age of first smartphone ownership.
These mental health problems were more extreme for female respondents than male respondents, but the pattern holds for both sexes.
Like so many other things we try to research around technology, there are a couple of major problems, although this study does a good job of trying to answer some of them.
The most concerning issue is that this data looks as people who are currently 18-24 years of age – meaning that they are reflecting on getting their first smartphone between 2001 and 2018 (e.g. someone who is currently 18, who got their first smartphone at 6, got their first smartphone in 2001; someone who is currently 23, and got their first smartphone at 18, got their first smartphone in 2018). This is concerning because the results – more mental health issues with earlier smartphone ownership, are coming before the age of social media (Facebook became available to the general public in 2006; SnapChat in 2011) and so it is possible the results will be MORE extreme in current generations than are reported here.
Another, obvious concern with this data is the old truth that correlation does not equal causation (just because two things occur together does not mean one causes the other). The study does a good job of trying to control for childhood trauma – and as you would expect if there is a real impact of smartphone ownership on mental health, the pattern remains the same when groups with and without childhood trauma are examined. People with childhood trauma have lower mental health scores than people without childhood trauma, but age of smartphone ownership continues to have a significant negative impact on mental health
So what do you do? The answer is both simple (wait) and very very hard (wait). The longer you hold out on giving your kid a smartphone, the better your kids’ mental health is likely to be in the long run.
Now it’s not all that simple – we know (from personal experience) that once a group of friends start getting phones, those without phones are less involved in the social life of the group. But pushing for non-smartphones to start with, and holding the line on social media may be good ideas.
