A recent study has found that children who owned a smartphone before the age of 12 faced a higher risk of depression, obesity and poor sleep.
The study, published in the Journal Pediatrics on Monday, analysed data from more than 10,000 children who are 12 years old.
The children participated in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study — the largest long-term look at children’s brain development in the United States to date — between 2018 and 2020.
According to researchers, 63.6% of the study’s participants owned a smartphone, and the median age was at 11 years old.
The researchers compared children who had obtained a smartphone by age 12 and children who had not, and found that one year later, those without smartphones were experiencing better mental health than those who had them.
Ran Barzilay, the study’s lead author, urged parents to delay when children receive their first smartphone because of possible harms to adolescent health.
“When you give your kid a phone, you need to think of it as something that is significant for the kid’s health — and behave accordingly,” Barzilay, a child psychiatrist with the Youth Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Research Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said.
He emphasised that the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is not intended to shame parents who have already given their children devices but to acknowledge how ingrained smartphones have become in American adolescence.
“A kid at age 12 is very, very different than a kid at age 16. It’s not like an adult at age 42 versus 46,” he added.
However, the study only shows an association between early smartphone ownership and poorer health outcomes — it does not prove cause and effect.
It also did not examine how children used their phones or how much time they spent on them, factors that could also influence their health.
The study does not indicate whether similar patterns exist among younger or older smartphone users.
The researchers referenced previous studies suggesting that young people with smartphones may spend less time socializing in person, exercising, or sleeping, all essential for well-being.
They noted that adolescence is a sensitive period, when even small changes in sleep or mental health can have lasting effects.
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