Those of us who grew up before the digital age have many reasons to remember those years with fondness.
Now, a team of researchers has given us one more reason.
“Smartphone Ownership, Age of Smartphone Acquisition, and Health Outcomes in Early Adolescence,” a study published Monday in the journal “Pediatrics,” linked smartphone ownership by age 12 to subsequent problems with “depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep.”
A robust sample of “10,588 participants from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study” provided the data.
Compared to participants who did not own a smartphone at age 12, those who did own a smartphone at age 12 showed increased risk of both depression and insufficient sleep. Risk of obesity entered the equation for younger smartphone owners.
Moreover, those who still did not own a smartphone by age 13 showed better health outcomes than did 13-year-olds who had acquired a smartphone in the previous year.
“Smartphone ownership was associated with depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep in early adolescence,” the study’s abstract concluded. “Findings provide critical and timely insights that should inform caregivers regarding adolescent smartphone use and, ideally, the development of public policy that protects youth.”
The point about informing caregivers seems most critical.
Indeed, Dr. Ran Barzilay, the study’s lead author and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, certainly framed it that way.
“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 said, according to The New York Times.
Likewise, Barzilay noted that smartphones had an effect on pre-teens that they might not have in later years.
“A kid at age 12 is very, very different than a kid at age 16,” he said. “It’s not like an adult at age 42 versus 46.”
Of course, the new study merely identified a link between smartphones and health problems in children 12 or younger. It did not — indeed, it could not — prove causation.
Nonetheless, it stands to reason that some kind of causation exists.
As far as anyone knows, the phones themselves do not cause depression, obesity, or lack of sleep. After all, find any healthy, fit, and well-rested 13-year-old, and you could guess that he or she has probably still had regular access to a smartphone in the past year.
Problems begin when the smartphone consumes the child’s attention. In that sense, therefore, a smartphone, like any distraction from healthy behavior, threatens children with terrible habits. And those habits, rather than the phone itself, lead to the aforementioned health issues.
Thank goodness those of us who grew up without smartphones never had to worry about such things.
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