Initially published on THE DEFENDER
Children who have their own cellphone by age 12 are at greater risk of obesity, depression and insufficient sleep than kids who don’t — and the younger they are when they get the phone, the greater risk they’ll be obese and have trouble sleeping, according to research published Monday in Pediatrics.
Ran Barzilay, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s lead author and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Defender he hopes parents will consider how their decision to hand their kid a cellphone may affect their child’s health.
“It should not be something that you do and forget about it,” Barzilay said. “Rather, parents should communicate this to their kids and work together to see how smartphone ownership affects their lifestyle and wellbeing.”
The study authors conducted statistical analyses of data on more than 10,000 U.S. 12-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, described as the “largest long-term look at children’s brain development in the United States to date.”
Barzilay’s team brought together researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine, the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University.
In addition to looking at 12-year-olds who already had cellphones, they also tracked 12-year-olds who didn’t have a cellphone at the beginning of the year but were given one by age 13.
“By the time they turned 13,” Barzilay said, “the ones who had gotten a smartphone in that year were struggling more with mental health and sleep compared to kids who still didn’t have one.”
That was true even when the authors took into account the children’s mental health and sleep problems from the year before, he added.
Parents need to talk with their kids about cellphone use
Barzilay emphasized that cellphones aren’t inherently bad. They “offer significant benefits, connecting people and providing access to information and knowledge,” he said.
He empathized with parents who have to decide how long to hold off on giving their kid a cellphone, and who must set time limits once they do.
Parents can be sure that cellphones aren’t allowed in the kids’ room at night and build in non-cellphone socializing time and physical activity, he said.
Barzilay also encouraged parents to help their kids develop “healthy technology habits” by regularly talking with them about cellphone use and how it makes them feel.
“When teens understand that these conversations stem from a genuine commitment to their health, they are more likely to engage collaboratively with their parents, recognizing that both parties share the common goal of supporting their overall wellbeing,” he said.
Social media is just part of the problem
The Pediatrics study focused on cellphone ownership, not on the kind of content kids accessed when using a cellphone.
However, part of the controversy around children using a cellphone has to do with social media’s negative impact on them. For instance, The Defender recently reported on a 12-year-old girl who took her own life just three weeks after starting Prozac, following years of social media addiction that her parents said contributed to her depression.
Her mother is now part of a lawsuit accusing TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube of targeting vulnerable children with harmful content.
Researchers with the nonprofit Sapien Labs in January reported that feelings of aggression, anger and hallucinations were rising sharply among adolescents in the U.S. and India — and the increase was linked to the progressively younger age at which children are acquiring cellphones.
This month, Australia is preparing to implement the world’s first nationwide social media ban for teens. Starting Dec. 10, social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that kids and teens under 16 in Australia cannot set up accounts on their platforms.
The companies also must remove or deactivate Australian youths’ accounts by that time.
But cellphones aren’t just harmful to kids because of social media, according to Dr. Robert Brown, a diagnostic radiologist with more than 30 years of experience and the vice president of Scientific Research and Clinical Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust.
Earlier this year, Brown published research showing that just 5 minutes of cellphone exposure caused a healthy woman’s blood cells to abnormally clump up, even when the cellphone was an inch away from her skin.
Brown told The Defender he was encouraged to see high-ranking institutions like the University of Pennsylvania paying attention to the health consequences of cellphones on kids.
However, he would also like to see research focused on how the radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by the phones harms kids’ health. “It is not just the early age of ownership that is responsible,” he said.
Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, agreed.
“The Pediatrics study adds to the mountain of evidence that smartphones are problematic and parents need to protect their children. Aside from the content, the RF radiation is also harmful.”
Even the World Health Organization has now acknowledged that there is “high certainty” evidence that cellphone radiation exposure causes two types of cancer in animals, she said.
“Parents and the public need to engage in a sensible conversation about technology when it comes to our children and stop assuming that any of these technologies are harmless,” Eckenfels said.
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