Everything We Believe About Kids And Phones Might Be Wrong, Study Finds

Critics say phones ruin children’s attention spans and are causing a mental health crisis. But what if phones are not actually all that bad for kids?

A new study from the University of South Florida is challenging long-held assumptions.

“Many of my colleagues and I on our study team had read ‘The Anxious Generation’ and were quite concerned about many of the things that we read,” said University of South Florida’s Justin Martin, the study’s lead researcher, who referred to social psychologist’s Jonathan Haidt’s popular book, which argues that phone-based childhoods are causing a teen mental health epidemic.

“We expected to go into this study and find that exclusively negative things were associated with smartphone ownership, but that’s just simply not what we found,” Martin said.

In the survey of 1,510 Floridians ages 11-13, kids with smartphones reported better mental health than those without smartphone on a number of different measures, including higher self-esteem and being less likely to feel depressed. This finding held across the socioeconomic differences of the children being surveyed.

This USF survey challenges the belief that kids with cellphones are more likely to be shut-ins who never leave their bedroom. In fact, surveyed kids with smartphones were overall more likely to spend time with friends in person.

Martin noted that the surveyed middle schoolers were using phones to spend time online with their friends, do school-related tasks, play learning games and coordinate hangouts with friends.

The study suggests that, “Similar to many adults, kids need phones to have thriving social lives,” Martin said.

Dr. Megan Moreno, the principal investigator of the social media and adolescent health research team at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics, called the USF survey a “groundbreaking” addition to ongoing research, because too many studies do not include the possibility of there being positive outcomes to kids having phones. “It is just so rare for studies to consider both benefits and risks,” she said.

Middle schoolers, in particular, can socially benefit from having a phone because this age group is awkward, said Catherine Pearlman, a licensed clinical social worker and author of “First Phone: A Child’s Guide to Digital Responsibility, Safety, and Etiquette.”

For kids who are particularly uncomfortable and have higher social anxiety, “then the phone can actually be a lifeline for them. It’s much easier to communicate” on one, Pearlman said.

Nearly 8 in 10 children surveyed had a smartphone ― and if you’re one of the few kids who does not have a phone by this age, this can potentially lead to social isolation.

For middle schoolers, “If you don’t have a smartphone, then you’re a little bit the odd person out,” Moreno said. “You may not know what’s going on after school, that everybody’s meeting up at this one kid’s house, or you may not have a sense of what the discussion around a particular pop culture idea is.”

Kids in the survey who did not have smartphones were also more likely to be cyberbullied, which might be because they were excluded from conversations that were taking place, Martin suggested.

These bullied kids are perhaps “getting picked on and aren’t there to defend themselves,” Martin said. “Among the cyberbullying questions we asked were things like: ‘In the last three months, have people shared mean photos or videos about you?’”

The study concluded that allowing children as young as 11 to have their own smartphone is likely fine and may, in fact, be beneficial to this age group’s mental health.

Moreno noted that between the ages of 8 and 11 might be too early for the responsibility of a phone because this age group needs imaginative play to reach their developmental milestones. Meanwhile, middle school years might be the sweet spot to get a phone because it can help them figure out ideas around their identity. “That’s when you really start to think, ‘I am a person who does this,’ or ‘I am a person who cares about this.’ … A phone can be used towards reaching some of those developmental milestones,” Moreno said.

Pearlman said this USF survey aligns with her interviews with families and her own recommendation that the ages of 9 and 11 are a “really good age” to introduce a kid to their first phone.

That’s because a middle schooler is much more likely to be connected to their parents and receptive to their family’s phone guidance, Pearlman said. This is also when their “social lives are blossoming.”

“By the time they’re 13 or 14, they are done with their parents educating them on technology. They don’t want you in their social media accounts. … They’re very much moving on to their friends as their advisers,” Pearlman said. “But an 11-year-old is just so happy to have a phone.“

Kids in this age group “have so much more exposure [to technology] than their parents realize, you might as well give them the training,” Pearlman said.

Of course, owning a smartphone did not exclusively lead to positive outcomes for the kids being surveyed. Kids who posted publicly online to social media were more likely to report feeling depressed and anxious than kids who did not post.

In other words, having a phone is not the problem, it’s what children are doing on their phones that can lead to adverse mental health outcomes.

And if there’s one takeaway that parents can take immediate action on, it might be to ban phones where kids sleep. Those notification “pings” already have the power to distract adults, but they can have devastating consequences for a growing child’s ability to sleep at night.

Kids who slept in the same room as their phones reported significantly less sleep than those who did not in the survey. Kids who sleep with their phone only got about 8.6 hours of sleep on school nights, while kids who sleep with a phone in another room got 9.3 hours of sleep, which follows the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendation of kids getting at least nine hours of sleep a night.

That extra sleep time “is a huge amount of extra sleep for a developing brain,” Martin said. “It truly could be the difference between a well-adjusted adult later on and a poorly adjusted one.“

The USF survey’s recommendation was for kids to not sleep in the same room as their phone, which lines up with recommendations that child experts give families.

Pearlman said she advises parents to ban all charging devices in a bedroom, because the device proximity is too distracting for kids.

“I’ve heard stories of 8-year-olds setting an alarm on their iPad so they can wake up and play games in the middle of the night,” Pearlman said. “If they hear a buzz or they know it’s near them, they’re just more likely to use it. … Absolutely nothing good is happening on these kids’ phones in the middle of the night.“

Of course, some kids need a phone nearby or they will not be able to sleep at all. That’s when you meet kids where they are, Moreno said. “That’s a kid where you work on, ‘OK, where’s the phone located? What are the settings? Can we set it to ‘Do not disturb,’ so that no one other than your parent is going to be able to break through?”

Overall, there are many reported downsides to children using phones. But do not assume phones are all bad or all good. This survey serves as an important reminder: Taking away a phone or withholding access can potentially hurt a kid’s well-being. Having a phone can facilitate the conversations and knowledge a child needs to be their best self.