We’re Learning Just How Bad Smartphones Are for Our Kids — But What If Yours Already Has One?

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission.

If you’re a parent scrolling through your socials, you’ve probably seen Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation — because it’s everywhere. Released just this week, it’s already an Amazon bestseller, and it is raising red flags about an issue that’s becoming more and more disturbing the more we learn about it: the toll that social media is taking on our kids’ mental health.

The signs are becoming increasingly clear: the kids are not all right. In May of 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on the subject.

“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘is social media safe for my kids’. The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” Murthy said. “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”

A few statistics …

In January of this year, The New York Timesreported on a survey by Common Sense Media, in which 65 percent of kids ages 12-17 felt that the mental health of the youth in their community was “poor or fair.” Only one-third of respondents thought things were going well for kids and teens today. Less than half said they anticipated being better off than their parents someday.

A different study, published late last year by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, found that Gen Z’ers are a lot more likely to report feeling stress, anxiety, and loneliness. A mere 15 percent of people ages 18-26 said their mental health was excellent — which is in stark contrast to a similar study done a decade ago. When asked the same question back in 2014, 52 percent of millennials in the same age group reported that their mental health was excellent.

Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at Georgetown University Hospital, told the NYT that “the digitization of our lives, and social media in particular,” was a major factor in the decline of adolescent mental health. And in his book, Haidt examines just that: what has happened to the kids of the digital generation?

Haidt chalks it up to a one-two punch of factors. First, the decline of the “play-based childhood”; he says that parents, fueled by increasing fears about real-world safety (thanks, media), began to restrict kids’ access to unsupervised outdoor free play. That coincided with the rise of the “phone-based childhood” — the dawn of the age of smartphones and social media platforms.

“Few of us understood what was happening in children’s virtual worlds and we lacked the knowledge to protect them from tech companies that had designed their products to be addictive,” he writes on his website. “For this reason, we ended up overprotecting children in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual world.” 

Even the youth themselves are reporting that there’s a problem; according to Pew Research, almost a quarter of adolescents believe that social media has a mostly negative effect. Yet they have trouble staying away — in 2022, over half (54 percent) reported struggling to “give up” social media, and 36 percent admitted to spending “excessive” time on their platforms of choice.

We’ve seen this firsthand: Four years ago, SheKnows did a deep dive with our Hatch teens on this exact subject (and this was before the rise of TikTok!).

As more and more parents start to wonder if they’ve failed their kids by giving them unfettered access to these smart devices (raises hand), parental stances on social media use are starting to pivot, and the pendulum is increasingly swinging toward more conservative use. The “Wait Until 8th” pledge, for example, is a movement that encourages parents to hold off on allowing smartphones until at least the eighth grade. (Haidt, based on his own research, recommends waiting until high school). Basic phones and watches with call and text capabilities are fine, they say — it’s phones with social media access that should be off-limits.

“Smartphones are distracting and potentially dangerous for children yet are widespread in elementary and middle school because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one,” the Wait Until 8th site says. “These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of Snapchatting, Instagramming, and catching up on YouTube.”

What if my child already has a smartphone?

Even if the damage is already done, and our pre-8th-grade kids already have smartphones, we can lessen their dependence on them by setting clear boundaries. Ariana Hoet, Ph.D., executive clinical director of children’s mental health organization On Our Sleeves, told SheKnows that she recommends designated screen-free times every day: during dinner, for example, and powering phones down a couple of hours before bedtime. Additionally, she advises making a family social media plan.

“You can talk about what social media platforms you’re going to use. Who do you follow? What do you post? And then most importantly, when are the screen-free times? What are other activities you’re doing? Who do you go to if you’re worried about something?” Dr. Hoet says. “You also need to establish the consequences: what happens if these rules are broken?”

Adolescents these days are being raised largely by parents who didn’t have this problem, so they’re essentially the guinea pigs, or as Haidt calls them, the “canaries in the coal mine.” They’re the first generation to be fully immersed in a digital world at such a young age — but also the first to make us realize that, maybe, that isn’t such a good idea after all.

Before you go, check out what these celebrities had to say about the technology rules they have for their kids.