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There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread, most of which is just "correlation is not causation". Yes, c

• jimmyjazz14 3y ago
  It only took a couple of weeks going without a phone for me to see a marked improvement on my outlook on life and the world, so to me the correlations between phones and mental health are pretty clear.
  • PragmaticPulp 3y ago
    I’m curious: How much were you using your phone each day before you gave it up for a week? And for what? I set a 30 minute screen time limit for social media apps on my phone because I thought I was using social media too much. Then to my surprise I almost never hit that limit. I can consume all of my social media within well under 30 minutes each day and keep up with friends, family, and even HN just fine. I’m honestly curious about what people are consuming so much of that it deteriorates their mental health.
    • chmod600 3y ago
      Not a direct answer, but I think a part of it is the general anxiety caused when the phone is physically present. Maybe someone is sending me a message? Or maybe not, and of so, why not? It only takes 3 seconds to respond to a message, what are they doing that they can't respond? And Amy sent me a message four minutes ago and I didn't respond because I want to know what Dustin is doing first, but I don't want her to think that.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.... But if you are swimming or something then your phone is out of reach and there's nothing you can do so you just accept it and enjoy swimming and talking to whoever you are swimming with. Also it mixes everything together, so if you just want to do something benign, you take out the phone and have a zillion other messages to worry about.
      • jimmyjazz14 3y ago
        Yeah totally what worked best for me was leaving my phone in my trucks glovebox most the day, not having the phone even nearby seemed to make a big difference for me. I wasn't a huge phone user but even so the urge to just check if I had a notification or something was there even though I rarely had any. Now I try to compartmentalize my time better and at least for me it made a huge difference.
• tgv 3y ago
  > Writing off all of this ..., makes no sense. It does make sense when you think of it as an addiction. Many people fear giving up their phone. They think it's essential. They feel it. They live it.
  • nh23423fefe 3y ago
    Imagining you understand the motivations of diverse non-coordinating groups of people by labeling them addicts isn't persuasive or clarifying.
    • nilespotter 3y ago
      But it is still true
    • hydrok9 3y ago
      It's addictive behaviour, we've all seen it.
      • mordae 3y ago
        Yeah but the rats did not continue to drink cocaine if they had a nice place to hang out with other rats, right? So maybe everyone is binging the sewer water simply because life's not really fun nowadays. Have you noticed how tired and cynical are young people nowadays?
    • tgv 3y ago
      You don't think that addicted people aggressively defend their habit? Or don't you believe that people can get addicted to social media on phones? Or don't you believe that some of this forum's readers are addicted?
• makeitdouble 3y ago
  Because that argument can have no refutation, jor any clear verification. You wont find a control group that lives the same life as these kids but without a cell phone. You can't teleport these kids 50 years earlier etc. So we're bound to hear hot takes that have no other substanciation than "it makes logical sense" My main issue with these hot takes is that it doesn't help, as smartphone aren't going away. In contrast, we already understand the effects of Instagram on teenagers for instance, but nothing is actually happening on this front. So this whole debate on wether "smartphones" are to blame seems like a distraction from a more actionable "why isn't Instagram more regulated"
  • scanny 3y ago
    Couldn't one just do a study in communities like the Amish, or perhaps overseas? That could be a decent stand-in group.
    • Jcowell 3y ago
      no since the you would have to take in other factors that would affect that if an Amish person or one living oversees. For data like this you would have to quite literally clone these people , take away when they got a cellphone to be absolutely certain that getting a phone at the young age is the reason.
    • makeitdouble 3y ago
      Amish have a whole different societal structure so it's too much variation. Same issue if you study Indians in a remote village for instance. That would make a poor control group to compare to teenage girls going to high school in Texas.
  • mech7654 3y ago
    If you look at social science as an entire discipline (separate from "hard science"- which sounds dismissive- "Hard science" is able to achieve better precision because its experimental subjects are easier to control! in those ways it is easier!), it is so fraught with confounding factors and difficulties applying controls that eventually you have to choose a lower standard of evidence than "perfectly rigorous". One standard of evidence, or maybe better stated as epistemological standard, is the precautionary principle. If cell phones are an unknown threat, but a "creepy" one, where there certainly seems to be enough evidence that one should treat them with caution- treat them with caution. Especially when you can tell that the benefits of certain behavior patterns don't outweigh the risks. There are lots of areas of our lives where we lean on the precautionary principle WITHOUT needing bulletproof justification.
• chewbacha 3y ago
  I'm not sure. I think if I rewrote your argument with "social media" instead of "smart phone" it would sound just as convincing.
  • jononomo 3y ago
    Smart phones and social media are the same thing.
    • yamtaddle 3y ago
      There's a reason we didn't have a social media boom before smartphones. The medium is the message.
  • alexb_ 3y ago
    Smart phones give complete access to social media at literally every single waking hour. They are practically one and the same.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• balder1991 3y ago
  But these things aren’t smartphones’ fault per se, if you remove toxic social media from the equation most of these problems go away.
  • ChatGTP 3y ago
    Toxic social media and similar forums like YouTube are what’s feeding the “AI” at the moment, it’s not going to happen for a while. Tech is becoming the new tobacco.
  • bratbag 3y ago
    Do they? You still have a little dopamine generator in every kids pocket, just waiting for another app that's not technically social media. Conversely social media without constant access through mobiles would be far safer.
    • rightbyte 3y ago
      Mobile games are worse than my old Gameboy's. The controls are just bad. In all games. Hell, old button phones had better games. It is the microtransactions that are bad for mental health I guess. It is not that the games are good.
  • illiac786 3y ago
    I see kids aimlessly scrolling in Spotify, just because they like seeing all covers scrolling by... Hence, while social media are way worse, we should not underestimate a smartphone UI can be addictive in itself.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• thatwasunusual 3y ago
  I heard about the term "cognitive overload" a few years ago. Just google it if you want to; following the Wikipedia article about "Cognitive load" leads to two _very_ interesting articles: * Social facilitation * Drive theory I think these two - in particular - describes in detail what you are describing. It's scary as hell, for sure; I have a 4-5 year old daughter myself, and I do _not_ want her to live with the expose of "what everything is about" before she is old enough to handle it.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Gotta love the correlation is not causation crowd. Do they think Haidt and others haven't considered that? It's like the first thing that everyone considers. I personally think that HN dismisses these ideas because it would mean dire consequences for their high paying entrenched employers.
  • kergonath 3y ago
    I think it’s a reflex because we care about this sort of devices. In the same way as gun enthusiasts are overall again any kind of gun control even in dangerous cases. “It cannot be dangerous because I like it”. We need some kind of cultural shift so that people who give their kids a smartphone are shunned like people who give their kids cigarettes or beers.
    • sylens 3y ago
      But to that I ask - don't we all feel these same types of effects ourselves? Does anyone here feel happy about how much they look at their smartphone? And we're adults with fully developed brains - I cannot fathom the havoc it's wreaking on the adolescent (and younger) mind.
      • kergonath 3y ago
        I think so. Adults can get addicted very easily. It’s compounded by the fact that we don’t generally think of the dopamine hits provided by social media as something that can be addictive, so we are not very careful. But similarly as with alcohol and marijuana, the effects on a developing brain seem much more profound. (Caveat: I am not a specialist, but the limited reading I did from the literature and my limited experience point to that direction.)
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        This is my explanation as well. I look around and I see lots of addicted adults. Everyone I've asked says they want to use their phone less but they don't. They can't. It's a bad habit. What chance do children have?
• afavour 3y ago
  > Smartphones give children the ability to bully eachother at a scale unlike any other. No, social media does. I think it's important to be specific about that because a smartphone is just a tool, same as a laptop or a desktop computer is (when I was a kid there was plenty of bullying that went on via AIM!) Having access to e.g. Wikipedia is of enormous benefit to young people. Having the means to easily call your parents if you end up in an emergency situation is beneficial. It's possible to use a smartphone without social media. It's possible to set up a child's smartphone in such a way that their access to social media is limited if not totally removed. > There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread IMO HN has always had a strong anti-censorship streak, usually for good reasons. But it starts to get a bit weird and fuzzy when kids are involved, as if protecting them from the harmful aspects of the internet is no different than big government censorship.
  • alexb_ 3y ago
    Smartphones are what enable social media to ruin the lives of children. You can access Wikipedia from your computer. You can call your parents from a flip phone. And hey, you can sometimes engage with social media from a computer. The problem is that smartphones give children access to social media in literally every single waking hour of their lives, making it a constant that they must be extremely aware of.
    • mordae 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • branon 3y ago
      This is the reasonable middle ground, I think. No outright refusal, nor blind acceptance. Instead: separation of powers and reasonable barrier to entry. Dumbphone + stationary desktop PC would be much better for kids than a smartphone + tablet.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    Smartphones are a force multiplier for social media. Social media waiting for you on the family PC at home is a lot different than sitting in class with your phone buzzing in your pocket.
• 908B64B197 3y ago
  > But when it makes logical sense why there would be correlation, there is no way to actually measure causation You can also get causation and correlation reversed. Think about it: "The longer a teen uses (per day) smartphone the more he/she is depressed" could also be "The more depressed teens tend to have more smartphone use per day because they are depressed".
  • rowanG077 3y ago
    This would imply depressed kids get smartphones earlier. Which is a pretty large unexplained leap.
    • 908B64B197 3y ago
      Not necessarily. Parents that are less involved in their kids lives might get them a smartphone earlier. Could also be a proxy for how involved they are with their kids school (the private schools all try to de-emphasize phone use and some exclusive private schools here in the valley ban them altogether).
• psychomugs 3y ago
  > bully each other at a scale A phrase I didn't know I needed to learn.
• lukeasrodgers 3y ago
  From folks making the correlation vs causation argument here, I would like to hear their rebuttal to the points the author already laid out in this article https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill..., especially the section on quasi experiments. Do we just think that because it is probably impossible to conduct pure double-blind RCTs in human populations, it is therefore impossible to reasonably attribute causality to anything on a social scale, and our efforts to understand and maybe even shape social outcomes are thus inherently pointless?
  • cauch 3y ago
    My rebuttal would be: it is not impossible to attribute causality, and THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Right now, there are two identically possible situations (well, even more, but you get the jest): A) smartphone -> depression B) depression -> smartphone But the author does not do a good job in explaining why he choose A instead of B, except "it feels logical to me". It feels like a coin toss. (and sure, the author has some arguments, but they are arguably disputable, more than in other cases where the idea that there is causality ends up being adopted as a consensus) It does not mean it is impossible to reasonably attribute causality. It just means that the author does a bad job at the "reasonably" part.
    • bhk 3y ago
      Or also.... C) X -> depression AND X -> smartphone First example, X could be "strongly needs to feel included"
      • cauch 3y ago
        yes, exactly
      • illiac786 3y ago
        Why then is there an uptick since 2012, for example? Your theory doesn't explain this, while the author's does. We can't just consider all theories equal because they are all in the realm of the possible. Some evidence, while not proof, strongly points toward social media being the cause or at least a very strong factor. I agree with multiple other commenters here, that banning phones in school would be a high reward chances / low risk decision. We're talking about LOTS of kids getting their mental health damaged, but in many comments I don't hear the sense of urgency, rather a detached a almost snobbish focus on correlation != causality. I think such answers are partially missing the point.
• greenhearth 3y ago
  What about the physiological effects, such as dopamine addiction and the consequential withdrawals, which are probably the main cause of the depression?
• wanderingbit 3y ago
  To those who dismiss with "correlation is not causation", you should share with them Haidt's in-depth article showing multiple experimental studies regarding social media and mental health, and how more social media use causes lower mental health: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill... Key paragraph is: "In sum, we found six quasi-experiments that looked at real-world outcomes in real-world settings when the arrival of Facebook or high-speed internet created large and sudden emergent network effects. All six found that when social life moves rapidly online, mental health declines, especially for girls. Not one study failed to find a harmful effect." That being said, I think relying on a preponderance of evidence is acceptable in this case where the current status quo (particularly for teenage girls) is worrying for the vast majority of people in your community. There isn't a good excuse to wait. There's no strong evidence that technology can "get us out of this".
• byyyyy 3y ago
  [dead]
• artursapek 3y ago
  anyone denying this is just coping with their bad parenting decisions lmao, it's obvious that smartphones are bad for mental health.
• mschuster91 3y ago
  > Smartphones give children the ability to bully eachother at a scale unlike any other. It simply changed the methods. Bullying tended to be extremely physical until the "zero tolerance" crap in the 90s (that had the "side effect" that victims were also punished if they resisted). In any case, the problem of bullying could be solved by schools having actually approachable and trained staff to serve as a contact point for students being bullied. > Smartphones make every child hungry for validation from strangers, and makes them do crazy things to get said validation. That was the case before smartphones as well. Stuff like "Jackass" and its culture didn't come out of nothing - adolescents across millennia did and do extremely dumb shit to impress their peers, which is also the cause of societies evolving distinct legal frameworks that differ between adolescents and adults in courts. Again, smartphones just changed the method (and, a bit, the audience potential).
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  The point is not to stop criticizing smartphones. The point is to be direct with that criticism. How else can we possibly change anything?
• decremental 3y ago
  It's important to remember that a ton of people on here are victims of the things they defend. It's like Stockholm syndrome. Drugs, hardcore porn, you name it. They grew up with it, they've been conditioned to feel defensive when there is pushback against it, and to come to the conclusion that they themselves are victims would require facing some harsh emotions that many people would rather just not experience.
  • trgn 3y ago
    Today's equivalent of my parents beat me, but I turned out OK!
• adastra22 3y ago
  My kids don’t have phones. They are the only ones among their peers who don’t have a phone. I told them they can get one when they write an app and get it listed on the App Store, not before. Most people I tell this to are impressed. The only time I got crucified was the last time I mentioned it on HN. This seems to be a particular bone to pick that HN users have.
  • doublerabbit 3y ago
    How are they suppose to write an app when they have no phone? And which AppStore? Apple, Google, Sourceforge?
    • pb7 3y ago
      The App Store.
    • zild3d 3y ago
      > How are they suppose to write an app when they have no phone? Android and iOS both have emulators. React native/expo can run in browser, etc. > And which AppStore? Apple, Google, Sourceforge? Seems like that's missing the point
    • dhbradshaw 3y ago
      I wrote my first Android apps using an emulator. Then used the proceeds from selling those apps to buy my first Android device and a better computer. (Doesn't mean that they have to, of course. Just that it's possible.)
  • nvrmnd 3y ago
    My oldest got a phone this year, the real issue is that we need to communicate with her when she goes to a friend's place, soccer practice, and so on. Primarily for safety reasons. I imagine for most people their children will reach an age where they are more autonomous and require a phone for safety well before the kiddos are writing iOS applications.
    • 3y ago
• casey2 3y ago
  The thread and article isn't about smartphones being harmful, it's about a very small study showing slight correlation between MHQ(something that approximately 2 people itt could define) (and a few categories that "don't align with DSM-5") and the age at which 18-24 year-old females got their first "smartphone or tablet" and even less correlation among 18-24 year-old males. It can't be the million other things wrong with society it has to be the new thing, let's all extrapolate wildly from a random study and get hyped up on fear of the new thing so we can keep ignoring real problems. Through in some random easily debunked claims about every (literally every) child. You make no sense.
• swayvil 3y ago
  Nobody wants to be a lemming heading for the cliff. Nobody wants to be a stoneage troglodyte drinking from a lead cup. So I have this semiconscious reaction. The logical refutations appear in dozens, without even having to think about it. Automatic reality editing.
• vlovich123 3y ago
  When I was growing up I was told all sorts of shit like this just about whatever was new tech at the time (e.g. TV rots your brain, Wikipedia is not a reliable source, you're going to get molested if you're not careful on chat rooms). "It feels good" is particularly dangerous for things like this because humans are terrible at making conclusions like this at scale. It could also be that people in bad situations develop phone addictions and otherwise would be doing drugs. So from that perspective are smartphones causing bad mental health or are kids not being taught good coping strategies & would otherwise be displaying other negative symptoms? Is it possible that the vast majority of people don't do a good job regulating their kids' smartphone use & are the same people who use the TV/iPad/smartphone as a babysitter to quiet the kid whenever they get fussy and then those kids are the ones who develop problems with smartphones? This is extremely complex & hot takes lead to reactionary changes that don't move us forward as a society.
• hydrok9 3y ago
  I'll add this. Smartphones give children instant access to instant stimulation, and it gives children access to an escapist fantasy world. Both of those things, if used to self-medicate, will cause mental health issues.
  • atourgates 3y ago
    I'd disagree with the "instant access to an escapist fantasy world" bit being the core issue. Kids have had access to escapist fantasy worlds ever since the invention of the paperback, and I don't think "being able to distract yourself with books" will lead to mental health issues.
    • hydrok9 3y ago
      Books aren't really instant in that way. Plus they're finite, so you don't get hooked on them having a constant new and unexpected dopamine drip. Also i didn't say "distract" I said "escape." There's a difference in that escapism can start to seem like a long-term solution, when it's not and often leads to neglect of your real life, that leads to more escapism, etc.
• giantg2 3y ago
  "give children the ability to see everyone who is smarter than they are, prettier than they are, and so on." It's not just them seeing it, but everyone else too. I think with the advances in media, everyone is comparing themselves and others to these higher benchmarks. Expectations seem to be incredibly skewed these days. It feels like people expect me to be some expert dev wizard who is rich, witty, has abs, and an 8" done. Sorry, we don't live in a movie...
  • mordae 3y ago
    You are right. We are definitely missing a positive, encouraging, cooperative culture. Which is kinda as intended, isn't it? They sure told us in school to make sure we market ourselves well to our future employers. Stressing the need for "healthy" competition.
• Spooky23 3y ago
  I think the audience skews male and single on HN. I have and regularly interact with kids 6-17 right now, as a parent, close uncle and baseball coach. The effect of phones and tablets in little kids is very obvious - I’ve see kids as young as 3 compulsively watching rubberized tablets under bleachers, in cars, etc. The younger kids get the shittiest devices - the cheap Amazon tablets. That device is a Skinner box that reinforces poor behavior - act up and you get rewarded with some garbage content. As they get older, the issues change. My 11 year old just got an iPhone SE, mostly because of some circumstances that make it difficult for him when mom and dad are away. He’s a good kid and responsible, but he’s expressed FOMO/anxiety re missing messages from friends, etc. That gets worse into the self-esteem issues as they get older. It’s clearly a difficult tool for children to use effectively without causing harm. It’s also unfortunate as the public infrastructure that I had as a child of the 80s. (Walkable neighborhoods, public phones, etc) don’t exist.
  • nancyhn 3y ago
    > I’ve see kids as young as 3 compulsively watching rubberized tablets under bleachers, in cars, etc. Arguably child abuse. It will be seen as giving a 3 yr old a cigarette or a beer.
• fatneckbeard 3y ago
  HN prob full of people who make their living off smartphones reminds me of Oil / coil industry people who dont want to talk abt climate change never easy to come to terms with your life work has to change or stop.
  • mordae 3y ago
    Sorry, never made living from smart phones. Still don't think it's a good idea to ban them for kids. Instead of actually making the world a fun place to live in, someone calls for renaming git master branch to main, sorry, to ban phones. It's just posing. Never easy to come to terms with your life's work is actually making lives of other people miserable by exploiting them for a rich guy's third yacht. And that you should just say no.
  • slt2021 3y ago
    drug dealers always say: never get high on your own supply
  • illiac786 3y ago
    That is a bit far fetched and a lot of trolling no?
    • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
      Which part is far-fetched? O&G did their best to muddy the waters on the climate "debate" for decades. If you watched the Social Dilemma, executives of social media companies often limit the way their children use smartphones for their own health and safety.
      • illiac786 3y ago
        completely agree on actions of O&G. But comparing the overall actions of climate-negationist billion dollar corporations with the individual comments of developers working in the smartphone industry is a bit far fetched in my view…
• alanchen 3y ago
  > We must also always consider that there could be “third variables” that cause both of the first two variables to rise. In this case, one plausible confounding third variable is permissive parenting. Perhaps permissive parents (in each country) simultaneously do two things: they give their kids smartphones at very young ages, and they also give them few boundaries and little structure, which then interferes with development and produces struggling young adults. From the original article. I wonder if this variable is controlled, how much of the correlation will be gone.
• bbarn 3y ago
  There is also a negative parenting component that smartphones and tablets enable, which is they can be used to occupy a child without effort. The causation here is probably a mix of a lot of things but generally that society has rapidly changed without a lot of controls in place, smartphones being one that can't be ignored. The internet period is a big one. 25 years ago to call home from abroad was a 30-40$ phone call we did on a special occasion. Now we have instant access to anyone from anywhere.
• treeman79 3y ago
  Raised a teenage daughter to adulthood, have another teenage daughter another upcoming. Social media was an absolute nightmare for my oldest nightmare. Every single time she had access, she got moody, rude and withdrawn. We will take it away for a month or more and she would quickly revert back to her happy easy-going self. Within a week or so I’m getting access back should revert to miserable all the time. Every single time she completely denies that it has any affect on her and that we were being stupid. Went on for years. At about 23 she started telling us that she thinks the phone is making her depressed. So on her own she deleted most social and mostly stays off the rest. She’s doing dramatically better now. With her younger sister hit 13 and got a phone, started complaining to her that she’s not allowed to have any social media. Our oldest told her to stay off social media. That it was a bad idea. So middle child is often pissed at us about that. But is doing very well in life.
• 99_00 3y ago
  >it makes logical sense why there would be correlation The fact that this is "obvious" to well informed parents who take their kids mental health seriously makes it more likely that this is correlation and not causation. At risk kids will be given smartphones. Not at risk kids will not. I suspect that there are elements of correlation and causation involved. I don't think it's a simple relationship.
• meragrin_ 3y ago
  > Smartphones give children the ability to bully each other at a scale unlike any other. People problem. > Smartphones give children the ability to see everyone who is smarter than they are, prettier than they are, and so on. People problem. > Smartphones give children a new avenue for social exclusion. People problem. > Smartphones make every single child afraid that what they are doing is being recorded by someone else. People problem. > Smartphones make every child hungry for validation from strangers, and makes them do crazy things to get said validation. People problem. Smartphones aren't the problem. They are just things. They don't make people do things. They just enable people to do things in a different medium. > Writing off all of this and boldly claiming that smartphones aren't the problem, it's all just coincedental correlation, makes no sense. It makes perfect sense when you realize the smartphone is nothing more than a tool and the people are the problem. If you take away all the assholes, are smartphones going to have the same effect?
  • nathan_compton 3y ago
    By this logic you'd be fine if we gave every person on earth a nuclear bomb? It doesn't take a genius to understand that various pieces of technology might either change the incentive structure of society in such a way as to produce more of certain behaviors and less of others or might enable the assholes you refer to to do more harm than they used to do and in either case undesirable outcomes might increase. Unless you believe that the common good doesn't exist or that human's don't have any business trying to construct their society in such a way as to seek some form of it, you have to take the social effects of technology into account when making policy. Just asserting that all things ultimately come down to individual decisions is really weird. Like even if you believe it in some libertarian free market fantasy framework, the vast majority of people think differently and your comment provides no justification whatsoever for why "ultimately people are responsible" is a useful way to think about these problems.
  • Sivart13 3y ago
    What's easier to change, human nature or technology?
  • CrampusDestrus 3y ago
• barbariangrunge 3y ago
  What can parents do about it? Cut their kids off? Will they be better off if they reach adulthood without being immersed in the tech culture of their day? They might be at first, but they might struggle as adults to thrive in the brave new world we’re creating with tech where “software is eating the world”
  • mixmastamyk 3y ago
    I never used the internet until my mid-twenties and learned to write socket code a few months later. Lots of old folks that never used a computer when younger are addicted to facebook today. The idea that doomscrolling can't be learned later (post teens) is kinda silly.
• iamgopal 3y ago
  Smartphones does all that if you don’t teach children properly all this results. We need to proactive at the same time we give them smartphones.
• fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I sort of agree, the instant satisfaction of base human desires a smartphone offers, particularly if wide open to psychosocially optimized personalized social media and related applications, is dangerous at any age but especially for people who haven’t built the social experience and resilience necessary - both young and old. Additionally the form factor makes it ever present and open for use / abuse. For my child, she has an iPad mini that’s heavily parental controlled. She has no access to social media, and only a few games - Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and Terraria. She has drawing programs, education programs from her school (RazKids, etc), and a locked down messenger with only her family members in contacts. It has her kindle, which she has a epaper version of as well. She does have access to safari, but as of yet she just uses it for Wikipedia and stuff. I watch her use and will tailor access as appropriate. Further we talk to her about the ills and the causes of the ills from social media and addiction optimized user experiences in these devices. The device isn’t the problem, it’s the “impressions, conversions, and stickiness at all costs” mentality that drives so much revenue, and thus so much UX. I was raised on NES and c64 games, and I gained an awful lot out of it. I don’t agree that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with computers presenting content vs the real world. But I do know there is something wrong with the relationship between users of modern internet media and the companies extracting maximal value from shaping our behavior. That impact increases as you become younger / less sophisticated.
• sangnoir 3y ago
  > Yes, correlation does not equal causation. But when it makes logical sense why Confounding factor: think about the type of parents who choose not to give their children smartphones. Are they more or less likely to be engaged in other aspects of the childs life that promotes good outcomes compared to the average? How about other things like diet, hobbies, income, waking hours spent in the home? Could those potentially affect mental health in adulthood?
• DoreenMichele 3y ago
  There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread, most of which is just "correlation is not causation". The issue is that early ownership of a phone correlating to worse mental health may be a proxy for something else. If you are raising children and trying to make good parenting decisions and someone says "smartphones are the work of the devil and your child will be mentally healthier without them" they need to actually be correct, not guessing to enhance their career or something. If it's not true, then parents who might have safety reasons for providing a phone who then opt to not provide a phone "because phones are bad for kids" may be harming their kids. It's a blanket statement without nuance. It doesn't tell me if there are situations where it's okay and, if so, what they are. This usually means a person isn't really that knowledgeable about a topic. People tend towards confirmation bias. It's a rare individual who says "What would affirmatively disprove my hypothesis? Does that thing exist?" Without that, it's usually not a solid hypothesis. It's usually one full of holes.
  • thethimble 3y ago
    > safety reasons for providing a phone Isn’t this a red herring? Do you need to provide a smart phone or just a phone? If it’s a smart phone do you need to enable unfettered access or just the safety related apps you need?
    • DoreenMichele 3y ago
      I would welcome detailed articles about exactly that over this guy harping on his "right" to win this argument with the preponderance of the evidence. He seems very hung up on stamping his foot and insisting the world admit he's right, damn it, and not actually all that concerned about helping parents raise their children better.
• racl101 3y ago
  I know this is just anecdotal info but I know of a couple of families with boy and daughter around the same age. One family lets the kids use smartphones and iPads and the other only iPads and only for school. The former family's kids are constantly in a negative and neurotic mode. Always comparing themselves to other students and complaining about what they don't have. The latter family's kids are waaaay more properly adjusted and it's not even close. They don't spend a lot of time comparing themselves to other people nor on coveting for stuff they saw on YouTube. There's just no way that all that external stimuli cannot have a negative effect on one's child.
• dahwolf 3y ago
  It's way worse still. Even if none of the problems you describe materialize for a young individual, still smartphones are bad for development. They directly come at the expense of socialization, physical activity, discovery and experimentation, group play, facing (manageable) dangers and setbacks, making your own mistakes and learning from them, etc. To have actual experiences. Good and bad ones. What an absolute dead-end culture it must be to have no experiences.
• isitmadeofglass 3y ago
  [dead]
• brightball 3y ago
  People boldly write off everything these days. It's just the way of the world at this point and it's very pedantic. Some things are very hard to prove or disprove. Some things people have argued very hard against and are simply unwilling to hear contrary information. Even when there is a study, people will find fault with the study. In many cases, warranted fault. In others, not so much. People simply decide what to trust and what not to trust. If I see a guy in a blue shirt walking down the street, stop and talk to him for a minute and then go on my way there's no way that I can prove that to you. The distrustful skeptic can always find a reason that they don't want to believe it.