Anecdotally, I remember that the kids who got smartphones the earliest were already "bad kids". Their parents let them watch explicit movies and TV shows, party

Anecdotally, I remember that the kids who got smartphones the earliest were already "bad kids". Their parents let them watch explicit movies and TV shows, party unsupervised, and slack off with their grades. (This goes for low- and high-income students both). I think smartphones do accelerate poor mental health. If I'd been given a smartphone earlier than I was (as a sophomore in college), I definitely would have seen a deterioration in my own self-esteem. However, I also think that permissive parenting that fails to set moral and behavioral boundaries early on in life is a confounding factor in terms of why giving smartphones early leads to worse outcomes.