Smartphones deploy sophisticated techniques to draw in and captivate our attention; the apps and mobile content hosted on these devices are similarly designed to monetise our attention. 

Children are especially susceptible to ‘distraction by design’ technology, and it appears that its effects are not fleeting or temporary, but have a permanent effect on their abilities to focus and remain concentrated on real-life activities – schoolwork, friends, family, real-world play.

Multiple studies have identified evidence of comorbidities between excessive smartphone use and psychiatric diagnoses including ADHD and OCD.

The convenience of accessible real-time images, information, games and other content comes at a high price – especially for children. Using colours, sounds and vibrations smartphones,  and many of the apps that run on them, are specifically designed not only to hold our attention but to encourage regular repetitive viewing.

According to former Google designer Tristan Harris, features such as  “pull to refresh” were inspired by slot machines and casino games; and these features have been weaponised by social media platforms. Many aspects of the device have been designed to create fanatical users.

Children, the most vulnerable of users, seek out validation and dopamine hits through social media approval. Even a 2016 report by Common Sense Media found that 50% of American teens “feel addicted” to mobile devices and 59% of parents believe their kids are addicted to their devices. The same survey also found that 78% of teens check their devices at least hourly.
More recently, a Pew Research report from 2018 found that 95% of American teenagers have smartphone access and 45% use the Internet “almost constantly”.
A 2019 King’s College London study found that in the UK, an estimated one in four children and young people use their smartphones in a way that is consistent with a behavioural addiction.

​​Studies have found that excessive smartphone use among young people has been associated with difficulties in cognitive-emotion regulation, impulsivity, impaired cognitive function, addiction to social networking, shyness, depression, loneliness, stress, social anxiety. Parents may feel they are cushioning their children by keeping them safe at home and indeed teens are physically safer, they are less likely to get into a car accident or drink alcohol but psychologically they are vulnerable.

Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed in the past decade  such that we are now experiencing a global  teen mental health crisis.

Meanwhile  mental health researchers in the US have observed  that symptoms of depression, suicide risk factors and suicide rates among teens increased sharply in 2012, coinciding with the acceleration of smartphone ownership particularly among those younger generations.  It has been customary for commentators to point out that correlation does not prove causation, but Jonathan Haidt, a leading expert in the field, contends that as evidence of harm mounts, this position is becoming harder to defend. He writes, “There is now a great deal of evidence that social media is a substantial cause, not just a tiny correlate, of depression and anxiety, and therefore of behaviors related to depression and anxiety, including self-harm and suicide.”

The almost ubiquitous presence of smartphones in social, family, leisure, retail and business settings is changing the way children understand the social world, and their confidence and ability to interact in person with friends, family and community, with potentially severe impacts on long-term personal and professional life prospects still to be measured.

A study of 1,500 parents of children aged six to 16 found that 70% are desperate to get their youngsters outside more, while 63% find it hard to get their child off their devices and into the great outdoors.
Around 12% of boys in the UK were believed to be addicted to playing video games in 2020. Smartphones are by design single-user devices, and so encourage solo activity at the expense of social interaction. Despite the omnipresence of social media and instant messaging,children are feeling lonelier than ever, with a third of teens now reporting loneliness at school, up from a tenth in the year 2000.

Parents’ own smartphone use can have potentially very serious consequences for the development of babies and toddlers, and can normalise dependencies and addictive behaviours.

Adults on average pick up their phones as many as 150 times per day, creating short interruptions in real-world relationships, and reinforcing perceptions about the acceptance of dependency and other addictive behaviours.

Studies already show that maternal smartphone use compromises mother–child interaction, which unsurprisingly can have negative effects on child development including language, cognition, and socio-emotional regulation. For older children, spending time with family members who areconstantly checking, scrolling, texting, or engaged with a smartphone can cause feelings of inadequacy and isolation as well as creating negative expectations about the ubiquity of smartphones in the human experience.

Parents’ own smartphone use can have potentially very serious consequences for the development of babies and toddlers, and can normalise dependencies and addictive behaviours.

Adults on average pick up their phones as many as 150 times per day, creating short interruptions in real-world relationships, and reinforcing perceptions about the acceptance of dependency and other addictive behaviours.

Studies already show that maternal smartphone use compromises mother–child interaction, which unsurprisingly can have negative effects on child development including language, cognition, and socio-emotional regulation. For older children, spending time with family members who areconstantly checking, scrolling, texting, or engaged with a smartphone can cause feelings of inadequacy and isolation as well as creating negative expectations about the ubiquity of smartphones in the human experience.

In recent studies, 55% of UK teens reported seeing  real life acts of violence on social media in the last 12 months. 24% had seen children carrying, promoting, or using weapons.
Children’s Commissioner,  Rachel De Souza said of a teenage focus group;  “I was asking them what they had seen online and two thirds of the room of 15 to 16 year olds had been sent images of a beheading”. The UK Government meanwhile estimates that online pornography is accessed by 1.4 million UK children each month. Around 50% of 12 child year olds report having seen pornography online.

Even if your own child’s phone is protected by parental controls there is no failsafe for ensuring another child doesn’t share harmful content with your child, let’s say in the playground. Sadly, images and videos of both sexually explicit behaviours and extreme violence are ubiquitous on the internet, via texting, or through apps, as well as social media. So why do we give our kids unfettered access?  The gateway access is enabled by smartphones – in the words of Miriam Cates MP “Your child is only as safe as the last protected child.

Meanwhile, young people are frequently exposed to violent pornography, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts; and a Children’s Commissioner report finds that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.