3 Proven Ways Smartphones and Screen Time are Harming Children’s Health
For years, the cell phone industry has fought litigation and has tried to prevent warning labels from being added to their products, and in a 2017 landmark case in an Italian court, a judge even ruled that excessive cell phone use can in fact result in brain cancer. While it may take a number of years to develop, cancer is not the only negative health effect using today’s smart phones, and for children, the impacts of handheld fixation technologies are rather broad. Even Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, is well-known for not permitting his own children to use iPads, smartphones and other handheld devices, noting how addictive and openly available devices like these are in our society today. “… when he [Steve Jobs] was asked “Your kids must love the iPad?” He said “Actually we don’t allow the iPad in the home. We think it’s too dangerous for them in effect.” The reason why he said that was because he recognized just how addictive the iPad was as a vehicle for delivering things to people. That once you had the iPad in front of you, or when you took it away from the home with you, you’d always have access to these platforms that were very addictive. That were hard to resist.” ~Adam Alter, author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked Here are several other documented ways in which screen-time and smartphones are negatively impacting children’s health. 1. Literally Turning Them Into Addicts As Jobs says, the devices are highly addictive, meaning they re-train the brain’s pleasure and reward centers, interfering with the a child’s natural responses to the joy, while heavily distracting them from life. These devices are digital drugs, as habit-forming as cocaine and ubiquitous in our society. “This addictive effect is why Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of neuroscience at UCLA, calls screens “electronic cocaine” and Chinese researchers call them “digital heroin.” In fact, Dr. Andrew Doan, the head of addiction research for the Pentagon and the US Navy — who has been researching video game addiction — calls video games and screen technologies “digital pharmakeia” (Greek for drug). That’s right — your kid’s brain on Minecraft looks like a brain on drugs. No wonder we have a hard time peeling kids from their screens and find our little ones agitated when their screen time is interrupted. In addition, hundreds of clinical studies show that screens increase depression, anxiety and aggression and can even lead to psychotic-like features where the video gamer loses touch with reality.” [Source] Some academics even suggest that these devices are so addictive they should come with a health warning: “University of Derby finds smartphone users in study spent average 3.6 hours a day on devices, often causing severe distraction from relationships and ‘real life.’ [Source] 2. Impacts Their Mood and the Emotional System Overexposure to screen time with these devices negatively affects the mood and emotional systems of children, and as many studies [...]