Are Smartphones Bad for Kids?
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by Dan Krutka
This week I came across a talk from Cal Newport titled, “Are Smartphones Bad for Kids?” Newport is best known for his various books (“Deep Work,” “Digital Minimalism,” “A World Without Email”) that critique how modern technology creates distracting and exhausting technological environments for knowledge workers, and he offers advice for how to engage in “deep work.” I was interested in this particular post because Newport inquired into a compelling question that I believe we should pose to children and adolescents: Are smartphones bad for kids?
Sometimes we shy away from questions like this one in school because they feel too big. Teachers are often taught to ask more narrow questions where students can research evidence and find concrete answers, often on topics that are disconnected from the experiences of young people’s lives. However, the C3 Framework (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) encourages the use of compelling questions like this one that have debatable answers. When inquiring into such questions, students are supposed to build arguments on credible evidence, but in the end, their answers are also grounded in philosophical, moral, and technological beliefs.
In Newport’s talk, he argues that researchers from different fields have slowly coalesced around a consensus answer to this question: Yes. He primarily references increases in mental health problems to support his answer. He describes the emerging research over the last decade as taking form in three acts:
Act 1: An Alarm is Sounded (2012-2017): Newport argues that from 2012-2017 researchers started to show that the rise of smartphones in 2012 increased mental health problems among youth. He cites a range of evidence from Jean Twenge’s work as summarized in her 2017 Atlantic article, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” to Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ 2017 article where young people attest to these problems themselves in, “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?”
Act 2: The Data Wars (2017-2020): He argues that other factors cannot explain the rise of anxiety across many countries, and he tries to debunk other possible explanations (e.g., “maybe teens just got more comfortable talking about mental health” in self-reports). He references the increase in nonfatal self-harm and suicides among teens in hospital admission data matches the rise of smartphone adoption.
Act 3: A Consensus Begins to Emerge (2020-2023): Newport then cites a range of other studies that also correlate smartphone use with a rise in mental health problems, and argues that young people verify these harms in surveys and interviews.
He argues that smartphones and social media make people feel like they are being social (“social snacking”), but they are missing many of the embodied aspects of social experiences that help people feel connected to others. He argues that scholarship overall supports the idea that young people should not have smartphones and social media until 16 years old.
When I first watched this talk I had a few initial reactions. First, I was skeptical. Newport’s presentation felt too generalizable, and the conclusions too clean. It certainly feels uncomfortable answering such a big question that seemingly concludes that we need to take all the kids' phones away. Young people also cultivate cultures and grow into healthy identities online (e.g., Gleason, 2018). Moreover, young people’s experiences are diverse and I can’t help but worry about, for example, how an isolated transgender youth could suffer without their connections to communities of support that they may lack in their immediate community. When we ask if smartphones are bad for kids—what else do we need to consider? We might also discuss the disproportionate effects of social media on young people, exorbitant costs of smartphones for poor families, the damage for kids whose parents/guardians mine the rare earth metals in smartphones or assemble them for low wages, among other topics.
Our 5 Critical Questions about Technology could be adapted to help young people inquire into some of these other questions: 1. What do kids give up for the benefits of smartphones?; 2. Who is harmed and who benefits from smartphones?; 3. What do smartphones need from kids?; 4. What are the unintended or unexpected changes caused by smartphones for kids?; 5. Why is it difficult for kids to imagine our world without smartphones?
Are smartphones bad for kids? Educators should ask them to answer the question. Students need time, space, and practice thinking deeply—weighing evidence, relating to their experiences, and seeking answers—about big technological questions. They need to figure out—individually and collectively—what kind of lives they want to live, and what kind of world they want to live in.
References
Gleason, B. (2018). Adolescents becoming feminist on Twitter: New literacies practices, commitments, and identity work. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(3), 281-289.
National Council for the Social Studies. (2013). The college, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards. NCSS.