<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/29/uk-mps-in-full-moral-panic-decide-to-ignore-the-research-push-for-dangerous-ban-on-phones-for-kids/>
"The moral panic about kids and technology these days is just getting dumber
and dumber. The latest is that MPs in the UK are considering an outright ban on
smartphones for kids under 16.
Just last week, we posted about a thorough debunking of the “mobile phones are
bad for kids” argument making the rounds. We highlighted how banning phones can
actually do significantly more harm than good. This was based on a detailed
article in the
Atlantic by UCI psychologist and researcher Candice Odgers,
who actually studies this stuff.
As she’s highlighted multiple times, none of the research supports the idea
that phones or social media are inherently harmful. In the very small number of
cases where there’s a correlation, it often appears to be a reverse causal
situation:
When associations are found, things seem to work in the opposite direction
from what we’ve been told: Recent research among adolescents—including among
young-adolescent girls, along with a large review of 24 studies that
followed people over time—suggests that early mental-health symptoms may
predict later social-media use, but not the other way around.
In other words, the kids who often have both mental health problems and
difficulty putting down their phones appear to be turning to their phones
because of their untreated mental health issues, and because they don’t have
the resources necessary to help them.
Taking away their phones takes away their attempt to find help for themselves,
and it also takes away a lifeline that many teens have used to actually help
themselves: whether it’s in finding community, finding information they need,
or otherwise communicating with friends and family. Cutting that off can cause
real harm. Again, as Odgers notes:
We should not send the message to families—and to teens—that social-media
use, which is common among adolescents and helpful in many cases, is
inherently damaging, shameful, and harmful. It’s not. What my fellow
researchers and I see when we connect with adolescents is young people going
online to do regular adolescent stuff. They connect with peers from their
offline life, consume music and media, and play games with friends. Spending
time on YouTube remains the most frequent online activity for U.S.
adolescents. Adolescents also go online to seek information about health,
and this is especially true if they also report experiencing psychological
distress themselves or encounter barriers to finding help offline. Many
adolescents report finding spaces of refuge online, especially when they
have marginalized identities or lack support in their family and school.
Adolescents also report wanting, but often not being able to access, online
mental-health services and supports.
All adolescents will eventually need to know how to safely navigate online
spaces, so shutting off or restricting access to smartphones and social
media is unlikely to work in the long term. In many instances, doing so
could backfire: Teens will find creative ways to access these or even more
unregulated spaces, and we should not give them additional reasons to feel
alienated from the adults in their lives."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
