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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/phones-and-children-benefits_uk_67fe65e1e4b0095bc4906b6a>
"Critics say phones ruin children’s attention spans and are causing a mental
health crisis. But what if phones are not actually all that bad for kids?
A new study from the University of South Florida is challenging long-held
assumptions.
“Many of my colleagues and I on our study team had read ‘The Anxious
Generation’ and were quite concerned about many of the things that we read,”
said University of South Florida’s Justin Martin, the study’s lead researcher,
who referred to social psychologist’s Jonathan Haidt’s popular book, which
argues that phone-based childhoods are causing a teen mental health epidemic.
“We expected to go into this study and find that exclusively negative things
were associated with smartphone ownership, but that’s just simply not what we
found,” Martin said.
In the survey of 1,510 Floridians aged 11-13 years old, kids with smartphones
reported better mental health than those without smartphones on a number of
different measures, including higher self-esteem and being less likely to feel
depressed.
This finding held across the socioeconomic differences of the children being
surveyed.
This USF survey challenges the belief that kids with phones are more likely to
be shut-ins who never leave their bedroom. In fact, surveyed kids with
smartphones were overall more likely to spend time with friends in person.
Martin noted that the surveyed children were using phones to spend time online
with their friends, do school-related tasks, play learning games and coordinate
hangouts with friends.
The study suggests that, “similar to many adults, kids need phones to have
thriving social lives,” Martin said.
Dr. Megan Moreno, the principal investigator of the social media and adolescent
health research team at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics,
called the USF survey a “groundbreaking” addition to ongoing research, because
too many studies do not include the possibility of there being positive
outcomes to kids having phones.
“It is just so rare for studies to consider both benefits and risks,” she
said."
Via Christoph S.
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
