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Kids who own smartphones before age 13 have worse mental health outcomes: Study

Dang, et al., go.com needs the subdomain visible, all go.com means is that it's a Disney owned brand.

5 hours agoDoctorOW

Soon:

  Adults who have smartphones have worse mental heath outcomes: Study
Whatever the safe level of smartphone usage is, most of us are above it.
6 hours agoskylurk

> Whatever the safe level of smartphone usage is, most of us are above it.

I think I'm immunized from it because I hate using smartphones, especially when I'm at home and could be doing the task on a PC with a big screen and keyboard. I have a few but just use them for practical tasks when away from home (occasional text, deliveries on porch, looking something up in the store, listening to podcasts, to do list for the day). Viewing content on a tiny screen with a minefield of things to accidentally tap? No thanks. They are great multi-function devices to replace others on the go.

7 minutes agogblargg

I keep debating trying to go full-dumbphone, but I'm confident what would happen is that it would work great until I need a specific thing for whatever reason, and I'd have to buy an Android or iPhone, and then I'd be forced to carry around two devices and potentially have two separate cell phone plans. This seems like a pain in the ass.

But I don't dispute that waking up in the morning to a bunch of things competing for my stimulated attention probably isn't healthy.

4 hours agotombert

The thing that keeps me on a smartphone is public transit (maps/route planning + stop arrival trackers).

I used public transit back in the no-phone/dumbphone era. I'm never going back. But if there were some way to ditch the rest of the smartphone....

an hour agoexmadscientist

I've been using a featureful dumb phone (Sunbeam F1 Pro, Juniper) for a few weeks now. Before this I've been using an iPhone since iPhone 6s, and before that an Android phone since Nexus 4. My new phone runs BasicOS, an Android remix that removes Google Play, removes all web browsers, and comes with a suite of custom default apps built to nice with physical buttons (T9-style).

My phone has calls, SMS, MMS, email (IMAP), calendar (CDAV), contacts (CDAV), navigation (offline and Waze), note-taking, voice memos, a music player, weather, and voice-to-text via Azure's AI models. The only things I've missed so far are:

- Two-factor authentication via TOTP and HOTP. I loathe SMS-based 2FA, and not every service supports Email-based 2FA. This has been so annoying I've considered jailbreaking it, learning Kotlin and Android development, and releasing an MIT-licensed application for the company to bundle with the phone.

- A way to scan QR codes. It would be fine if I could just extract the text into a Note.

- The ability to record a call without an additional device. I've been dealing with a medical billing kerfuffle and it was much easier to disclose and press record, than to disclose and find another recording device.

- The ability to send and read SMS/MMS messages from my MacBook Pro. It should be possible with the Bluetooth HFP, which many cars use to enable the same thing. Sadly, Tunabelly Software's app "Handsfree 2" was pulled from the market and I could not get Sustainable Softworks' app "Phone Amego" to work. I've considered building a TUI for this purpose.

- At first I missed Audible, but then I learned two important facts. First, I can listen to my Audible books on my Kindle as long as I connect a bluetooth speaker (including Ford SYNC). And second, Audible and iTunes for Windows integrate with each other to allow me to burn Audible books to CDs, 80 minutes at a time.

- I really miss having O'Reilly Learning Platform. I used to listen to audiobooks on there all the time, and now I've got no good solution for it. I've replaced that time with Audible books (which are rarely about software). I still get plenty of software book reading done when I can focus my eyes on it, though.

There have also been some UX problems, which are livable:

- The camera is not extremely high quality. I've taken to borrowing my wife's iPad to take photos of my whiteboard when I need to preserve something before I erase it. It's fine for texting photos to friends, but not for document scanning.

- The music player is good for music, but not great for audiobooks and podcasts. It doesn't remember where you are in the middle of an audio file when you play it again later (which would, admittedly, be weird for music).

But the benefits have been incredible:

- I no longer stay up way too late every night pushing pixels past my peepers. Instead, I stay up way too late only some nights, reading technology books.

- I no longer browse social media, play puzzle games, or browse news headlines every time I'm bored for a few minutes. Instead, I contemplate (what my plans for tomorrow are, a recent problem I failed to solve, what that odd sound is, how pretty the clouds are, etc.).

- I no longer have to put up with Liquid Glass. (I also replaced my Apple Watch with a Casio LWS2200H and downgraded my MacBook Pro to Sequoia.)

- I no longer have to be concerned with anybody but my carrier tracking me.

- I've been less aware of state, national, and world news--which has been a huge boon to my mental health. Conversations with friends and coworkers still keep me apprised of the things that are important enough to need to know. All the other crap just passes me by. Nothing is shoving headline notifications at me, and the easy moments to browse headlines have been replaced by devicelessness.

2 hours agoKerrick

There are also options to split the difference - a dumb phone that can sync with your smartphone or watch like https://dumb.co/

3 hours agoitsdrewmiller

As someone who used dumbphones, trust me it wouldnt be that big of a mental gymnastic.

They are really cheap and some like kaechoda and other brands are really slim as well so I can recommend it genuinely.

Its worth looking more into but yes I am having an android now partially because of whatsapp and the fact that my old dumb phone had died

Rest in peace, it was really cool.

4 hours agowhynotmakealt

Fortunately, I use my smartphone about 20 minutes a day for work authentication, and for its camera while traveling. And audiobooks.

Unfortunately, my iPad Pro gets way, way, way more use. Much too addictive as a media consumption device.

5 hours agomacintux

I’d guess it’s very different from how most of the people consume content.

The problem with smartphone is that it’s always on you wherever you go, and the temptation to use it for filling every second of boredom is just too strong.

iPads/laptops on another hand are just too bulky for carrying them around - in a minute of boredom you have to take deliberate action to go and grab it from whatever place it’s right now. From my experience, this additional barrier between you and content is a huge deterring factor.

As an anecdote, I use Brick app to lock my phone out of social media, and even tho the physical unlocking device in another corner of the same room where I’m, this works surprisingly well, because most of the time I’m just too lazy to take this action of going through unlocking procedure.

4 hours agoekropotin

[delayed]

a minute agomacintux

That’s interesting because I’ve been able to keep my iPads and computers entirely productivity devices but my phone wastes considerable amounts of my time.

5 hours agotyleo

Yeah I can’t see any good reason to get an iPad if you’re not an artist. Just a way to get more video streaming in your life.

4 hours agoteaearlgraycold

I doubt there is any meaningful difference in effect of smartphone usage versus tablet usage, though

5 hours agobluefirebrand

Eerie parallels to tobacco smoking just a few decades ago. It's a public health problem but those in charge of the bureaucracy at the highest levels choose to obsess over rare vaccine side effects and the use of tylenol during circumcission? It's a mad mad mad mad world (great film, which is overdue for a cyber age remake)

3 hours agoDaveZale

Is owning a smartphone more or less dangerous than owning a cat?

"Cat Ownership Linked to Increased Risk of Schizophrenia, Research Suggests" https://www.sciencealert.com/owning-a-cat-could-double-your-...

> "After adjusting for covariates, we found that individuals exposed to cats had approximately twice the odds of developing schizophrenia,"

6 hours agostopbulying

My first question would be: or is it that cat owners are schizophrenic are more likely to get a cat?

I'm not answering that question, but I do want to quote your article. From the bottom:

> Results were inconsistent across studies, but those of higher quality suggested that associations in unadjusted models might have been due to factors that could have influenced the results.

> One study found no significant association between owning a cat before age 13 and later developing schizophrenia, but it did identify a significant link when narrowing down cat ownership to a specific period (ages 9 to 12). This inconsistency suggests that the critical window for cat exposure is not well defined.

> A study in the US, which involved 354 psychology students, didn't find a connection between owning a cat and schizotypy scores. However, those who had received a cat bite had higher scores when compared to those who had not.

> Another study, which included people with and without mental disorders, discovered a connection between cat bites and higher scores on tests measuring particular psychological experiences. But they suggested other pathogens, such as Pasteurella multocida, may be responsible instead.

> Before we can make any firm interpretations, the researchers reiterate that we need better and broader research.

6 hours agoFnoord

And of course there's endless correlation-causation isseus there as well. Under most circumstances you have to be both aggressive and careless to get bitten by a cat in the first place.

4 hours agocrooked-v

That article is junk. The leading cause of Toxoplasma gondii infection in humans is under cooked meat. Cat ownership is not actually linked to higher prevalence of T. gondii infection[1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3497129/

4 hours agoch4s3

Schizophrenia is a subset of "doing worse mentally". For a proper comparison you need to check overall mental health, not just schizophrenia, which is a rare condition.

5 hours agograeme

the culprit is toxoplasma. A third or so of US citizens have it in their brains.

3 hours agoDaveZale

Obviously, because people like cats, they are good, and because people don’t like phones, they are bad.

5 hours agodoctorpangloss

well since internet usage increases the purrrcent chance of cat ownership I’d say it’s at least a hair more dangerous and not without whisk(ers)

4 hours agoluxuryballs

How’s this compare to computer/internet usage? I’ve been chronically online most years since age 7 but didn’t get a smartphone until 22 or so.

3 hours agothebigspacefuck

My anecdotal observations suggest it's pretty different. One thing is you can (and do, if you're a kid) carry it everywhere with you and stare at it all the time. I think the phone UI where each app takes over the whole screen also increases the impact of the worst sorts of apps (like TikTok).

3 hours agoBrenBarn

Interesting observation about everything effectively running in full-screen on a smartphone, taking it out of the larger context of whatever else you were doing before that.

3 minutes agogblargg

Personally I'd think its different, smartphone apps usually have tons of dark patterns and are designed to always be with you versus a desktop or even a laptop.

3 hours agokogasa240p

I don't know many children who are 13 today and don't have a smartphone - in fact it was quite a common thing even a decade ago - how do you even control for this

6 hours agotorginus

My 13 year old has a phone. Most of the apps are blocked. Messages is open, and we tweak based on expectations how much he has access per day, and when. Right now it's 8:30pm to 9pm (so after sports and homework).

He can call and text me and my wife anytime of the day. Thankfully the school bans phone usage, so it's not a lot.

A handful of his friends have no phone. Most have, and all apps are accessible (not sure how parents configure age restricted content/apps).

It's a lot of work to limit and tweak and even his 1 minute a day on Safari (because I couldn't find a way to cut to 0) allowed him to create a TikTok and Instagram account (on web). I am a technologist... and gee my 13 year is a genius when trying to find ways to circumvent the restrictions. Every other week I have to change some minor thing in Settings. But my point is that it's a LOT of work... I can see why some people either completely ban or allow. But to me it's worth. Messages is open because I believe he needs to talk with his friends, but fuck Tiktok and Instagram and Youtube.

an hour agoinerte

To me, "The Internet" and "The Internet without short-form videos" are two different things.

There was a very short span of time when the mobile bandwidth was good enough for browsing, messaging, and corporate email, but not really good enough (or prohibitively expensive) for streaming. Feels like that was the sweet spot.

3 hours agosupportengineer

There's also a decade plus of various "Net Children Go Mobile" annual surveys across major tecnological countries that plot the diffusion of phone use and ownership by age and country.

Leading to a large ANOVA table of years, countries, ages, mental health statitics, etc.

Yes, Denmark measures these things is ways different to the UK and both differ from the US.

All the same, each being reasonably internally consisent across time means trends can be picked after normalising.

The case for whether encroaching phone use does correlate with increased early onset mental issue diagnoses becomes a consideration of thresholds and variances.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283320908_Net_Child...

5 hours agodefrost

I wonder how many 5-6 year olds are getting smartphones because parents are divorced and one parent wants to be able to check in on the other, could be something like that is the issue

3 hours agothebigspacefuck

In the US, we restrict driving to around age 16, alcohol consumption to 18, voting to 18, and tobacco consumption to 21. Then there are industry-applied age ratings, like the MPA’s PG-13, R, and NC-17 ratings. Barbiturates and amphetamines we’re once available without a prescription.

There’s official/unofficial wiggle room, but there are limits. For example, if you live on a farm, you may be driving on the farm before you have a license to drive on public roads.

I could see mobile-phone ownership becoming similarly-restricted.

5 hours agoCaliforniaKarl

>In the US, we restrict ... alcohol consumption to 18

isn't it 21 all over the US? it was changed to cut drunk driving in the late 70s at the federal level, tied to highway funds, so the states needed to cave

32 minutes agofsckboy

Kids can / often use other family members' smartphones / tablets (I assume it's the majority of cases). How can the law prevent this if parents do nothing about this?

5 hours agosenfiaj

The same way that the law prevents kids drinking their parents’ alcohol - it doesn’t. But having it be illegal sends a signal, even though it’s possible to circumvent it, and also allows prosecution if warranted.

4 hours agolemming

That'd put it in the same basket as alcohol and tobacco. Although the pro/con of owning a mobile are a lot less clear than those two and banning phones in that way is probably a mistake.

4 hours agoroenxi

It sucks because they could be pocket-sized bicycles for the mind rather than addicting ad-driven bullshit surveillance slot machines that maximize attention. Humanity had a choice and chose poorly.

3 hours ago2OEH8eoCRo0

Reading Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation' broke me. I have two kids, still far too young for smartphones, but his book and all of the surrounding research has made me DRASTICALLY alter the way I use my own smartphone and will shape the way I treat phones with them.

If you have kids, take the "wait until 8th" pledge: https://www.waituntil8th.org/

No smart phones until after 8th grade.

12 minutes agodcchambers

Horrifically terrible data and methodology for even suggesting causal claims. Global Mind Data is literally self report online survey data. You may as well have used political surveys from Fox News and MSNBC

4 hours agothrowout4110

Impossible to separate from level of parental care.

5 hours agogroundzeros2015

Keeping your kids away from screens requires a significant parental effort

4 hours agobethekidyouwant

So, I can tell you my reaction when I was 13 and first saw a smartphone. (It must have been late 2007 or 2008.)

You know. Everything's round and cute and colorful. Like candy.

"Oh. This is for retarded people."

Unfortunately I was wrong.

It's actually much worse than that. It's for normal people. But it makes you retarded.

Slowly. You don't even notice it happening.

It eats away... day by day.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4

3 hours agoandai

You shouldn't stick your head in the sand just because it makes you feel better. Since media companies are causing damage then they should be held liable. Where is the class action?

5 hours agocasey2

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3 hours agokiuy

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3 hours agokiuy

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