Smartphones Harm Child And Adult Mental Health

“The moment a baby is born, a parent is too,” the President and co-founder of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement, writes.
It’s a job that evolves as children get older. These days, when they should be spreading their wings a little, the parents give them a smartphone or watch, keeping them tethered. Parents become obsessively attached to their children, damaging the parent’s mental health and preventing a child from learning essential life skills, Skenazy says.
A lot has been written in recent years about smartphones’ negative impact on children’s health. Schools are increasingly banning their use during school hours to improve students’ attention in class and interaction with one another and reduce bullying.
But Skenazy says that the smartphone also has a negative impact on parent health. It may have a role in the growing concern about parents feeling increasingly stressed.
Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents saying parents need help. His office points to a survey that found one-third of parents are feeling “high levels of stress in the past month compared to 20% of other adults.” This trend has been developed over the past decade.
“Parents have a profound impact on the health of our children and the health of society. Yet parents and caregivers today face tremendous pressures, from familiar stressors such as worrying about their kids’ health and safety and financial concerns, to new challenges like navigating technology and social media, a youth mental health crisis, an epidemic of loneliness that has hit young people the hardest,” Murthy says.
They are stressed by the constant running for kids’ dance, sports, or club programs that have started intense training at earlier and earlier ages.
“When stress is severe or prolonged, it can have a harmful effect on the mental health of parents and caregivers, which in turn also affects the well-being of the children they raise,” Murthy states.
Stressed parents have higher levels of anxiety and depression, he says. When parents are stressed, they can become less patient and spend less time nurturing their children.
While many factors play into that stress, smartphones, their child’s and their own, must be among them.
Just 15 years ago, when parents dropped their kids off at school, they were mostly out of contact until the end of the school day. But today, through smartphones and smart watches, messages constantly stream between a concerned or overly protective parent and a child.
In the past, when a child was dropped off for school, there was “…no contact. No tracking. No alerts from the school. (My mother) didn’t even pack a note in my lunch, because during school, I was sort of off her radar, and she was sort of off mine. That didn’t mean she loved me less. But it did mean that she assumed I was fine without her watching or contacting me,” Skenazy writes. It required trusting the school to keep your child safe.
But in our social media and news world, we are constantly hearing the stories of violent crime, abductions, school shootings, and bullying leading kids to self-harm. Violent crime is down substantially in the U.S. Schools have introduced comprehensive anti-bullying programs. Abductions are terrifying but extremely rare. But social and news media make all these things seem ever-present.
A parent’s anxiety about their child extends into after-school hours if they go out to play and are going to be out of sight.
Technology has come to the rescue to ease parent worries. Phones keep them in contact with their kids, and tracking devices tell them exactly where their child is at any moment. There are devices that allow parents to listen in on their children’s conversations.
“Today’s parents are demanding panic buttons, fall detection, and apps that automatically unlock the door for their kids, or turn on the lights,” Skenazy writes.
All this hovering ingrains parents’ worries deeper and stunting a child’s growth, she says. The solution to easing parent anxiety is a return to trust. “Trust is a muscle. It has to be exercised to get strong.”
As young children playing with the neighbor kids, we learn independence and develop social skills and confidence in dealing with others who we are getting to know.
Let children go to school without constant check-ins, messages, or heart-shaped emogis. Let them play outside with friends without constant surveillance. Detachment nurtures the growth of trust between a parent and a child. Freedom is essential to a child’s developing maturity, responsibility, and self-reliance.
Reliance on tech devices weakens a parent’s “trust muscle,” Skenazy writes. “Instead, we keep seeking—and getting—addictive hits of reassurance that our kids are fine, they’re safe, they’re where they should be, and they’re feeling our love. Only constant connection soothes us. I consider that arrested development…of us.”
Parents can fool themselves into thinking they are building trust between the child, their community, and themselves by saying they are letting their child run around free of monitoring, but that watch on their wrist or their phone undermines it.
Skenazy relates a story about a child playing in the neighborhood whose bike chain fell off. With a quick message, her father located her and fixed the chain.
The child didn’t gain the experience of fixing the chain herself or the resolve to walk the bike home. She didn’t get to develop the sense of pride and self-sufficiency that comes with facing and solving a challenge. The parent missed the opportunity to congratulate the child on her accomplishment.
Our small towns are ideal for both children and parents to develop their trust muscles. Life is quieter and not scattered over a large geographic area. Children can ride bikes around town or go for a walk. They can go to the swimming pool or beach. They can go to the park and hang out.