What is the right age to give your child a smartphone? It’s a question that haunts many parents, torn between urgent pleas for their pre-teens and researchers warning of the potential harms of constant contact. But the results of a new study strengthen the arguments in favor of delaying this decision.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, found that children who had a smartphone at age 12 were more likely to suffer from depression, obesity and poor sleep than those who did not yet own one. The researchers analyzed data from more than 10,500 children who participated in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the largest long-term follow-up of children’s brain development in the United States to date.
The study found that when younger children under the age of 12 got their first smartphone, their risk of obesity and sleep problems increased. The researchers also focused on a subset of children who had not received a phone by age 12, and found that a year later, those who did had fewer unhealthy mental health symptoms and poorer sleep quality than those who did not.
“When you give your child a phone, you should think of it as something important for the child’s health — and act accordingly,” says Ran Barzilai, lead author of the study and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The new study only shows an association between getting a smartphone in early adolescence and worse health outcomes, not a cause-and-effect relationship. But the researchers point to previous studies suggesting that young people who use smartphones may spend less time socializing, exercising and sleeping, all of which are essential for well-being. They point out that adolescence is a sensitive period where even modest changes in sleep or mental health can have profound and lasting effects.
Barzilai says the goal of the study is not to shame parents who have already given devices to their children. And he’s realistic about how smartphones have become ingrained in American adolescence.
The bottom line, in his opinion, is that age matters.
“A 12-year-old is very different from a 16-year-old,” he says. “It’s not like a 42-year-old versus a 46-year-old.”