Ep 6: Are Smartphones Stealing Childhood?

Raising Parents with Emily Oster

In today’s world, many parents feel like we need our kids to have phones. We tell ourselves it’s for their safety—they may need it while walking to a friend’s house or when going on a school field trip. And then there’s the fact that for many parents, the idea of not giving your kid a phone—when everyone else has one—just doesn’t even seem like a possibility. By age 10, 42 percent of kids in the U.S. have a phone. By age 12, it’s 71 percent, and by age 14, it’s 91 percent. The pressure to conform is just too great. And the reality is that phones keep kids entertained, which gives parents a break—to cook dinner, to do the laundry, or. . . to scroll through Instagram on their own phones.

The problem is that most parents have no idea what the effect of all of this phone time—46 percent of teens say they use their phones “almost constantly”—is. What are phones doing to our kids, their development, their physical health, their mental health, their social lives? Is the panic around cell phones like the panic that once met the invention of the radio or TV? Is it a kind of hysteria? Or are phones fundamentally transforming the essence of what it means to be a kid? Are phones. . . stealing childhood? If so, what should we do about it? Should we leave phone regulations in the hands of schools, or should parents take the initiative to drive the change? Is there even a middle ground, or have we passed the point of no return?

Resources from this episode:

• Jonathan Haidt The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Bookshop)
• Ben Halpert Savvy Cyber Kids (Amazon)
• Johann Hari Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (Bookshop)
• Delay Smartphones