Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#241

Post by cpsempek » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

cauch wrote: post #154

lukeasrodgers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From folks making the correlation vs causation argument here, I would like to hear their rebuttal to the points the author already laid out in this article https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill... , especially the section on quasi experiments. Do we just think that because it is probably impossible to conduct pure double-blind RCTs in human populations, it is therefore impossible to reasonably…

My rebuttal would be: it is not impossible to attribute causality, and THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Right now, there are two identically possible situations (well, even more, but you get the jest): A) smartphone -> depression B) depression -> smartphone But the author does not do a good job in explaining why he choose A instead of B, except "it feels logical to me". It feels like a coin toss. (and sure, the author has some a…

I commented this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating because actually reading the author's arguments (granted, in other writings, not OP) will allow you to see he's considered this point and is will to accept that causation works the other way around.

It's a fair point. But what explains the uptick in depression and mental health issues starting around 2012, disproportionately impacting pre-teen girls and not contained to any geo. The author's entire point is that social media is the only explanation that that has been proposed [1]. Moreover, it's not a far-fetched explanation. He very aware that correlation does not provide causation, and that it could be the other way around. However, no one (according to him) has offered up a theory which explains the data like the social media theory does.

[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#242

Post by tayo42 » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

nvrmnd wrote: post #177

adastra22 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids don’t have phones. They are the only ones among their peers who don’t have a phone. I told them they can get one when they write an app and get it listed on the App Store, not before. Most people I tell this to are impressed. The only time I got crucified was the last time I mentioned it on HN. This seems to be a particular bone to pick that HN users have.

My oldest got a phone this year, the real issue is that we need to communicate with her when she goes to a friend's place, soccer practice, and so on. Primarily for safety reasons. I imagine for most people their children will reach an age where they are more autonomous and require a phone for safety well before the kiddos are writing iOS applications.

they still make regular cell phones, flip phones where the internet is hard to use

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#243

Post by philsnow » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

nvrmnd wrote: post #177

adastra22 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids don’t have phones. They are the only ones among their peers who don’t have a phone. I told them they can get one when they write an app and get it listed on the App Store, not before. Most people I tell this to are impressed. The only time I got crucified was the last time I mentioned it on HN. This seems to be a particular bone to pick that HN users have.

My oldest got a phone this year, the real issue is that we need to communicate with her when she goes to a friend's place, soccer practice, and so on. Primarily for safety reasons. I imagine for most people their children will reach an age where they are more autonomous and require a phone for safety well before the kiddos are writing iOS applications.

I got my older kids apple watches set up in family/parent/whatever mode for this. They have cell modems (requirement for family setup, they're $5/mo each on my t-mobile plan), can send and receive texts, can send and receive phone calls.

If you don't want to use apple watches because of their ridiculously poor battery life (fair criticism; I have trouble remembering to charge mine regularly, so getting the kids to do so regularly isn't easy), you can find used/old iphones lying around for pretty cheap, and Apple Configurator lets you put a pretty tight policy on them. You can set it up so that the profile can’t be removed without a password. I think you can even set it up so it has wifi credentials preloaded and so that the user can’t add other wifi networks, and that you can preload contacts and prevent the user from calling/texting numbers that aren’t in the contacts (I don't think you can prevent them from answering calls / receiving texts from numbers not in their contacts, though).

I have an old iphone with such a profile that only has the Phone app, Messages app, and FaceTime. It doesn’t have the app store and as far as I know there’s no way to install or sideload apps.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#244

Post by itronitron » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #140

naravara wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything parents are as bad or worse than the kids now. I'm about 40 and am constantly having to remind my own parents to put the phone away and be more present with their grandkids when they come to visit.

Went to a high school graduation this weekend. Because we were running behind, we were in the top of the seats, right in the middle. It was nice because we could see absolutely everything, and I did notice a trend - In the crowd, the 50+ year olds were the ones getting their phones out to dick around during the ceremony. Youth would get the phone out to take pictures, post quickly on socials, then put the phone away.…

My children are around that age, which means I recall going to young children's birthday parties at the age (5 to 8) where about half the parents would stick around for the whole party, but they would all be scrolling through their smartphones. This was probably around 2010.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#245

Post by micromacrofoot » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #122

jacquesm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphone = pushy social media in your pocket 24x7. In practice I suspect that amongst highschoolers the ratio of time spent between wikipedia and social media (and gaming as well) heavily favors the latter.

Like I said: > It's possible to set up a child's smartphone in such a way that their access to social media is limited if not totally removed. The problem is parents who don't care enough to get actively involved in their child's lives to this extent.

It's not though, completely removing social media from children is also a problem because it's become nearly impossible to socialize without it... kids almost universally have social media access, so to tell yours that they can't have it ostracizes them in a lot of ways. I'm worried that completely limiting access to it is worse.

I can relate to this with my own kids because I grew up with a kid who wasn't allowed to watch TV, his family didn't have one in the house. I saw this kid on my school bus daily, but I don't even remember his name because my friends and I were always talking about TV and video games and weren't emotionally competent enough to know how/why to include him. I'll forever remember him as "the kid without a TV."

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#246

Post by treeman79 » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

alexb_ wrote: post #45

There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread, most of which is just "correlation is not causation". Yes, correlation does not equal causation. But when it makes logical sense why there would be correlation, there is no way to actually measure causation (we can't exactly give kids placebo phones), we keep seeing the same correlation over and over again, why is it b…

Raised a teenage daughter to adulthood, have another teenage daughter another upcoming.

Social media was an absolute nightmare for my oldest nightmare.

Every single time she had access, she got moody, rude and withdrawn. We will take it away for a month or more and she would quickly revert back to her happy easy-going self.

Within a week or so I’m getting access back should revert to miserable all the time.

Every single time she completely denies that it has any affect on her and that we were being stupid.

Went on for years. At about 23 she started telling us that she thinks the phone is making her depressed. So on her own she deleted most social and mostly stays off the rest. She’s doing dramatically better now.

With her younger sister hit 13 and got a phone, started complaining to her that she’s not allowed to have any social media. Our oldest told her to stay off social media. That it was a bad idea.

So middle child is often pissed at us about that. But is doing very well in life.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#247

Post by mordae » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #219

rcme wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, social media does. This is like the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Sure, smartphones are just a tool. But they're a tool used to access social media. Also, I'd argue it's not just social media causing this issue. AI filters that make you look more "beautiful" are commonplace now. Children see themselves through these filter and it may impact their self-esteem, e.g. "why do I look beautif…

I would actually be completely in favor on a ban on smartphone usage until about 16 years of age; which is also the age of consent in the majority of US states. Kids under 16 can possess a flip phone. It would be better for their mental health, encourage a longer childhood, reduce all kinds of social pressure, prevent TikTok-style inappropriate content serving [1] and pedophiles grooming, etc. The world is not going…

Why? Just ban the social media use below that age. And then enforce it by fining parents.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#248

Post by dhbradshaw » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #175

adastra22 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids don’t have phones. They are the only ones among their peers who don’t have a phone. I told them they can get one when they write an app and get it listed on the App Store, not before. Most people I tell this to are impressed. The only time I got crucified was the last time I mentioned it on HN. This seems to be a particular bone to pick that HN users have.

How are they suppose to write an app when they have no phone? And which AppStore? Apple, Google, Sourceforge?

I wrote my first Android apps using an emulator. Then used the proceeds from selling those apps to buy my first Android device and a better computer.

(Doesn't mean that they have to, of course. Just that it's possible.)

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#249

Post by f1shy » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

c22 wrote: post #152

afavour wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smartphones give children the ability to bully eachother at a scale unlike any other. No, social media does. I think it's important to be specific about that because a smartphone is just a tool, same as a laptop or a desktop computer is (when I was a kid there was plenty of bullying that went on via AIM!) Having access to e.g. Wikipedia is of enormous benefit to young people. Having the means to easily call your pa…

My kids rock Punkt MP-02s. They pretty much just make calls and text (with t9!) but they can also be 4g hotspots if they need to connect a laptop. They still have access to social media and other garbage but it's not 24/7 and I do believe that makes a difference.

Thanks. Good piece of advice.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#250

Post by TremendousJudge » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #189

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I’m seeing a very clear division in parenting style among my peers. Some parents allow screen time with moderation and caution because they know what excessive use leads to. The other group sees nothing wrong and screens are everywhere all the time. My friend circles are exclusively in the first group, from daycare to schools to friends. So much so that at first I thought everyone was like this. Then I s…

Smartphones and social media are tools. Drugs are tools. Both can be used or abused.

By that analogy, most drugs are not suitable for children, and for the ones that are it's never good to allow a child to self-medicate. It's always an adult giving ibuprofen to a child when he has a fever, not giving the child a 100 pill bottle and telling him to go play.