Why Smartphones Could Isolate Families From One Another
By Movieguide® Contributor
OnePoll conducted a survey that took 2,000 parents who have children in school, and the survey showed that the average child will get their first smartphone by the age of 10.
Six out of 10 adults stated that they text their children when dinner is ready…even when they’re in the same house.
A few of the reasons parents gave for allowing their children to have smartphones was for emergency purposes (55%), to help children gain tech skills (47%), children showed the maturity to have one (46%) and parents believed that tech would be beneficial for their child’s social skills (62%).
However, according to an NPR survey, “more than three in five Americans are lonely, with more and more people reporting feeling like they are left out, poorly understood and lacking companionship.”
“Social media use was tied to loneliness as well, with 73% of very heavy social media users considered lonely, as compared with 52% of light users,” NPR reported.
“But feelings of isolation were prevalent across generations. Gen Z – people who were 18 to 22 years old when surveyed – had the highest average loneliness,” the survey added.
In addition, smartphones have added a level of danger for children. Approximately 73% of children were exposed to pornography by the age of twelve.
Movieguide® recently reported on why parents have said ‘no’ to smartphones for their teen:
“Jhett Rogers is the only holdout in his 30-strong group of friends without an iPhone. He says kids in the hallways now bump into each other, with everyone staring down at their phones,” according to the Free Press.
“At lunch hour, he says, everyone eats alone, scrolling TikTok while they chew. Every time one of his classmates gets a smartphone, Jhett Rogers thinks to himself: There goes another one. ‘It kind of feels like I’ve lost a friend. Whenever I’m with them, they’re zoned out and always on their phone,’” The Free Press continued.
Jhett even commented on the desire that he still wants to join the smart phone club.
“It kind of made me feel left out and jealous,” Jhett said. “But later I don’t want one because I know what happens.”
The Free Press added, “At 13, Jhett is part of a small, but growing, minority group of holdouts. By age 12, seven out of ten American kids own a smartphone. They also spend about eight hours online a day, inhaling TikTok trends, toggling between texts, and turning their daily lives into Snapchat and Instagram content. But a growing body of research shows that smartphones are at least partly to blame for skyrocketing rates of teenage anxiety and depression, and parents, like Jhett’s are waking up to the risk of having the entire internet at their teenager’s fingertips.”
- Content: +4Share:
- Content: +1