That’s a tough question. We don’t really have any studies on the effects of mobile devices by children that I found (in a quick Google Scholar search) - though my inability to find any doesn’t in any way suggest that there aren’t any.
I think there are two factors to address, primarily; the difference between use and abuse, and the difference between the use of a mobile device in and of itself and the use of social media via that device.
What advantages of smart phone for people?
Teens and children are prone to abuse privileges; they overuse their devices in ways that harm them. Whether it’s staying up too late playing on their phone, ignoring class in favor of using their phone, or something similar, abuse has clear and obvious consequences (as well as less clear long-term consequences as well). I won’t address abuse here, since it’s the same as abusing books or any other interest; an excessive focus on anything detracts from the ability to focus on others, which impairs the healthy development of our youth.
The other concern is access to social media. Young people will have access to social media without mobile devices, but statistics show that teens primarily access social media through mobile devices, making it a reasonable conclusion that the effects of social media exposure, such as cyber-bullying, can be mitigated by removing that access. Again, I won’t address cyber-bullying, sexting, and other social issues here as they would exist even if mobile devices all magically disappeared, other than to say they are obvious problems we as both a culture and a government are still struggling to deal with.
I think the broad conclusion is simply that we don’t know. Social media is something that our culture and society are still adjusting to. Social media itself is still in flux - think of the difference between the social media landscape between 2008 and 2018, in which MySpace still dominated and Facebook was just starting to gain ground, and Twitter was a new creation with Instagram still two years away.
It takes quite some time for society to catch up and figure out how to handle things like this. Look at television; it took a number of generations before parents reached a level of comfort with handling how children could interact with the TV, and that was a much simpler and non-portable device.
My guess? In a century or two, we’ll laugh at the quaint concerns of cellphones while simultaneously struggling with VR addiction.
Other concern of the disadvantages of a cell phone for a young generation will be
What advantages of smart phone for people?
Teens and children are prone to abuse privileges; they overuse their devices in ways that harm them. Whether it’s staying up too late playing on their phone, ignoring class in favor of using their phone, or something similar, abuse has clear and obvious consequences (as well as less clear long-term consequences as well). I won’t address abuse here, since it’s the same as abusing books or any other interest; an excessive focus on anything detracts from the ability to focus on others, which impairs the healthy development of our youth.
The other concern is access to social media. Young people will have access to social media without mobile devices, but statistics show that teens primarily access social media through mobile devices, making it a reasonable conclusion that the effects of social media exposure, such as cyber-bullying, can be mitigated by removing that access. Again, I won’t address cyber-bullying, sexting, and other social issues here as they would exist even if mobile devices all magically disappeared, other than to say they are obvious problems we as both a culture and a government are still struggling to deal with.
I think the broad conclusion is simply that we don’t know. Social media is something that our culture and society are still adjusting to. Social media itself is still in flux - think of the difference between the social media landscape between 2008 and 2018, in which MySpace still dominated and Facebook was just starting to gain ground, and Twitter was a new creation with Instagram still two years away.
It takes quite some time for society to catch up and figure out how to handle things like this. Look at television; it took a number of generations before parents reached a level of comfort with handling how children could interact with the TV, and that was a much simpler and non-portable device.
My guess? In a century or two, we’ll laugh at the quaint concerns of cellphones while simultaneously struggling with VR addiction.
Other concern of the disadvantages of a cell phone for a young generation will be
- They will be spending less time with their parents. siblings, friends, and relatives.
- They will give more priority to the virtual media.
- They will be less active in outdoor activities like sports, hiking, travelling, arts etc
- Somehow they will don't know the true purpose of life if they spend their whole time on cell phone using different social media
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