The challenges of tackling too much screen time

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr supports banning students’ cellphone use in schools. The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services chairs the commission behind a recently released a report on "Making Our Children Healthy Again," which addresses, among other things, the negative mental health effects of too much screen time.

The report cites Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who attributes the recent rise in adolescent mental health issues to increased smartphone use and an accompanying decrease in in-person interactions. In his opinion, expressed in his 2024 book “The Anxious Generation,” widespread adoption of smartphones by teens has led to a surge in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and loneliness, as well as less physical activity.

There’s empirical support for the observation that young people are increasingly tethered to digital devices. By the age of 15, almost all American children have a cellphone. Social media use is highly prevalent among teenagers too; up to 95 percent of people aged 13 to 17 said they use a social media platform, and 46 percent said they use the internet “almost constantly,” according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.

Haidt’s views on the harms owing to excessive smartphone use are shared by some other experts. Studies, for example, suggest that children who spend more time on social media or on their phones may have a harder time concentrating, have more depressive thoughts, and are more impulsive. In an email to Undark, Valerio Capraro, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Milan-Bicocca, suggests there’s a consensus among researchers about certain physiological and psychological harms that can be attributed to heavy smartphone and social media use, specifically related to problems with sleep, attention, and behavioral addiction. And some risks are more pronounced in girls, such as body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, and exposure to mental disorders.

Critics of Haidt’s take suggest that the evidence is mixed regarding whether increasing levels of teen mental health problems can be attributed to screen time per se. In fact, they argue that what Haidt shows are correlations and not causes. They believe he’s oversimplifying a complex problem.

Nevertheless, some state governments appear to side with Haidt on this issue. In response to what some governors and legislators see as a major problem, roughly half of U.S. states have imposed some kind of ban on smartphone use in the classroom. Kennedy has applauded states with restrictions, pointing to the research that indicates cellphones have a negative effect on students’ mental health. (The HHS secretary has also suggested that cellphone radiation can increase the risk of cancer, a concern that is not backed by evidence.)

Internationally, according to The BMJ, France, Turkey, Norway, Sweden, and parts of Canada “have introduced laws, policies, or guidance for schools to ban or heavily restrict the use of phones in schools.” And in Australia, a ban on social media for children under the age of 16 was approved at the end of last year. It became the first country in the world to impose such a restriction.

In the Netherlands, classroom bans on cellphones, smart watches, and tablets were introduced last year in primary and secondary schools. The Dutch government called them a "distraction" that negatively impacts academic performance and social interaction. In March of this year, a majority in the Dutch House of Representatives voted in favor of guidance to limit the use of social media to those 15 and above. And last month a large group of doctors, scientists, and other experts wrote a letter to the government in which they argued there were demonstrable physical and mental health effects related to intensive smartphone and social media use among children. The group supported setting strict age rules that would require young people to be 14 years-old to own a smartphone and 16 years-old to access social media.

But are such blanket bans feasible? Or even effective?

Implementing bans in schools may be easier said than done. Capraro described three sets of challenges in particular: Legally, in the U.S., a “ban could be deemed unconstitutional if it violates First Amendment rights by restricting access to information, or if it infringes on parental rights to decide how their children are raised.” Indeed, a federal court in Florida halted a Gov. Ron DeSantis-backed youth social media ban this month, citing free speech. Ethically, there may be privacy risks if verification systems rely on identifiable information. And such bans could unintentionally drive children toward online spaces that are less regulated, and more dangerous. And practically, the questions become how to implement effective age verification, how to identify which platforms to include, and how to enforce any regulation.

Meanwhile, as Miranda Pallan, a children’s public health researcher at the University of Birmingham, pointed out, social media use has become enmeshed in adult society and “the same goes for adolescents, with schools often using apps and social media for communications around homework, event publicity etc.,” she wrote in an email to Undark. This makes it “far more challenging to implement an age limit for social media than smoking (or vaping).” She considers the recently introduced Australian legislation to be a test case that could provide researchers with real-world evidence on the feasibility and effectiveness of limiting social media use for young people.

But thus far, evidence regarding locally instituted policies such as age restrictions and school bans isn’t conclusive. Pallan cites published work from her group that found no significant differences when comparing students’ mental health and school performance across 20 schools with restrictive smartphone policies to 10 schools with permissive policies. She acknowledges that her group’s research has found “clear and consistent association between the time spent on phones and social media” and worse outcomes. But, she said, their “findings suggest that in their current form, school policies banning recreational smartphone use do not have an impact on the outcomes we studied.” Broadly, among experts, there’s agreement that the “available evidence is too limited and inconsistent to draw conclusions about the claim that phone-free schools would benefit the mental health of adolescents overall,” as Capraro and a long list of co-authors noted in a recent pre-print consensus statement. Perhaps this reflects in part the reality that new technologies play an indispensable role in people’s lives. As such, they can have both negative and positive influences. Consider, for example, that eating disorders may be exacerbated in younger demographics by certain social media platforms, while at the same time social media can serve as a tool for support and intervention. Meanwhile, children use their smartphones to interact with others on social media — which has been found to have both negative and positive effects.

As Kennedy and others advocate for bans, it’s worth noting that merely imposing age limits for social media (or smartphones, for that matter) aren’t guaranteed to work. In an email to Undark, Pallan wrote that a “multi-faceted approach that addresses child and adolescent phone and social media use across all contexts (school, home, and the wider environment) is required.”

Citing a recent article she and colleagues published in The BMJ, Pallan said that we need to “ensure that the rapidly evolving social media and wider digital environment is designed to both safeguard children and also support their education and development. This can potentially be achieved by enforcing tech companies to design age appropriate, child-rights respecting social media content.”

This implies making online spaces safer for young people, which in turn could mean more content moderation that may be achievable by preventing platforms from allowing minors to access age-inappropriate websites, not permitting the collection of sensitive data from children, and restricting the use of features like push notifications or messages sent from a server to a user's device without the user explicitly requesting them.

Capraro reinforces the message of safe use when he offered what he called a “more nuanced alternative,” in which “younger children are gradually introduced to smartphones in a structured, parent-mediated way.” This would entail parents setting boundaries, guiding their children’s usage, and helping them develop healthier digital habits.

Whether any states or the MAHA Commission will recommend such a nuanced approach — and whether any states would implement one — is a different question.