What Smartphones are doing to kids' mental health is NOT terrifying (no matter what a child psychiatrist says)

The Guardian has done another shoddy article about why smartphones are definitely bad. But what's really 'terrifying' is how many apparent experts are so keen to join in with them.

Boo! I guess? (Photo by Matheus Lara)

Another day, another Guardian article that seemingly exists purely to convince parents that giving kids their own smartphone is basically the same as letting them brush their teeth with enriched uranium.

This latest effort is titled “As a child psychiatrist, I see what smartphones are doing to kids’ mental health – and it’s terrifying”, written by Emily Sehmer. Who is, by process of deduction, a child psychiatrist.

The casual reader would be forgiven for assuming that, once again, the argument against phones is irrefutable. After all, if an actual qualified child psychiatrist is raising the alarm, surely that’s pretty conclusive?

As ever, no, it’s not conclusive. And even if we assume that the author has 100% good intentions in writing it, the piece is riddled with rhetorical tricks that a less generous analysis could describe as ‘deeply cynical’, which coax the lay reader into arriving at conclusions that they shouldn’t. Not according to the evidence, anyway.

So, let’s look at some¹

Appeal to authority?

You know it’s not a great sign when the very title irks you greatly. But this is a bugbear of mine: articles/posts/videos that start with “I’m an [Insert relevant professional], here is [some guff]”. Whether it’s “I’m a neuroscientist…”, “I’m a biologist…”, “I’m a psychologist…”, “I’m a spot-welder for mid-sized cargo ships…”, I’ve seen it waaaaay too often lately, and it never fails to irk.

Starting a supposedly informative, insightful item with “I’m a [Qualified expert]!” makes me think of how modern impressionists often begin a skit by saying “Hello, I’m [Person I’m doing an impression of]”. Because apparently the average reader/viewer can no longer be trusted to figure things out themselves, they need to be both hand-held and spoon fed the basics².

The way it’s presented here, though, is clearly meant to convey some form of ultimate authority. It’s as if criticisms and counter-arguments are being rebutted in advance. “You don’t agree? Are you a child psychiatrist? No? Well then, your input is inferior”.

I’m sure many who read it would accept that premise. Maybe they’d even argue, who am I, the author of this rebuttal piece, to presume to contradict a qualified psychiatrist?

The answer is, if you’re so insistent, that I’m a doctor of neuroscience who spent almost a decade teaching qualified medical doctors how to be psychiatrists. So, if on-paper qualifications are a dealbreaker, I like to think I can still continue this critique.

Questionable claims, absent of evidence.

OK, so here are a few things in the article that ‘jumped out’.

Smartphone use among children has reached a critical moment. Many of us in the UK are increasingly aware of the dangers associated with them – and as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I am more worried than most.

Why is it a ‘critical’ moment? What’s about to happen? Why make such an alarming claim and base it on apparently nothing?

And if you are going to tout your expertise and qualifications as a reason people should listen to your conclusions, immediately linking to a Simon Jenkins opinion piece about a sensationalised Channel 4 documentary as support for your claims is not a move that screams ‘academic rigour’ to me.

But then, I’ve already ripped the p**s out of that article in this very Substack. And this is only my fourth post!

The majority of children over 10 I see at my NHS clinic now have a smartphone.

I mean, yes, in a population where the majority of children aged 10-11 own a smartphone, then if a chunk of that population ends up requiring mental healthcare, then the majority of that chunk will also own a smartphone.

It does not logically follow that the smartphones are the cause of the mental health issues. I’d wager that a similar or even greater proportion of that population turns up at the clinic wearing a coat. But where are the fire-and-brimstone thinkpieces about the harm coats do to our children?

You may think I’m being facetious. And yes, I am a bit. But the same logic applies.

An increasingly large proportion of patients have difficulties that are related to, or exacerbated by, their use of technology.

What does ‘related to’ mean here? Yes, problematic smartphone use is often linked to familiar mental health issues, but that could just as easily mean the smartphone use is due to the mental health problem, not the cause.

And that’s not necessarily bad. It could easily be a form of self-regulation, or similar. After all, if you’re too anxious or depressed to leave the house, then a smartphone offers you a lifeline to friends and peers and support that remains accessible. So, you’ll use it more.

As for ‘exacerbated’, well this also depends on the specifics. E.g. someone with depression invariably has a strong negativity bias; they pay more attention to emotionally negative things. And if you’ve a smartphone, you’ll have more access to negative ‘content’, and constantly viewing it could maintain your depression state.

Is that the phone’s fault? Arguably. But then this has been happening since long before the invention of the smartphone, and it’s hard to imagine it’ll suddenly go away if they were banned overnight.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to explore this if any references for these claims were provided.

Or for any of the ones in this passage.

Children’s self-esteem and self-image is also at an all-time low, and levels of depression and suicidal thoughts have never been higher. It is no secret among mental health professionals that there is a direct link³ between smartphone use and real-world harms.

Or this one.

As adults, we see how our attention span has been affected in the years since our lives have gone online. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone watch a film without scrolling through their phone or checking their messages. Our brains are changing – and children are not immune to this.

Or this one.

At the same time, our young people are increasingly isolated and insular. The average time that teens spend with friends each day has plummeted by 65% since 2010.

Or this one.

This needs to be a watershed moment. As an advocate for children’s mental health, it is clear to me that we are forcing children to grow up long before they are ready.

It goes on like this.

For what it’s worth, I’m sure you could find studies that do indeed support the claims being made.

And if your gave me five minutes, I could find just as many, if not more, that said the exact opposite.

That’s the issue with such a nebulous, complex, variable area like “the effect of smartphones on children”: it’s quite easy to construct a choose-your-own-adventure style argument from the reams of available data, so you can go with what you ‘feel’ is true. And people keep doing exactly that. And lo, here we are.

Personally, I feel that heavily-emotive evidence-free claims should work against your argument when you’re literally arguing for significant government intervention into children’s lives. Granted I appear to be in the minority on that, but it’s a hill I’m absolutely willing to die on.

Image by Tima Miroshnichenko

Brain misinformation

There are also many things in the article that cause me (a qualified neuroscientist, remember) to narrow my eyes even further, to the backing soundtrack of grinding teeth.

Stuff like this.

The average UK 12-year-old now spends 29 hours a week – equivalent to a part-time job – on their smartphone. To have access to the amount of information they do at such a young age is having a profound impact on their neurological development.

29 hours a week sounds like a lot (and actually is, admittedly), but ‘on a screen’ doesn’t mean anything, in the practical sense.

How much of that is doing actual work in/for school? Or watching something informative, or as part of a group or family? The fact that you can wrack up 20 minutes of ‘screen time’ wandering down the typical high street these days, does that count? Is that bad? If so, why are adults plastering screens everywhere a child may look? Is that not negligent??!?

The fact is, so much of modern life, and childhood, occurs online now. So “time spent looking at a screen” is not the same as “time spent not doing childhood things”. That’s a very old-fashioned, outdated worldview.

Also, it’s ironic how having ‘access to information’ is somehow inherently bad when it’s supplied via a phone or screen. One assumes that if a child were to consume the same amount of ‘information’ via books, they’d be praised for it, not condemned.

True, it’s the type of information that really matters. But I’m not the one making broad sweeping generalisations here. I’m just operating within the parameters of the original claims.

in the past we might have received a handful of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) referrals each week, we are now inundated.

I’m sorry, but poor form! The mechanisms and factors behind the ‘increase’ in ADHD are many and complex, but we’re as sure as we can be that smartphone use is not the cause of it. Increased awareness, better diagnosis, greater access to healthcare for an ever expanding population, these are all much more plausible mechanisms for the ‘surge’ in ADHD cases.

Pointing at phones and saying “It must be them!”? I, personally, feel this is a deeply underhanded move for someone touting their qualifications and concerns as a trained professional. Those with ADHD struggle enough as it is, without being thrown under the bus in the name of spurious grandstanding against the latest tech bogeyman.

In my own family, I hope I’ll be able to keep my children away from smartphones and social media until they are at least 16. Our brains continue to develop up until the age of about 25, and prior to that our ability to think rationally, make decisions based on fact rather than emotion, plan, problem-solve and exhibit self-control is limited.

The ‘frontal lobe theory’ of brain development is definitely having a moment in the mainstream right now. Doesn’t mean it’s true, though.

More often than not, it seems to be deployed as a way of denying responsibility and autonomy to anyone below the age of 25. Not that it’s deployed with any consistent logic or reason, though.

Why would being under 25 mean you’re denied access to medication or independent medical choices, but allowed to become a top-flight footballer earning millions? Either your brain isn’t formed enough to make independent choices, or it is. You can’t pick and choose based on “which is the most economically or politically convenient”.

Well, obviously you can do that, as it happens all the sodding time. But you shouldn’t.

Aaaaaand… there it is

And right at the end, we have this.

As a society, we urgently need to reckon with this problem. Campaigns such as Smartphone Free Childhood are gaining momentum in encouraging parents to take decisions en masse for their children’s wellbeing. But the state must now also intervene.

Seems the author is a fan of Smartphone Free Childhood, the organisation with Jonathan Haidt as it’s figurehead, undisputed king of ‘telling paranoid parents what they want to hear’ when it comes to smartphones.

Is she actively involved with the campaign? It’s hard to tell. But this isn’t exactly an objective way to sign off an article, one that’s been 92% unfounded hyperbolic alarmism and 8% questionable references thus far.

I feel the main takeaway from this whole thing, though, will be that a child psychiatrist is saying it, so it must be right, yeah?

Well, no. Because even if the author is being 100% genuine and accurate about everything written in the article, she won’t have an objective view on this matter.

I’ve written, and there are many studies published, about the benefits of smartphones for mental health, and how they can help wellbeing and development in children. But do you know where children who are helped by their phones never end up?

In the psychiatry clinic!

Just like how insurance investigators can end up thinking everyone is a scheming fraudster, if you’re a child psychiatrist, you’re going to have one hell of a selection bias when observing the interplay between phones and mental health in children.

It’s understandable that you might arrive at some skewed viewpoints, ones that deviate somewhat from what the actual data tells us. Not the ideal outcome on a purely professional level. But you can probably sell it to a major publication quite easily.

I mean, you shouldn’t do that. But when has that ever stopped anyone these days?

Further articles tackling matters such as this can be found here, here, and here

I cover this whole area in my latest kids book (which is actually suitable for everyone) Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It

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1. It’s entirely possible I miss some points, as there are many and it’s a long piece. But please do leave a comment if you spot anything I’ve not flagged up.

2. Many would argue that this assumption is actually correct. My stance is, it’s self-fulfilling. Ergo, I don’t like it.

3. Actual researchers who have actually looked into this using methods more sophisticated than “Observing those who wander into my clinic” have been looking into the actual global data on this matter for decades now, and have found no sign of any such link. If mental health professionals can prove it exists, then it seems they are keeping it a secret, for some reason.