I don't know if 250 is a sample size I'm comfortable making that decision on. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to me that a greater impact on children's well-being is the training their parents...
I don't know if 250 is a sample size I'm comfortable making that decision on. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to me that a greater impact on children's well-being is the training their parents give them on the internet, their health, and self-discipline in general... not whether they have a phone. One day, they'll get it, and one day, they'll have to figure out how to prevent it from destroying their life. That'll be easy if they're taught what their relationship to technology ought to be, and difficult if they turn 18 and are told "your life, your choices."
Sample size isn't everything. It was a 5-year long cohort / longitudinal study (repeatedly testing to compare changes over time), which is a lot more complicated and expensive to organize/run....
Sample size isn't everything. It was a 5-year long cohort / longitudinal study (repeatedly testing to compare changes over time), which is a lot more complicated and expensive to organize/run. Those sort of studies are also much more of a commitment for participants, so it's harder to get massive amounts of qualified participants to agree to, then have them keep in touch and consistently follow all the procedures over that period. This particular study was also slightly more complicated than just the typical self-reporting and filling out of standardized questionnaires every so often, since it also involved strapping accelerometers to the children for a week after every check-in in order to assess their sleep onset times and sleep quality during that period.
I read the article! I'm familiar with the process, just also familiar with similarly proportioned and supposedly comprehensive studies on other subjects that have been later proven incomplete at...
I read the article!
I'm familiar with the process, just also familiar with similarly proportioned and supposedly comprehensive studies on other subjects that have been later proven incomplete at best, disproven at worst (recognizing the irony in this sentence, I use these words loosely). "Health" and particularly "mental health" involves a lot of factors that are literally impossible to control for considering they're interior.
My takeaway from most research like this is that a given factor may not influence a particular outcome "in general," but that doesn't mean it isn't still an active factor in a way the study inherently can't recognize.
You are pointing put a limitation with scientific inquiry generally. And it’s the reason no single study should be relied upon by itself to make decisions, and also the reason we perform meta...
You are pointing put a limitation with scientific inquiry generally. And it’s the reason no single study should be relied upon by itself to make decisions, and also the reason we perform meta studies.
We’ve gotten shockingly good at modeling and manipulating chaos, but we have not eliminated it by a long, ahem, unpredictably long, shot.
Middle school is the age when we couldn't hold back too. There are just too many transportation and other events that are really difficult without a phone. Where we try to draw a line, however, is...
Middle school is the age when we couldn't hold back too. There are just too many transportation and other events that are really difficult without a phone. Where we try to draw a line, however, is by strongly encouraging the kids to think twice about social media. I feel lucky that they have so far avoided falling into that black hole.
Even though I'm never going to have any children, I've always kind of wondered what I would in regards to technology and the internet if I did. Honestly I find myself just saying to ban it...
Even though I'm never going to have any children, I've always kind of wondered what I would in regards to technology and the internet if I did.
Honestly I find myself just saying to ban it entirely from their lives, but that's very obviously not wise or even ethical. You can't function as a person without the internet these days.
It's also kind of funny; I think the internet is much more dangerous for kids these days, but it's not for the same things my parent's generation was afraid of. I'm not really worried so much about the child rapists on the internet so much as the stuff that our society allows people to do with very little regulation. We have passed the time where the worst thing influencing children to do is to nag their parents to buy the toys they see advertised on TV; modern business is all about addicting children to their video games so they not only beg, but eventually get desperate enough to steal money to pay for. Anyone remember when Facebook knew that children were charging their parent's credit cards without their permission but decided to do nothing about it because of all the money it was making them?
I also worry about Cyberbullying. Kids are assholes. Things were bad enough before social media. But at the same time banning children from social media won't really solve the problem either; it just means other kids can say nasty things and spread rumors about them without them being made aware of it until someone else shows them.
The one thing I am greatful for about my childhood is that my parents were very permissive; generally speaking there was little I would be denied for as long as it didn't cost money. But the flipside of that was that I was a 'good kid' who never got into trouble, which was largely because I was always by myself. I was raised mainly by my father who had zero social skills. If I were to be a parent I'd love to give my kid the freedoms that I had but I would do anything to make sure they had a good social life as well, and the internet makes that so much more complicated than it ever was before.
So my solution is simple; talk to the child. Be a good teacher and let them know about all the bad things in the world so that they can see where the problems are and they can avoid them. And as time passes, watch them - not obsessively, just enough to see if they are taking your lessons to heart. Talk to them, listen to their troubles, and be the source of wisdom that they need you to be. In other words, just be a parent.
Of course it's not actually simple, though; it's a lot of work you'll be doing for longer than a decade.
It's worth noting that the study finished when the oldest kids were 15, and that "Nearly all children had phones by age 15 years", so there's not any real data here about what happens after that....
It's worth noting that the study finished when the oldest kids were 15, and that "Nearly all children had phones by age 15 years", so there's not any real data here about what happens after that. "Among children who owned phones, 99% had smartphones by the end of the study", so phone is synonymous with smart device here.
It does show that the significant majority get phones between ages 11-13, with a teenager being a 95th percentile outlier without one at age 14, and a greater than 99th percentile outlier at age 15. Thinking back to my own (pre-smartphone-era) teen years, and how cruelly people picked out any sign of difference, I know I would have struggled significantly to be one of that out group if I were young today - both from the difference itself painting a target on my back, and from the lack of shared social context that comes of not having access to the same media platforms as my peer group.
Ultimately it's of course you and your co-parents' place to make the call, and I have absolutely no doubt that you're looking at this though the lens of protecting your children from all of the harm and upheaval that we millennials have seen technology bring over the last two decades, but seeing a study that says giving a 12 or 13 year old a phone won't harm them seems incredibly reassuring to me. It means they don't have to go through the hardship of being the odd one out, at least not on this specific subject, because when a kid says "everyone else has one and they're doing fine" we now know that they're right on both counts!
Yes and no. These lines touch on that subject: So the smartphone itself isn't the problem. But... In other words, make sure you steer them toward healthy use of the smartphone. And yes it's hard...
Yes and no. These lines touch on that subject:
When the analyses were conducted only on smartphones (vis-a-vis any mobile phone), the results were similar.
The overall pattern of results indicates that, in general, technology ownership was not found to be linked in either positive or negative ways to children’s well-being.
So the smartphone itself isn't the problem. But...
The researchers note it may be more important to study what children are doing with their technology than simply whether they own a phone.
In other words, make sure you steer them toward healthy use of the smartphone. And yes it's hard to make a reasonable balance between responsible parenting and helicopter parenting.
Somewhat related, I found out about the Stanford Human Screenome Project through this article and I am really interested to learn what they're working on.
I don't know if 250 is a sample size I'm comfortable making that decision on. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to me that a greater impact on children's well-being is the training their parents give them on the internet, their health, and self-discipline in general... not whether they have a phone. One day, they'll get it, and one day, they'll have to figure out how to prevent it from destroying their life. That'll be easy if they're taught what their relationship to technology ought to be, and difficult if they turn 18 and are told "your life, your choices."
Sample size isn't everything. It was a 5-year long cohort / longitudinal study (repeatedly testing to compare changes over time), which is a lot more complicated and expensive to organize/run. Those sort of studies are also much more of a commitment for participants, so it's harder to get massive amounts of qualified participants to agree to, then have them keep in touch and consistently follow all the procedures over that period. This particular study was also slightly more complicated than just the typical self-reporting and filling out of standardized questionnaires every so often, since it also involved strapping accelerometers to the children for a week after every check-in in order to assess their sleep onset times and sleep quality during that period.
I read the article!
I'm familiar with the process, just also familiar with similarly proportioned and supposedly comprehensive studies on other subjects that have been later proven incomplete at best, disproven at worst (recognizing the irony in this sentence, I use these words loosely). "Health" and particularly "mental health" involves a lot of factors that are literally impossible to control for considering they're interior.
My takeaway from most research like this is that a given factor may not influence a particular outcome "in general," but that doesn't mean it isn't still an active factor in a way the study inherently can't recognize.
You are pointing put a limitation with scientific inquiry generally. And it’s the reason no single study should be relied upon by itself to make decisions, and also the reason we perform meta studies.
We’ve gotten shockingly good at modeling and manipulating chaos, but we have not eliminated it by a long, ahem, unpredictably long, shot.
Good news for me, my middle schooler is fixing to get her first phone that’s actually on the network.
Middle school is the age when we couldn't hold back too. There are just too many transportation and other events that are really difficult without a phone. Where we try to draw a line, however, is by strongly encouraging the kids to think twice about social media. I feel lucky that they have so far avoided falling into that black hole.
Even though I'm never going to have any children, I've always kind of wondered what I would in regards to technology and the internet if I did.
Honestly I find myself just saying to ban it entirely from their lives, but that's very obviously not wise or even ethical. You can't function as a person without the internet these days.
It's also kind of funny; I think the internet is much more dangerous for kids these days, but it's not for the same things my parent's generation was afraid of. I'm not really worried so much about the child rapists on the internet so much as the stuff that our society allows people to do with very little regulation. We have passed the time where the worst thing influencing children to do is to nag their parents to buy the toys they see advertised on TV; modern business is all about addicting children to their video games so they not only beg, but eventually get desperate enough to steal money to pay for. Anyone remember when Facebook knew that children were charging their parent's credit cards without their permission but decided to do nothing about it because of all the money it was making them?
I also worry about Cyberbullying. Kids are assholes. Things were bad enough before social media. But at the same time banning children from social media won't really solve the problem either; it just means other kids can say nasty things and spread rumors about them without them being made aware of it until someone else shows them.
The one thing I am greatful for about my childhood is that my parents were very permissive; generally speaking there was little I would be denied for as long as it didn't cost money. But the flipside of that was that I was a 'good kid' who never got into trouble, which was largely because I was always by myself. I was raised mainly by my father who had zero social skills. If I were to be a parent I'd love to give my kid the freedoms that I had but I would do anything to make sure they had a good social life as well, and the internet makes that so much more complicated than it ever was before.
So my solution is simple; talk to the child. Be a good teacher and let them know about all the bad things in the world so that they can see where the problems are and they can avoid them. And as time passes, watch them - not obsessively, just enough to see if they are taking your lessons to heart. Talk to them, listen to their troubles, and be the source of wisdom that they need you to be. In other words, just be a parent.
Of course it's not actually simple, though; it's a lot of work you'll be doing for longer than a decade.
It's worth noting that the study finished when the oldest kids were 15, and that "Nearly all children had phones by age 15 years", so there's not any real data here about what happens after that. "Among children who owned phones, 99% had smartphones by the end of the study", so phone is synonymous with smart device here.
It does show that the significant majority get phones between ages 11-13, with a teenager being a 95th percentile outlier without one at age 14, and a greater than 99th percentile outlier at age 15. Thinking back to my own (pre-smartphone-era) teen years, and how cruelly people picked out any sign of difference, I know I would have struggled significantly to be one of that out group if I were young today - both from the difference itself painting a target on my back, and from the lack of shared social context that comes of not having access to the same media platforms as my peer group.
Ultimately it's of course you and your co-parents' place to make the call, and I have absolutely no doubt that you're looking at this though the lens of protecting your children from all of the harm and upheaval that we millennials have seen technology bring over the last two decades, but seeing a study that says giving a 12 or 13 year old a phone won't harm them seems incredibly reassuring to me. It means they don't have to go through the hardship of being the odd one out, at least not on this specific subject, because when a kid says "everyone else has one and they're doing fine" we now know that they're right on both counts!
Yes and no. These lines touch on that subject:
So the smartphone itself isn't the problem. But...
In other words, make sure you steer them toward healthy use of the smartphone. And yes it's hard to make a reasonable balance between responsible parenting and helicopter parenting.
Somewhat related, I found out about the Stanford Human Screenome Project through this article and I am really interested to learn what they're working on.