There’s loads of evidence linking excessive phone and social media use with mental health issues, and taking phones away is an easy win.
I don’t have time to review all the research that has been done on the topic, but fortunately others have done a review of the existing studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9200624/ concludes “Despite the fears held around wireless technologies, we believe that at this stage there is not enough evidence supporting a causal negative relationship between MP/WD use and children and adolescent’s mental health to justify particular public health interventions.”
And this isn’t a review, but here’s one additional study:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/children-mobile-phone-age.html says “Stanford Medicine researchers did not find a connection between the age children acquired their first cell phone and their sleep patterns, depression symptoms or grades.”
So I did a quick search through the scholarly literature and the consensus is overwhelmingly the opposite of your claim. So much so that I’ve decided not to link any studies (there are literally thousands). Science isn’t perfect and statistics alone guarantee many ambiguous results, some of which you seem to have found.
It would help if you could link to at least one of the thousands. What’s one you think makes a strong case? I’m not sure if you’re referring to actual studies or, maybe, confusing blog posts and “expert” opinions with actual studies.
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There’s also lots of evidence linking bandages with bleeding. Let’s try taking away bleeding people’s bandages and see if they get better
Theme: tell me you are 16 without telling me you are 16
Mom: “Honey, try reading a book or something for once. You’re almost about to graduate from high school and you’ve literally never read a book to completion in your entire life. Actually, I’m going to say only 1 hour of cell phone time a night until you finish a book of your choosing.”
OP: *This post*
I’m 30+ and, granted, I haven’t given my daughter a cellphone, and I think well of parents who are careful about how their children use technology.
It’s a meme. It’s not super clear, but it’s memorable.
One belief I’m trying to express with this meme is that most laws created “to protect the children” are not really about protecting children. I know that’s a hot take (/s). For example, my state has recently said “to protect the children, let’s require all adults to upload their government ID before posting on any website”, and the skeptical part of me thinks that’s not really about the kids.
I think the issue here encompasses several factors: 1) you seem to be conflating the kind of moral panic driven legislation which has historically always existed with a silencing tactic aimed at dismissing youth-driven cultural criticism and 2) this meme screams low hanging fruit, appealing to the emotions of young people for whom having their phone taken away is like torture while also engaging in the, at the moment, very popular denigration of older Americans as being out of touch and dismissive of continuously worsening societal issues. Point 1 is understandable, as criticizing new things as being a corrupting influence on young people is as old as dirt, as is the propensity for the powers that be to dismiss cultural and material criticisms of the worsening state of peoples’ lives in hard times. And while they may exist as a part of a shared rhetorical and ideological ecosystem, their relationship is too complex to be purely causal, as your meme seems to be suggesting.
Pretty sure excessive phone use leads to this kind of doomerism so might not be a bad idea to force kids to touch some grass.
“Doomerism” when you live in DoomLand - Hellhole is justified. Only a total, worthless moron would think otherwise.
Even though you’re right, the attitude is unhelpful. We should try to fix things; besides I’m not sure if you guys noticed but an entire generation of 10 year olds is glued to their social media. It’s sad AF. Here are some of the results:
Even more bizarre, and brace yourselves for this stat, the average boomer is LESS likely to say that “feminism is bad“ than the average gen z’er. No joke. Almost certainly a result of social media overconsumption. Every parent I know with the exception of one allows their kids unrestricted access to the internet 24/7. Afterwards they collect mental illnesses like Pokémon. “Oppositional defiance disorder” is the funniest one, look it up.
Man seeing those graphs, all I can say is thank god for women.
10 year olds? Most people who have access are on social media all the time just like people before that were on the newspaper, radio, or book all the time.
Maybe this is something I am just failing to grasp but I don’t understand how social media is more harmful than basically every media. I can’t begin to tell you how much damage buddy cop dramas did to people’s perspectives of cops and how that created a more militant police force.
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I appreciate it.
There’s still beauty in the world and it depresses me that you can’t find any for yourself.
There’s beauty in the wings of a butterfly. Will that stop climate change, poverty, war and violence?
You know what, you’ve changed my mind. We should all kill ourselves instead.
Even more bait trash.
Whataboutism
You really think OP is trying to derail discussion of the effects of kids having phones, and not, say, trying to draw the attention to the fact that the people in charge are doing fuck all to solve much more serious problems that also cause anxiety in kids?
It’s not that deep. This “meme” was made by a kid who is salty that their own shitty decision making got their phone taken away.
And pray-tell, how did you divine this information? Are you a mind reader, by chance? Oh, no, if I’m not mistaken you’re just the sort of useful idiot that ignores the fact we’re living in a failing society.
You need this:
Non sequitur, doesn’t even relate remotely to the discussion. At least try to get basic, grade-school level education on philosophy before trying to pretend you know something.
Meanwhile in the 18th century during the reading fever: “You mean, take the kid’s books away, right?”
And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.
- Plato, 370 BC
Also greek philosophers: Farts are bits of the soul leaving the body.
Yeah, that’s pretty nutty. I’d argue what I quoted, which is basically “Reading makes your memory shit because you won’t need to exercise it” is also a pretty bad take.
Welp, banning reading is bad, therefore banning things unrelated to reading is also bad.
Any excuse to further marginalize young people and exclude them from society. Fellow old people never fail to disappoint me.
Stop playing on your phone in class, kid
Does this quality as “dank”?
No :+(
