A Stolen Childhood – Smartphone Free Childhood

Dangers of Smartphones and Social Media

In this film experts including Dr. Susie Davies from Papaya Parents examine the dangers of Smartphones and Social Media. We consider how unlimited access to the internet and social media can affect children, how these apps can impact children’s mental health and what teachers, schools and professionals can do to support the children in their care.

Smartphones and social media can present many challenges for teachers and other professionals caring for children. 9 in 10 children have a smartphone by the age of 11. Research shows that the messages they receive during these formative years can shape the way they view and experience the world around them. Sometimes this can negatively impact children’s mental health but it can be hard to know what to do to support their wellbeing.

Transcript of  “Stolen Childhood: Dangers of Smartphones and Social Media“

Tech companies have rewired and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.

It’s causing an epidemic of mental illness in young children

It’s just a lot of pressure on us

Everyone has to look a certain way

Just one small thing, it affects you so much

Someone will just be like, ‘Why does your hair look like that?’

I see random accounts posting grim stuff

I’ve seen videos of people getting shot.

I’ve been sent inappropriate pictures of male genitals since year eight, I think.

Smartphones give the internet unlimited access to your child.

The danger of smartphones in young adolescents is that, really, it gives the internet unlimited access to your child. Children can search up almost anything online, they can access online gaming with access to strangers.

You also have to think about the social media apps, which are now really being shown to impact the well-being and mental health of young children, as well as being really, really addictive.

I’ve had a smartphone since I was nine.

I had Snapchat straight away, I started using it just to talk to friends, keep up with friends.

These apps are designed to be addictive.

Snapchat, for me, is the single worst challenge that we have to deal with at school. Children have reported to me that on a weekday, it’s hundreds of snaps, but at weekends, it can be thousands that keep their phone clicking, vibrating.

Some children feel that they should be checking all of this they don’t want to miss out and we all know that these apps are designed to be addictive, and that is exactly what they are.

You can see something that might scare you or might not be appropriate for your age for your age group

yeah, and it could scar you for the rest of your life

Boys as young as 13 have been targeted for sextortion scams.

My son’s friends have been duped into giving explicit photos, and those explicit photos have been given to the whole school or the whole year.

Young people are being bombarded by often some really horrible messages day and night, and it’s affecting their wellbeing.

According to one study, 24% of people who are bullied online will self-harm as a result.

The children’s understanding of what they’ve said, they just don’t have that comprehension that you’ve said it on WhatsApp or you said something on Snapchat, and that’s it.

It’s there. Someone’s screenshot it.

It’s there forever.

I constantly say to children, ‘How would you feel if the person who you’ve made those comments about were sat in their bedroom receiving them and then decided, frankly, to take their life?‘

And it happens.

So you cannot underestimate the impact that your words have. They are spending hours a day comparing themselves to other people’s perfect, curated images, and these pictures and images are not real.

There isn’t really much room to be yourself
you have to fall under this category
you either dress like this, you look like this,
or you’re really not included, and you’re not relevant, and no one
will talk to you, and stuff like that.

There are lots of discussions around what is the right age to give children access and most of the apps, the legal age is 13.

My view is 16, because between the ages of 11 and 16,most children obviously are going through adolescence at their own rate, whether it’s periods, whether it’s voices dropping, and we all know there is, of course, a level of anxiety around that.

What you don’t need at that stage is social media telling you that this is how it should feel, this is what you should look like; and by the age of 16, most children are through that process.

Their normal levels of anxiety are through and hopefully, you’ve got reasonably self-confident humans who then manage the challenges of social media.

Rates of loneliness have doubled since 2012 worldwide

We’re seeing changes in the neuronal pathways in the brain for the way an adolescent brain develops because of the dopamine reward pathways, which are really, really addictive.

Tech companies have created likes, push notifications, followers, and all sorts of rewards on social media.

So if you imagine when you go to pick up your phone, you don’t know if you’re going to have likes or new followers on social media, that creates a spike of dopamine.

Now, the more you check social media, you create a really powerful feedback pathway.

88% of parents think young people are too dependent on technology.

If I were to say to parents, you give your child this device like a window to the world, walking around in their pocket, your child can hear things, experience things that in a million years, you would not want them to hear.

I’ve seen people post videos of people getting shot, things like that.
People getting their heads cut off and things like…

When I saw it, I was in year eight,
and I felt weird, and I couldn’t sleep.

Ultimately, I think the only way we can protect children is by saying,

“no social media”

We don’t allow them to smoke cigarettes, we don’t allow them to drink alcohol, if we have a rule that stops them, we’re okay.

Internet pornography is one click away for all our young people with access to the Internet, and it is having a profound impact on their body image and also their view of healthy sexual relationships. It’s intensely graphic, it is very misogynistic, and it is often violent.

We know that most young people access pornography by the age of 12. We’re seeing a huge increase in sexual violence against women with choking and slapping, and they’re watching this, and then they’re acting it out in later relationships.

80% of teenage girls are being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves.

I remember speaking to a boy, and he just sent me a picture of what
someone was put on his story, and he was like, ‘Recreate?’
And I said, ‘No’.
And then he was like, ‘Why not? It’s fun.
We can do it.’ I was like, ‘No’.
And I told him, I’m not comfortable with it.
And there was that constant pressure of him trying to convince me
Most boys think that that’s normal because it’s been normalized in our generation

I would really like the government to take a more proactive approach.

In medicine, we call it a precautionary approach: when something is becoming really obvious that it’s having a harm on wellbeing and health, that’s the moment we need to act.

My school has just decided to be a Smartphone-free school from September, and I honestly couldn’t be happier.

We’ve joined Smartphone Free Childhood and completely agree and align ourselves with their principles.

There’s a lovely quote from CS Lewis that says,

“You can’t go back and change
the beginning, but you can start where
you are and you can change the ending”.

To learn more, listen to our podcast: “how to move towards a smartphone-free childhood” or read more about Smartphones and Social media.