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Research linking smartphones and the effect they have on mental development among children. It also discusses how difficult it is for a single family to solve because non-phone children are surrounded by phone kids, so they also deal with mental health issues due to loneliness. Recommends we make changes together as a society.
Recommendations
  1. No smart phones before high school (9th year)
  2. No social media before 16
  3. Phone-free schools
  4. More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world
this territory is moderated
Extra info: 3/4 of Teens Sometimes Feel Happy or Peaceful When They Don’t Have Their Phone ~charts territory: #474079
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Children should be playing outside and engaging with the real world until they have enough development and cognition to start interacting with mobiles especially with social networks, social networks can only create self-esteem and other problems in children.
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You can be the strictest parent in the world but children due to social pressure or for whatever reason will end up with a mobile phone sooner or later, you can put parental controls on it but that will not prevent it from following the path of the majority at some point. Perhaps the solution is to demand not to have a phone or to teach them things from a young age that a phone can't project, but I'm afraid that nowadays intuition is easily defeated by technology. Sorry if my perspective is cynical.
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We've done all this. Still tough. I really think these steps you outline are vital but they aren't enough. I don't have answers. I think we need to be honest with ourselves as adults. Its not just the kids, but most of us didn't grow up in this culture of always connected devices. Its something humanity is going to have to figure out.
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Agreed. Even if our kids are off devices, they see us glued to them. What message does that send? And are they lonely within the family environment because they’re competing for their parents’ attention, love.
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Yes, and children copy everything adults do, forming a vicious generational cycle, the same example when someone who is raised in a household of smokers ends up being a smoker.
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Children are a product of their parents and the culture they are surrounded by. I get tired of hearing all the complaints about it when parents do nothing to affect change in themselves. Even writing this I'm conflicted because I know I could do many things better. But, it remains true.
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