Smartphones May Play Role in Children s Mental Health

Brad Fox | March 24, 2015
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The effects of television viewing for children, especially 1-3 year olds has been widely studied, with results indicating negative impacts on early brain development as well as overall physical health.

In the book, "Virtual Child: The Terrifying Truth about What Technology Is Doing to Children," the author cites that one third of North America's children enter school developmentally delayed and one in six children are diagnosed with a mental illness.

The use of mobile phones in children is under the microscope lately and the results are also mostly negative.

Julie Lynn Evans is a 25 year veteran in child psychology working everywhere from hospitals and schools, to directly with families.

She and many others directly related to the child psychology field have noticed a significant increase in mental health problems among the young.

The floodgates of desperate youngsters opened, she recalls, in 2010. “I saw my work increase by a mad amount and so did others I work with. Suddenly everything got much more dangerous, much more immediate, much more painful, reports The Telegraph.

Official figures show admissions to child psychiatric wards have doubled in a four year span. and youngsters hospitalized for self harm is up an astonishing 70 percent.

“It’s a simplistic view, but I think it is the ubiquity of broadband and smartphones that has changed the pace and the power and the drama of mental illness in young people.”

She says in real life we travel with our children, but with smartphones “they usually travel alone.” The access to the world wide web and the vast array of websites lead adolescents and children directly to the darker things the world has to offer. It is all easily accessible to the young, curious, and impressionable minds.

A disturbing example she brings up is a site where you watch men masturbate in real time while children as young as 12 watch. . . “And as they watch, they are saying, 'this is what sex is’. It is leaving them really distressed, she says.”

Ms. Evans says that parents should regulate and watch children's internet use for. It won’t make you popular but kids need the discipline and time to mature before they can be let loose on the web.

“Kindness, compassion, ethics, it’s all out of the window when you are in this instantaneous gossip world with no time to think, and no time to learn about having relationships.” 

Examples from parents choosing their smartphones over quality time with their children doesn't help the situation either. She thought about giving up on her profession dealing with more extreme cases of damaged children day after day.

"She is emphatically not anti-internet, but rather anti- the negative side effects of it on our young. “It is battering our children’s brains. They have no times for the goodies in life – kindness, acceptance, conversation, face-to-face, nature, nurture. They need to find a sense of purpose by connecting with other people, not being on the Internet all the time.”

If parents and schools engage with it openly and together, this can be tackled, she urges. “If we can grab what’s going on by the horns, and do something about it, then I am optimistic. I’m not optimistic, though, if we just say it's the government 's fault and we’ve got to have more money.”

H/T The Daily Telegraph 

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