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REPOST - The parents saying 'no' to smartphones

Originally seen on Hot Air this story originated on Free Press. Fascinating that there is a movement to restrict smartphone usage to kids until a certain age. And that there is an internet-free cell phone out there, which you can purchase at the bottom of the page.

Every time one of his classmates gets a smartphone, Jhett Rogers thinks to himself: There goes another one.

“It kind of feels like I’ve lost a friend. Whenever I’m with them, they’re zoned out and always on their phone.”

But Rogers, a middle schooler in Salt Lake City, says he still can’t shake the desire to join the club. Six months ago, the only other holdout in his 30-strong group of friends got an iPhone.

“It kind of made me feel left out and jealous,” he says. “But later I don’t want one because I know what happens.”

He says kids in the hallways now bump into each other, with everyone staring down at their phones. Teachers have started giving up on his school’s no-phone policy, knowing students hide their devices up their hoodie sleeves and pull them out as soon as no one’s looking. At lunch hour, he says, everyone eats alone, scrolling TikTok while they chew.

At 13, Jhett is part of a small, but growing, minority group of holdouts. By age 12, seven out of ten American kids own a smartphone. They also spend about eight hours online a day, inhaling TikTok trends, toggling between texts, and turning their daily lives into Snapchat and Instagram content. Most will have seen pornography by age 12, with three in four teenage boys saying they watch adult content at least once a week.

Meanwhile, a growing body of research shows that smartphones are at least partly to blame for skyrocketing rates of teenage anxiety and depression. As author Jonathan Haidt, reporting on a recent worldwide study on smartphone use among nearly 28,000 youths, put it: “The younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental health the young adult reports today.”

For years, the risks have been clear as day among ...

Full article:

https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2023/05/repost-parents-saying-no-to-smartphones.html

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