A new study in the United States has found that children who had smartphones at the age of 12 are more likely to develop eating disorders in the future compared to their peers who did not have phones at that age. The research was published on September 25 in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
The research team analyzed data from a large-scale survey on child cognitive development in the United States, covering thousands of elementary and middle school students. Among them, a whopping 70%, over 6,200 teenagers, reported having smartphones at the age of 12.
The differences between the two groups of children are significant:
– Among children who had smartphones at age 12, the most common eating disorder symptom was binge eating, with a prevalence of 9%.
– By the age of 14, around 24% of these children displayed at least one type of eating disorder symptom.
– For children who did not have smartphones at age 12, only 16% showed such symptoms by the age of 14.
Furthermore, children who had smartphones early on were found to be twice as likely as others to tie their self-worth to their weight and had a 50% higher likelihood of engaging in disordered behaviors like excessive exercise or purging to “offset” weight gain.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Jason Nagata, an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), told CNN that smartphones effectively introduce a significant amount of appearance-focused content directly into young people’s pockets, exposing them to images and messages that could foster unhealthy eating behaviors. He cautioned parents that giving children smartphones is not just providing a device but also altering the content they encounter in the digital world.
The article suggests that the real culprit behind these issues is likely social media. Dr. Nagata also noted that when children compare themselves to carefully curated, edited, and filtered influencers on social media, they are prone to body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem, which are risk factors for eating disorders.
For parents familiar with the risks associated with smartphones and social media, these findings may not come as a surprise. The same survey used in this study had previously found that for each additional hour of screen time, the risk of developing eating disorder symptoms and measuring self-worth by weight increases. What sets this study apart is its focus on the “age of smartphone initiation” and its role in these behaviors.
If these results hold true, even slightly delaying the age at which children acquire smartphones could significantly benefit their mental health. Dr. Mitch Prinstein, a psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of North Carolina who was not involved in the research, told CNN that the new study indicates that an effective delay may only require six months to a year. ◇