The smartphone is the boomer’s boogyman. Once, I was at a McDonald’s, texting my mom about plans for Christmas. A woman in her 60s leaned over to me. “Back in my day,” she said. “We didn’t have our noses buried in those things.” She had no idea what I was doing. It would have been preferable for her to leave me alone, eating my burger.
But the truth is, smartphone use can be both good and bad. Just like anything else.
Smartphones=Drugs?
“I always say to people, when you’re giving your kid a tablet or a phone, you’re really giving them a bottle of wine or a gram of coke,” says Mandy Saligari. She’s a rehab clinic specialist from England. “Are you really going to leave them to knock the whole thing out on their own behind closed doors?”
Dire words. How can you justify letting a child have a smartphone?
Maybe by listening to Mandy Saligari again. (1)
Smartphones and The Addictive Personality
“When people tend to look at addiction, their eyes tend to be on the substance or thing,” Saligari says. “But really it’s a pattern of behavior that can manifest itself in a number of different ways.”
In her book, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, Maia Szalavitz looks at how addiction is different from media portrayals. She says that those who joke about their addictive personality, “usually [do so] to justify an indulgence or to signal our guilt about pleasure.” Citing a study about addiction, she says “most mentally and psychologically healthy teens were not those who abstained entirely from alcohol and other drugs, but rather the kids who experimented with weed and drinking, but didn’t overdo it.”
So, maybe the problem isn’t giving your child a smartphone–it’s if you “leave them. . .behind closed doors.” (1, 2)
Parents and Smartphones
A Pysch Central article says that “Dr. Jenny Radesky, of Boston Medical Center, became concerned when she noticed the lack of interaction between parents and children. She had observed that smartphones and handheld devices were interfering with bonding and parental attention.” Dr. Redesky said that children “learn by watching us . . . if that’s not happening, children are missing out on important development milestones.” So, if you’re letting your children use their phone at the table, that contributes. If you’re using your phone when your child is trying to talk to you about something they care about–you’re part of the problem, too. (3)
Children and Addiction (Including Smartphone Dependency)
In Ms. Szalavitz’s book, she says:
“Children who ultimately develop addictions tend to be outliers in a number of measurable ways. . . . It is extremes of personality and temperament—some of which are associated with talents, not deficits—that elevates risk. Giftedness and high IQ, for instance. . . Whether these extreme traits lead to addictions, other compulsive behaviors, developmental differences, mental illnesses, or some mixture depends not just on genetics but also on the environment, people’s own reactions to it, and those of others to them.”
So, when you’re tempted to ban smartphones from your house, consider if that’s an easy scapegoat for a deeper issue. (2)
