UK MPs In Full Moral Panic Decide To Ignore The Research, Push For Dangerous Ban On Phones For Kids

The moral panic about kids and technology these days is just getting dumber and dumber. The latest is that MPs in the UK are considering an outright ban on smartphones for kids under 16.

Just last week, we posted about a thorough debunking of the mobile phones are bad for kids" argument making the rounds. We highlighted how banning phones can actually do significantly more harm than good. This was based on a detailed article in the Atlantic by UCI psychologist and researcher Candice Odgers, who actually studies this stuff.

As she's highlighted multiple times, none of the research supports the idea that phones or social media are inherently harmful. In the very small number of cases where there's a correlation, it often appears to be a reverse causal situation:

When associations are found, things seem to work in the opposite direction from what we've been told: Recent research among adolescents-including among young-adolescent girls, along with a large review of 24 studies that followed people over time-suggests that early mental-health symptoms may predict later social-media use, but not the other way around.

In other words, the kids who often have both mental health problems and difficulty putting down their phones appear to be turning to their phones because of their untreated mental health issues, and because they don't have the resources necessary to help them.

Taking away their phones takes away their attempt to find help for themselves, and it also takes away a lifeline that many teens have used to actually help themselves: whether it's in finding community, finding information they need, or otherwise communicating with friends and family. Cutting that off can cause real harm. Again, as Odgers notes:

We should not send the message to families-and to teens-that social-media use, which is common among adolescents and helpful in many cases, is inherently damaging, shameful, and harmful. It's not. What my fellow researchers and I see when we connect with adolescents is young people going online to do regular adolescent stuff. They connect with peers from their offline life, consume music and media, and play games with friends. Spending time on YouTube remains the most frequent online activity for U.S. adolescents. Adolescents also go online to seek information about health, and this is especially true if they also report experiencing psychological distress themselves or encounter barriers to finding help offline. Many adolescents report finding spaces of refuge online, especially when they have marginalized identities or lack support in their family and school. Adolescents also report wanting, but often not being able to access, online mental-health services and supports.

All adolescents will eventually need to know how to safely navigate online spaces, so shutting off or restricting access to smartphones and social media is unlikely to work in the long term. In many instances, doing so could backfire: Teens will find creative ways to access these or even more unregulated spaces, and we should not give them additional reasons to feel alienated from the adults in their lives.

But still, when there's a big moral panic to be had, politicians are quick to follow, so banning mobile phones for teens is on the table:

The committee says that without urgent action, more children could be put in harm's way.

It recommended the next government should work with the regulator, Ofcom, to consult on additional measures, including the possibility of a total ban on smartphones for under-16s or having parental controls installed as a default.

The report notes that mobile phone use has gone up in recent years:

Committee chairman Robin Walker said its inquiry had heard shocking statistics on the extent of the damage being done to under-18s".

The report found there had been a significant rise in screen time in recent years, with one in four children now using their phone in a manner resembling behavioural addiction.

Again, most of those studies cover the time when kids were locked down due to COVID, so it's not at all surprising that their phone usage went up. And, as Odgers has shown, there's been no actual data suggesting any real or significant causal connection between phone use and mental health problems for kids.

Incredibly, since this is happening in the UK, you'd think that maybe the MPs could wander over to Oxford (surely, they're aware of it?) and talk to Andrew Przybylski, who keeps releasing new studies, based on huge data sets, that show no link between phone/internet use and harm. He's been pumping these out for years. Surely, the MPs could be bothered to go take a look?

But, no, it's easier to ignore the real problem (and the hard societal solutions it would entail) and instead play up the moral panic. Then, they can do something stupidly, dangerously counter-productive like banning phones... and claim victory. Then, when the mental health problems get worse, not better, they can find some other technology to blame, rather than taking a step back and wondering why they're failing to provide resources to help those dealing with a mental health crisis.