Some parents refuse to give their children smartphones

Some parents in the region are resisting pressure to give their children smartphones and encouraging others to do the same, citing the health and social benefits.

“We’re not pro-no technology. We’re more pro-slow technology,” Kirsten Sweet told CTV News Edmonton during a recent interview.

She and Jill Antonioll, both mothers of two young children, say they won’t give their children smartphones until they’re in high school and won’t let them use social media until they’re 16.

This year, they launched the Gen Alpha Movement in St. Albert, Alta., after learning about the negative effects of smartphones on young people’s mental health and the dangers posed by strangers online.

As part of their self-study, they looked at the Children 2.0 documentary, listened to the Scroll to death podcast, and read the book by American psychologist Jonathan Haidt The fearful generationfrom which they derived the age guidelines for smartphone and social media use.

Around the same time, they attended presentations at their schools by child abuse researchers from ALERT, a state law enforcement agency.

“We learned new terms like sextortion. I thought, ‘What does that even mean? I don’t know,’” Antoniolli recalls.

“We thought we knew about social online presence, social media, all that stuff. But we didn’t really know that much.”

While Haidt’s methods have been the subject of some criticism, his conclusion that smartphones can be harmful to children is borne out by studies in Canada and the US.

“What’s happening with our phones right now is we’re giving them to kids — these highly addictive devices — at the exact moment that there’s all this incredible brain activity happening. What’s happening, essentially, is these phones are almost becoming little transport mechanisms for a constant, on-demand hit of dopamine,” said Tania Johnson, a psychologist in St. Albert and co-founder of the educational resource center Institute of Child Psychology.

“Essentially, these phones are experience blockers. As a psychologist working in clinical practice, we see that the kids are sleeping less, playing less, not playing sports, and a lot of them don’t have deep passions. They just don’t know how to connect with other people.”

Sweet said, “Of course we want our kids to communicate with each other and we want to be able to communicate with them, but we’re finding that a smartphone may not be the best choice for that.”

She and Antoniolli will instead consider getting their children a “dumb phone,” a device that can only make calls and send text messages. Several “kid phones” like this one are available in the U.S., including the Bark, Gabb and Light phones, and at least one in Canada.

“I know that eventually they’ll have a phone, they’ll be on social media. Eventually they’ll do it, but why do I have to do it now? I want them to have a childhood; I want them to play, I want them to have friends that they can actually talk to in person,” Antoniolli added.

“I don’t want them to go through another stressful part of their lives that they don’t understand yet.”

Johnson plans to follow Haidt’s advice with her own two daughters as well.

However, in her work with families she also advises taking other measures, such as:

• limiting screen time;
• turn off notifications to limit distractions and disruptions;
• placing computers and charging stations in public areas of the home; and
• Adults who follow the same rules, because teenagers’ behavior is often influenced by their parents.

With files from Nicole Weisberg and Evan Klippenstein of CTV News Edmonton