After hacking 200 children's phones, the U.S. study found a heartbreaking commonality
Hello everyone, I'm Icey, a psychologist who has been in the industry for many years.
For parents, the biggest difference and challenge in raising this generation of children is the rise of "mobile phone-based childhood".
The web is a tool that connects us to the world, but it is also full of temptations, such as short videos that are controlled by algorithms and keep indulging in them but have little to no nutrition.
We once did a poll of tens of thousands of parents, more than 40% of children watched short videos for more than one hour a day, and 22.8% of children were addicted to short videos for three hours or more every day.
A while ago, Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization focusing on the use of digital products by teenagers in the United States, released a 64-page report, and the data given is even more frightening:
During the school day, 97% of children spent a median of 43 minutes on their mobile phones (minimum of a few minutes and a maximum of 6 hours).
Half of the participants received 237 per day
or more, with the largest number of children receiving more than 4,500 notifications per day (including text messages, app notifications, social media chats, etc.).
The median time spent by teenagers on short videos is 1 hour and 52 minutes, and some children watch more than 7 hours a day.
657 different mobile games were played in a week, 211 of which were violent.
45% of kids have used apps that are only intended for 18 years and older, including Pornhub, fantasy sports/betting apps, casino games, or violent games.
Why do children become addicted to mobile phones? Not that age restrictions don't work?Are children really happy when they play with their phones?
In addition to the data, this academic material is a rare starting point from the perspective of children, revealing a truth that makes parents a little heartbroken:
Addiction to mobile phones is no longer just a matter of willpower,
Smartphones are quietly turning more and more children into the "zombie generation" in incredibly stealthy ways, manipulating their time, brains, and mental health.
Children are also troubled and unhappy when playing with their mobile phones, and they use various ways to save themselves, but they are often not understood by their parents and hide back in the Internet.
Slaves to the tech giants
According to Common Sense, about 43% of American children aged 8-12 and 88%-95% of teens aged 13-18 have their own mobile phones.
One of the big reasons why mobile phones are so widespread is that the children's classmates have mobile phones: "Not having friends means complete doom for me, I'd rather quarrel with my parents than have my own mobile phone."
In the report, the researchers recruited 203 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 to install a program on their children's phones with the consent of their guardians that provided data on the duration of different app uses.
The results revealed some of the more frightening statistics:
During the lesson,
The median time spent on mobile phones by 97% of participants was 43 minutes (minimum of a few minutes, maximum of 6 hours).
The median time of participants using mobile phones per day was about 4.5 hours, and nearly 10% used more than 10 hours per day, with noon and evening being the peak hours, with many 16-17-year-olds still playing with their phones at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night.
Half of the participants received 237 or more notifications per day, and the largest number of children received more than 4,500 notifications per day (including text messages, app notifications, social media chats, etc.),
About 23% of notifications are sent during school hours.
The median number of times teens pick up their phones per day is 51, ranging from 2 to 498 times a day, especially at noon and after school.
Younger children are less frequent (11 to 12 years old), probably because they are more controlled by their parents.
What do children do with their phones?
Let's start with a more unexpected use - as a background sound.
Not all the time is engrossed in looking at the phone, but playing music, videos, or the computer while doing other things, such as a child who said that his classmates opened Tiktok while they were doing their homework, and just wanted to stimulate their brains while doing their homework.
"Smartphones, which occupy most of children's waking hours, are intertwined with young people's lives in unique ways, both as foreground and background," the researchers said.
■ There are bloggers who interviewed everyone on the Harvard campus about what is their favorite APP, and Tiktok is also at the top of the list
Judging by the tracking of the use of the app, the number is equally staggering.
In total, 203 teens used a total of 1,644 different apps in one week. Each person opened 5-125 apps, and used an average of about 40 apps a week.
The most popular and longest-used by all 11-17-year-olds is short video Tiktok. 50% of the participants have used TikTok, and the median daily usage time is 1 hour and 52 minutes, and some children watch it for more than 7 hours a day, even in class and staying up late.
The algorithm of short videos can accurately locate everyone's preferences within tens of seconds, adjust them according to needs at any time, stimulate dopamine in the brain, and even many children will have difficulty falling asleep because their brains are overstimulated.
"Tiktok's algorithm seems to be more accurate than other apps, and it appeals to me more, providing me with small doses of fun anytime, anywhere, and sharing it with friends."
Another child expressed his struggle to be controlled by short videos: "The information in a bunch of short videos flowed into my brain, which made me feel overwhelmed and guilty. Should I do my homework, or should I continue to waste 20 minutes watching videos?"
Even if Tiktok and Youtube will remind them regularly, children whose brains have been kidnapped by dopamine can't stop, so turn off the reminder and continue watching.
Because there are too many short videos, some children say that they can't stand 30-second videos anymore and only watch those within 10 seconds.
■There is already an exclusive noun "Tiktok brain" abroad, and when the brain watches a short video that is precisely pushed by the algorithm, it will stimulate dopamine and produce a feeling of happiness
At night, before going to bed, Youtube (47% of the time spent on mobile phones at night), social media (39%) and games (29%) are the most popular things for children.
Younger children love to play games. A total of 657 different mobile games were played in a week, of which 211 (32%) had violent content ratings.
In the process, the game merchant exposed the characteristics of the chicken thief - sending notifications to the children's mobile phones every day to prompt them to open the game, as well as various incentives that make the children have to come back regularly every day to keep up with their progress and keep in touch with their teammates.
"Because my friends open the game every day, I keep coming back every day."
■ What happened recently, followed by a full refund from the game company
After observing the mobile phone usage of these teenagers, the researchers concluded that many of the details in the above apps are carefully designed to encourage users to participate for a long time:
The algorithm is sophisticated, which can take care of the child's feelings at that time;
The content is short and concise, suitable for watching at any time between classes, during meals, on the way home, and before going to bed;
Infinite scrolling
, there is no end, maximizing the scramble for attention;
No searching, no thinking, no pause.
"Companies that develop apps have an incentive to design features that capture children's attention for longer (e.g. more ad revenue or more data on their phones for targeted marketing), so children don't just use their phones because of a 'lack of willpower'."
■ Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was sued by more than 30 states in October last year for designing psychomanipulative features to lure children into using them for long periods of time with infinite swipes and reminders
Virtually non-existent age limits
In this report, the researchers also found a question that plagued many adults: Why do children still use these apps for so long after they claim to be age-restricted?
This is because, from the app store to the APP registration, the threshold is almost nothing, as long as you manually change the date of birth, you can act as an adult to fool through the level, and easily enter the content field that originally belongs to adults.
The researchers found that:
45% of kids have used apps that are only intended for 18 years and older, including Pornhub, fantasy sports/betting apps, casino games, or violent games.
47 apps with sexual, nude or suggestive themes;
Fourteen children used social media apps with risky features, such as the ability to send messages, photos and video chats with strangers
68% of children under the age of 13 have used at least one app that requires an older age or even an adult to use, which can lead to unsafe or exploitative interactions between child and teen users and others.
What's even more annoying is that the apps on children's mobile phones keep sending notifications at a frequency that is almost "harassing" to distract them.
The report found that children received a median of 237 notifications per day on their phones, and they saw or engaged with 46 of them. The morning hours skyrocketed, peaking in the afternoon and evening.
Among them, apps used to chat send the most notifications, such as Snapchat (a chat app that burns after reading), Instagram (a social app for sharing pictures), and Discord (a community of gamers).
In particular, Snapchat is considered one of the most "toxic" apps by foreign parents. Because the information is burned after reading, it guides the children to open the information as soon as they receive it, and it is precisely because of this function that users will often send unhealthy messages and withdraw them after reading them.
One child said, "What excites me the most is the Snapchat notification, it doesn't matter who sent it, the important thing is that each notification is a message for me, unlike other apps that are a bunch of irrelevant notifications." 」。
There are also children who see through the intention of such a bombardment by tech companies: "I think this is a way to rekindle users' interest, and it is also a way to keep users using the app, because there is always one that will arouse the user's interest when sending a lot of random messages."
■ American children are very dependent on mobile phones, and even in schools that do not allow mobile phones, 65% of children carry them with them
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Health released a 19-page report detailing the "profound risk of harm" to children posed by early exposure to social media.
Brain development during adolescence is one of the injuries.
Adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 are in a highly sensitive and vulnerable period of brain development, with risk-taking behaviors peaking, well-being fluctuating the most, and mental health issues such as depression often occurring.
In addition, early adolescence is a time of formation of identity and self-worth, and brain development is particularly susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparisons. Frequent social media use may be associated with significant changes in the developing brain's amygdala, which is important for emotional learning and behavior, and the prefrontal cortex, which is important for impulse control, emotion regulation, and regulation of social behavior.
In an experiment with college students, social media use was found to be associated with a 9% increase in depression and a 12% increase in anxiety.
This is true for college students, not to mention young children.
The children also felt guilty
At the moment, it seems that attacking children who are addicted to the Internet and mobile phones has become an unassailable right. "It's that they don't know things, they don't like to learn, they just like to play, they don't think about their bodies and their future, and they don't have willpower."
But from the Common Sense report, I heard different voices from children.
One in five to one-third of the children said that "often" mobile phones hinder their normal life, make them unable to sleep, affect their social and learning, and often use mobile phones to escape due obligations and negative emotions.
As one commentary in the New York Times put it, this generation's children experience more uncertainty than their parents and foresee a worse economic future. Coupled with the helicopter parents, they are limited when they should be exploring autonomous living.
Escaping into the online world means unrestricted freedom.
But what is certain is that they have not lost the desire to explore real life, especially the older children of sixteen or seventeen:
"For 10-12-year-olds, they may have just gotten their first phone and just want to have fun. But as I get older, I know that I am particular about the time and place to play with my mobile phone, I shouldn't play in class, and I can't watch short videos before going to bed. We know it's not good to play with our phones, and we're trying to get rid of it."
There are children who have come up with strategies to control themselves.
For example, turn on Do Not Disturb, turn off or delete unwanted app notifications, and only chat with a fixed few friends and relatives on social media, ignoring the push of the game app. And set it to airplane mode when you do your homework at night, and take your phone out of the bedroom when you go to sleep.
Even more remarkable are the fact that these children tell adults why their parents' control, coercion, and even violent confiscation of electronic devices often fail.
"Every time my parents tried to restrict my use of my phone, it aroused my rebellion, and I didn't want them to take it, so I used it more. Later, I realized that I was spending too much time on my phone, so I actively limited myself, and the effect was much better."
"I've given my phone a new setting: plants. When I don't touch it, it grows."
Nowadays, more and more people have begun to realize that "mobile phone addiction" is no longer just a matter of personal willpower, behind which there are manipulation traps of technology companies based on human nature, deliberate lure driven by profits, and internal drive of teenagers' social needs.
As Jonathan Haidt, author of the best-selling book Pampered Mind and professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, writes in his new book, The Anxious Generation:
Since 2010/2012, the anxiety, depression and suicide rates of adolescents around the world have begun to surge significantly, becoming a "mental illness pandemic" that has swept the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even the happy countries of Denmark and Finland.
One of the obvious reasons is that with the rise of mobile Internet after the popularization of mobile phones, social media has swept teenagers around the world, making more and more children addicted.
The good news is that there are already people on the move.
In the U.S., Florida introduced a bill in March that bans social media accounts from teens under the age of 14 in the state and requires platforms to delete all created accounts, while children between the ages of 14 and 16 must have parental consent to have accounts.
In the UK, a poll found that 77% of parents of primary school-age children want a smartphone ban on children under the age of 16.
I look forward to the early end of this "psychological storm" that swept all children. There are many challenges facing the next generation, and we must not give up too early in our teenage years.