The Problem Is the Product, Not the Kids, and the Solution Is Limiting Access

Making Sense of the New JAMA Study on Kids and Screens

This post was previously published on the Smartphone Free Childhood US blog.

The most important takeaway from the new JAMA study on kids and screens isn’t that parents don’t need to worry about their kids’ screen time, as suggested in some widely shared news articles. It’s that they should be worrying about something much more fundamental: whether their kids have access to phones, social media, and video games in the first place.

Why? Because the study found that it’s highly likely kids who use these products will become addicted to them, and that addictive use is associated with suicidal behavior and ideation.

What to Know About the JAMA Study

The researchers followed over 4,200 U.S. kids for four years to see whether addictive use of phones, social media, and video games was linked to suicide risk. Participants were nine or ten years old when the study began. Here are the key findings:

• Addictive use was extremely common for mobile phones (nearly 1 in 2 kids with “high addictive use”), social media (1 in 3 with “increasing addictive use”), and video games (over 40% with “high addictive use”).

• For mobile phones and social media, both high and increasing addictive use were associated with 2-3x greater risk of suicidal behavior and suicidal ideation.

• For video games, high addictive use was linked to increased risk of suicidal behavior and ideation.

• Addictive screen use was more common among black and hispanic children, as well as children from low income households and whose parents were unmarried or did not have a college degree.

The study’s conclusion: “High or increasing trajectories of addictive use of social media, mobile phones, or video games were common in early adolescents. Both high and increasing addictive screen use trajectories were associated with suicidal behaviors and ideation and worse mental health.”

The Media Buries the Lead

Let it sink in for a moment that youth addictive screen use is both rampant (again, the study found “high addictive use” of phones in nearly half of the kids) and associated with suicide, and then take a look at how this story was framed in two widely shared news articles in The New York Times and Parents.com:

A busy parent skimming this coverage might think the takeaway is that they don’t need to worry about screen time, only screen addiction—something with a connotation of being extreme and out of the ordinary. It’s not until midway through both articles that the staggering prevalence of youth screen addiction is mentioned. But how many parents in today’s rushed and distracted world would read that far?

By downplaying concerns about screen time instead of emphasizing how addictive these products are, both articles are missing the forest for the trees. A story that is quite simple—these products are harming our children on a massive scale—becomes something more ambiguous and academic: screen time is the wrong metric to focus on. The real takeaway is not that screen time matters less than screen addiction, but that the screens are addictive—period.

Unfortunately, problematic framing like this is common when we’re dealing with Big Tech. (See my post on the misleading media coverage of a recent Lancet study about phone bans in schools for another example). The tech industry, like the tobacco industry before it, is very savvy at manipulating media narratives to sow doubt about the harms its products cause.

The bottom line: When a study finds that nearly 50% of kids with phones are addicted to them and at a higher risk of suicide, and the media coverage leads by downplaying concerns about screen time, one can’t help but suspect that tech industry influence might be at play.

Borrowing From Big Tobacco’s Playbook, Experts Place Responsibility for Screen Addiction on Kids, Not Tech Companies

As research about the harms of smoking mounted, the tobacco industry pivoted from distraction and denial to framing these harms as a matter of personal responsibility, not the fault of cigarette companies. Big Tech is now recycling that strategy, with a big assist from its many enablers in the medical and scientific communities, as Richard Freed has demonstrated in Better Than Real Life. A case in point comes from the lead author of the JAMA study, Dr. Yunyu Xiao. Consider this quote from the NYT article:

“Dr. Xiao said interventions should focus on the child’s addictive behavior, which is typically treated with cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, rather than simply limiting access to screens.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the fact that these products were engineered to addict children and then aggressively marketed to families and schools. We are handing our children digital slot machines before they’re even out of diapers and then blaming them for their “addictive behavior.” This is madness. We must stop pathologizing our children for being addicted to products designed to addict them.

Moving on…the idea that cognitive behavioral psychotherapy (CBT) is the answer to a screen addiction epidemic that affects nearly 50% of kids with phones, per Dr. Xiao’s own research, is equally ludicrous. CBT is costly, time consuming, and often difficult to access, especially for underprivileged families whose children are at the highest risk of screen addiction, according to this study. As writer Bill Schubart aptly puts it, we “charge them to get sick and then charge them again to get well.” Wouldn’t it be better to prevent screen addiction by not letting our kids use these addictive products in the first place?

Not according to Dr. Xiao:

“We do not know if just taking away their phone will help,” she continues in the NYT piece. “Sometimes it can create some conflict in the family, and that is even worse.”

As discussed in my recent blog post, How to Identify Propaganda From Big Tech, the idea that limiting screen access does more harm than good is one of the most common myths promoted by Big Tech. (Replace the word “phone” in Dr. Xiao’s quote above with “beer,” “cigarette,” or, wild card option, “Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play” to see how ridiculous this logic would be in the context of any other product known to present a serious risk to children’s health and safety.) The fact is that children’s developing brains are no match for the powerful algorithms engineered to keep them hooked, so limiting their access is exactly what we must do to protect them from harm.

The Solution Is Simple: Say No to Addictive Screens

When it came to light in 2019 that over 30 babies suffocated while lounging in Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play sleepers, one of the most popular baby products on the market, we did not hem and haw about which metric we should look at to best understand the problem. We did not blame the babies. We did not tell parents to keep using the dangerous product and seek expensive medical treatment to help mitigate the inevitable harm.

Instead, the medical community raised the alarm, the media got behind the message, the government recalled the product, and millions of U.S. parents (myself included) got rid of their Rock ‘n Plays. Yes, it was inconvenient for exhausted parents; yes, it caused “conflict” with babies who loved their Rock ‘n Plays, but we did it anyway because the benefits of this product were not worth the risk.

On June 23 we observed Social Media Harms Victim Remembrance Day, honoring 245 U.S. kids and teens who lost their lives in connection with social media use. In the meantime, 95% of teens continue to use social media, as well as millions of children under the age of 13 (the minimum age requirement for most platforms). How many more children must lose their lives before our doctors, journalists, and government will find the courage to say “no” to these products?

Join the SFCxUS Community for Support in Protecting Kids From Addictive Screens

The Smartphone Free Childhood US community is rallying together to reclaim childhood from Big Tech. Here are a few ways to get involved and access support:

• Use the SFCxUS Parent Group Locator tool to connect with like-minded families in your local area

• Join the weekly community of practice calls on how to advocate for phone- and social media-free school legislation and other legislation related to preventing online harms—every Wednesday at 12pm EST

• Register for community call with Emily Cherkin, The Screentime Consultant, and Nicki Petrossi of Scrolling 2 Death on opting out of 1:1 devices at school—July 22 at 2pm EST.

• Read Reset Your Child’s Brain by Victoria Dunckley for the SFCxUS book club and register for the Zoom discussion with the author—July 28 at 8:30pm EST