SAN FRANCISCO — Children who own their own smartphone by age 12 are more likely to develop eating disorder symptoms than their peers who don’t have one, according to a new study.
The research, published Friday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, comes from a large survey of nearly 9,000 adolescents across the United States.
“A smartphone can put a world of appearance-focused content in a young person’s pocket,” exposing them to images and messages that may promote unhealthy eating behaviors, said Dr. Jason Nagata, lead author of the study. “It is important for parents to be aware that acquiring a smartphone is not just about the device. It can change a child’s access to different content and exposure in the digital world.”
It may not only be important whether you give your child a phone, he said, but also when you do it.
Young children with phones may have problems
Spending time on screens and social media is associated with a range of negative outcomes for children, including depression, loss of self-esteem, and experimentation with drugs and alcohol. Previous research from Nagata’s lab found correlations between screen time and binge eating.
Most previous studies have focused on how much time young people spend on their devices, said Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. For the new paper, he wanted to focus on the age at which children start using them and how that might affect the development of eating disorders in the future.
According to one study, approximately 22% of children and adolescents worldwide show signs of eating disorders. The distinction between eating disorders and disordered eating depends primarily on the level of severity and whether or not a person meets the criteria for a diagnosis. Both may include a fixation on food and weight, distorted feelings about body shape and size, restricted eating, or compensating for calorie intake by vomiting or exercising.
Using data collected from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a large, long-term study of the brain development and health of American children, Nagata and his team found that 70 percent of 12-year-olds own their own phones. Of these, 24% reported at least one eating disorder symptom at age 14. In comparison, fewer than 16% of teens who didn’t have a smartphone at age 12 reported eating disorders two years later.
Being 12 is tough: how parents can help
Preadolescence is a crucial period in development, both physical and emotional. Puberty comes with major changes in the body and body image, and it’s natural, Nagata said, for children to compare themselves to each other.
Before smartphones and social networks, these comparisons were mainly made between peers. “But when you compare yourself to influencers whose images are curated, edited and filtered,” he said, “it can lead to more body dissatisfaction and lower self-esteem, and that can then be a risk factor for eating disorders.”
According to the study, children who owned a smartphone at age 12 were twice as likely to associate their self-esteem with their weight and 1.5 times more likely to have tried to control their weight, such as by eating low-calorie foods or getting plenty of exercise.
Not using smartphones could spare teens from body image issues — at least for a while, said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development. Prinstein, who was not involved in the current study, said new research is beginning to show that delaying access to phones and other devices for six months or a year appears to benefit children’s mental health.
When kids get their own phones, he recommends parents let them “slowly, gradually, get more exposure to social media over time.” We don’t want to give them a completely unlocked phone with every opportunity to visit whatever they want for as long as they want.”
Most major social media platforms set 13 as the minimum age to create an account, Nagata said, but his previous research found that nearly two-thirds of 11- and 12-year-olds have accounts on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
This latest study doesn’t provide a “magic answer” for when is the best time to get your kids a smartphone, he said. But if parents are trusting tweens with their own phones, they may want to consider “additional safeguards” like limiting the apps kids can download and keeping phones out of the bedroom so it’s easier to monitor their activity.
“It’s very important for parents to stay involved in their children’s digital lives,” Nagata said. He recommends setting ground rules around phone use, having open conversations about what kids see online, and paying attention to any changes in the way kids eat or talk about their bodies.
You might not allow phones at the table, but this might be a good time and place to discuss it.
The key takeaways from this article were generated with the help of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article itself is solely written by humans.
Gn Health
