Kids should not be given a smartphone before age 13, at the earliest, researchers said Monday.
But while that age seems to be better for mental health, according to a new study led by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, it still carries some risks.
"Age 13 seems safer,” Ran Barzilay, an adolescent psychiatrist at the hospital, explained to Bloomberg. "Even then, make sure that you put some boundary on the amount of time that the kid is on the screen,” he added.
One of the risks of giving a child a smartphone at 13 was poor sleep health, but the researchers found it was not associated with depression or obesity.
The findings build on years of past guidance telling parents to delay giving their kids phones until the teenage years.
There were higher odds of poor sleep, depression and obesity for 12-year-olds who get smartphones, a previous study from the same team found, according to Bloomberg.
That risk of poor sleep, depression or obesity more than double when kids spent more than five hours a day on their phones, compared to those using them just two hours or fewer each day, the researchers noted.
The study did not look at which specific phone activities, like gaming or social media, might be the worst for kids’ health.
The researchers studied the health of nearly 2,000 teens who were a part of the ABCD Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the U.S. Of the 1,959 subjects, 1,230 got a smartphone between the ages of 13-14.
The kids reported how long they used smartphones for each day.
Past research has shown that more than half of U.S. teens are losing sleep because of their smartphone use. Sleep is crucial for overall health and brain development and teens need around 8-10 hours a night, according to federal guidance.
But, there is a way to reverse course, Barzilay noted.
Keeping a smartphone out of a bedroom at night and limiting phone use may shield them from poor health.
Kids who kept their devices outside their room at night were less likely to report not getting enough sleep.
“When considering the findings of this paper alongside our previous work, we can cautiously say that smartphone acquisition at age 13 appears safer than at or before age 12. However, even at age 13, our findings provide evidence informing parents and clinicians that it’s important to introduce a smartphone with clear rules and supervision,” Barzilay said in a news release.
“We encourage families to set daily limits on smartphone use and remove them from their children’s bedrooms at night,” he concluded.
