- Experts say more evidence is needed on children’s phone use
- They were speaking to a House of Commons select committee.
- Right now “almost everything is correlational”
The UK government has launched a plan to ban under-16s from accessing social media content on apps such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, but elsewhere in the halls of Westminster, experts are warning politicians that there is not much solid evidence when it comes to phone use and the child brain.
Speaking at the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee this week in the House of Commons (via The Register), academics said there is simply not enough data to show how social media and phone use could be shaping young minds as they develop.
“There is very little, if any, causal research in the early years,” said Professor Denis Mareschal, director of the Center for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck College. “Almost everything is correlational.”
Those views were echoed by Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University of Cambridge, who said the impact of “digital devices or social media” on teenagers’ brains amounted to “almost nothing”. “There are some small studies, but they have not been replicated and are purely correlational,” he said.
There is no precise age limit
However, while it is a case that requires further investigation, experts certainly did not rule out concerns about child safety either. The panel acknowledged that reward and self-control systems in the brain are still forming during childhood and adolescence, and that even adults find phone and social media use addictive.
Dr. Dusana Dorjee, from the University of York, pointed out that time spent in front of a device is time not spent playing games or interacting with others. The lack of that kind of multisensory information could be having an impact, he suggested.
Unsurprisingly, there were questions about the appropriate age to allow children to have phones and use social media, but according to Blakemore “what neuroscience cannot do is determine a precise age” – there is simply too much variation between individuals.
AI chatbots were also mentioned, but the response was the same: we urgently need more evidence of their effects on children and how they relate to tools like ChatGPT. While there are many concerns and stories about these child safety issues, we are still waiting for large-scale studies that can provide some definitive data-driven answers.
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