Smart devices are incredibly useful tools. Smart devices give the user a multitude of capabilities: the ability to instantly access information, to share ideas with others, to connect with people internationally, and to entertain yourself in times of dire boredom. According to a recent study conducted by Pew Research Center, nearly 95% of Americans own a phone or form of smart device. Common consensus perceives that allowing children to use smart devices as harmless, due to a smart devices’ capacity to offer educational and entertainment opportunities. However, smart devices pose a plethora of potential threats: negative impacts on physical and cognitive development and abilities, unrestricted access to pornography and violence, and susceptibility to malicious attacks by hackers and cyber-bullies. As devices with internet connectivity have gained popularity and become more useful, many parents have begun to allow their children to use smart devices at an alarmingly young age. As a result of the juxtaposition of opinion between common consensus amongst the population of interest (adults who have children growing up in the I generation) and recently conducted research, the argument on whether smart devices are really child friendly becomes a binary tug of war between the benefits of its capabilities and the drawbacks it incurs through the impact on physical and cognitive development and abilities.Smart devices can be used to educate and entertain young minds. There are a multitude of apps and games that are created for the sole purpose of entertaining and educating children. Carly Shuler, a Cooney Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and author of the report Pockets of Potential, estimates that 20% of children, aged five to seven, use smartphones. The application store on iTunes shows that the number of apps marketed toward and for children has grown exponentially, as have the number of child-friendly educational applications. There are over 3,400 educational apps currently available for download at the iTunes store, with a large number of them targeted at children between the ages of two and five. Examples of these applications include “MatheMagics,” an app designed to teach children math in exciting and innovative ways, and “Simple States,” created for children to learn about the geography of the United States. These educational apps are appreciated because they give children the means to learn in fun and creative ways, and encourage children to adopt an eagerness-to-learn outlook from a young age.

Smart device capabilities have evolved significantly over the years, and devices have become so versatile and multifaceted that the ability to watch television has become one of the primary reasons that children use smart devices. Television offers programs which can teach children lifelong qualities and skills that the child will take with him/her throughout their lifetime. Television shows that teach and entertain children are pivotal to the development of children, because a child can learn languages, math, responsibility, how to take action, how to be a diligent worker, how to accomplish goals, and lastly, how to encourage others. For example, educational cartoons like “Maya and Miguel” teach about the importance of cultural diversity, “Nutri Ventures” teaches young children about the importance of eating healthy, and “Numbers Around the Globe” enlightens young minds on the importance of counting and physical activity. The purpose of these child-targeted television shows is to significantly influence children by teaching lessons and embedding ideas into their brains that are outside of what they may be learning in the classroom, or even at home.

Before smart devices, kids lived more active lifestyles. On average kids of previous generations spent more of their free time playing outside and enjoying the company of their neighborhood friends than today’s generation. By playing outside, children learned how to interact with others, gain social skills that they will need for the rest of their lives, and allowed children to get some sort of exercise through outdoor play; children did not rely as heavily on devices to keep them entertained. Nowadays, children are not as interested in going outside and playing with their friends. Smartphones are one cause of this inactivity. Instead of physical activity in the form of playing outdoors, children are turning to games or applications on phones for entertainment. Obesity is a disease that is more common than it has ever been in the past. This is caused in part by a national trend of a lack of physical activity. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children and adolescents should only spend a maximum of one to two hours in front of the television per day. The AAP has estimated that the average child can spend upwards of seven hours on TV, internet usage and video games per day. 

In addition to not getting enough exercise, many kids do not experience the benefits of spending time outdoors because they are heavily reliant on technology for the purpose of entertainment. Spending time outdoors has an immense number of positive effects on the body  as  it provides you with exposure to sunlight, which supplies your body with Vitamin D, that is essential to fight infections. Sitting in front of a screen in the evening causes a suppression of the hormone melatonin which regulates the sleep wake cycle. Regular exposure to sunlight helps to keep one’s sleep cycle regular by influencing the body’s production of melatonin; according to the National Sleep Foundation, devices such as tablets and smartphones emit harmful blue light that can cause headaches, eye strain and irritated eyes in children. A poll conducted in the United States by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that 72% of all children and 89% of teens have at least one electronic device in their sleeping environment.  This immediate access to an electronic device makes it increasingly difficult for a child’s body to effectively prepare to get ready for a good night's sleep. 

Smart devices may be educational, and entertaining for young minds, but can leave lasting negative social effects in developing children. These negative effects stem from the large amount of time children spend in front of their devices. In preschool, children are taught how to share, wait their turn, make friends, and good manners. Cell phones are now preventing these social skills from being taught, as children are becoming increasingly caught up in the advancements and usefulness of their technology rather than the real world and its own advancements. Since face-to-face contact is becoming limited, as expressed by the increase in personal screen time, people are becoming anti-social and increasingly impatient. Technology introduces the human race to the idea of instant gratification. Instant gratification, as defined in Merriam Webster, is the act of giving pleasure or satisfaction to the state of being pleased or satisfied. Cell phones allow us to have immediate access to information and when we have to wait more than a split second for something, we start to feel anxious. Statistically, children already lose their patience quickly. By exposing them to technology at earlier and earlier ages, parents are decreasing the chance that children will learn how the value of patience. Moreover, the growing trend amongst parents to use smartphones or smart devices to pacify a young child for extended periods of time impedes self-regulation. 

While smartphones/devices allow children to be exposed to vast entertainment options, these types of devices also allow for exposure to unimaginably negative internet content-- like pornography and exposure to the idea of sexting. In the book titled, The Boogeyman Exists-- and He's in Your Child's Back Pocket, Weinberger surveys a group of about 70,000 children in the last month and discovered some astounding and disturbing information. Weinberger found that, on average, sexting began in the fifth grade, pornography viewing began at around age eight, and addiction to pornography began around age eleven. In her book, she states that, “people do not develop their prefrontal cortex until about the age of 25, which is the part of the brain that controls impulses.” By giving a child a smartphone before the full development of the prefrontal cortex, this access unlocks a world of possibilities ranging from educational articles to pornography. She also argues the importance of parental controls on such devices and social media pages, encouraging parents to “educate yourself on the specific apps and social platforms that your child is probably using including specific settings and risks for: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Ask.fm, YouTube, and Gaming Consoles like Xbox and Playstation. Also included: Minecraft and game apps.” These platforms in particular are some of the ways that children are finding themselves caught up in the negative aspects of having smart devices. 

Along with the potential to be exposed to explicit internet experiences like pornography, smart devices expose children to the world of virtual violence which gives rise to psychosocial problems. Blood/gore, intense violence, strong sexual content, and the use of drugs: these are just a few of the phrases that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) uses to describe the content of several games in the Grand Theft Auto series, one of the most popular video game series among adolescents. Children and youth have the ability to produce, view, and interact within scenarios like school shootings, sexual violence, and community violence on their smart devices. A report was done in 2001, by the U.S. Surgeon General, on the topic of youth violence related to video game playing. This report detailed the in-depth analysis of the literature used in each of these games, reviewing psychological research studies and large observational studies. Following this research, the consensus was that there was an association between violent video games and increased aggressive behavior and thinking in adolescents. According to the same source, two psychologists, Dr. Patrick Markey of Villanova University and Dr. Charlotte Markey of Rutgers University, have presented evidence that some children may become more aggressive as a result of watching and playing violent video games. After reviewing the research, they concluded that the combination of three personality traits might be most likely to make an individual act and think aggressively after playing a violent video game. The three traits they identified were high neuroticism (prone to anger and depression, highly emotional, and easily upset), disagreeableness (cold, indifferent to other people), and low levels of conscientiousness (prone to acting without thinking, failing to deliver on promises, breaking rules). By giving children unlimited access to video games that promote unrestricted violence, these games will negatively affect the child’s impulses and moral compass indefinitely.

Smart devices these days are not just limited to smartphones, there are also smart televisions and smart watches. A report by a European consumer, Watchdog, has flagged countless problems associated with smartwatches designed for children, including security flaws, privacy concerns, and risks posed by unreliable features. Four brands of kids GPS tracker smart watches and their associate applications for parents to keep tabs on their kids were analyzed for the report: Namely the Gator 2, Tinitell, Viksfjord, and Xplora, all of which are sold in the regulator’s local market, and at least some also in the U.S. “Any consumer looking for ways to keep their children safe and secure might want to think twice before purchasing a smartwatch as long as the faults outlined in these reports have not been fixed,” writes the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) in the report. Smartwatches have security problems that were identified in three of the apps and devices, according to the report, including two devices with flaws that could allow a potential attacker to take control of the apps, giving them access to children’s real-time and historical location as well as personal details. This security breach could enable them to contact children directly, without parental knowledge. One of the watches was also found to function as a listening device, with further implications towards the arguments connected to violation of privacy and lack of security as it could allow a parent or stranger with “some technical knowledge” to audio monitor the surroundings of the child, without any clear indication on the physical watch that this activity is taking place. The report also found that several of the devices transmit personal data to servers located in North America and East Asia, in some cases without any encryption in place. Though designed to be beneficial to a child, smart devices designed to function as personal GPS systems ultimately put a child at risk to people with malicious intents.

In conclusion, though the argument presented is to not allow children the access to smartphones until their prefrontal cortex is developed, which is around the age of 11, that situation is not realistic for everyone. In order to satisfy both arguments, a compromise should and can be reached. Though smart devices and smartphones can have negative impacts on children, there are things that can be done about that. For example, parental controls can be put in place. Parental controls are a feature that is included in televisions, phones, and video games. These controls allow parents to choose the things that their children have access to, which will aid in the premature exposure to pornography. By parents taking advantage of the online opportunities given by certain softwares, they can be advocates for their children and ensure that the internet does not become a roadblock in the lives and overall wellbeing. Another way that parents can ensure that their children do not become corrupt by certain implications of the internet is to educate and entertain them in different ways. One way can be to encourage your child to read books and seek knowledge rather than giving them access to information that they do not have to comprehend. Smartphones and smart devices can be neither ignored nor avoided, but there are ways to ensure no overarching damage so that the next generation does not suffer from the negative effects of them: parental investment, proactivity and involvement.  
