In society today 56 percent of children, age 8 to 12, have a cell phone and among children 8 years and younger, 21 percent use smartphones (Kids Wireless Use Facts). The American society today is driven by the use of technology and smartphones are at the center. This over-usage of smartphones from such a young age presents dangers in physical and mental health, along with hindering the development of social skills within generations to come. With society facing this problem, I am posing that the government restricts the use of smartphones until the age of thirteen.  Like getting your license or the right to vote, the user will have to wait until his or her thirteenth birthday in order to obtain the rights to a smartphone. Although governmental restrictions are sometimes hard, this restriction will benefit society immensely and strongly help with the furthering of generations to come. 

Smartphones have a major presence within society and they are not all bad. Smartphones have modernized education and assisted in some development within children. As stated by Jenny Radesky and fellow authors, “Interactive media, on the other hand, facilitates more retention of taught material” (Radesky 1).  Her studies show that using smartphones will allow children to be able to better retain information given to them in the future. This new implementation of smartphones in the classroom has helped the issue of smartphones as a distraction. An article in the New York Times follows an English teacher from Fern Creek High School in Louisville, Kentucky that has guidelines for smartphone use within her classroom, but kids still find a way to go around them. Instead of punishing these children the teacher implemented smartphone usage into her lesson plans. The only downfall to this correlation between smartphones and education is the fact that this over usage of smartphones is causing this younger generation to be robots. 

Along with the minor beneficial educational aspects, smartphones will help children better their problem solving and vision. As stated by Amy Williams in her article entitled “How Do Smartphones Affect Childhood Psychology,” “Smartphones and technology do offer benefits to our children, games help develops a child’s’ peripheral vision and internet users tend to use decision-making and problem-solving brain regions more often” (Williams 3). An article in Business Insider, discusses how the blue light from our phones is not all bad on our eyesight. Blue light can help regulate the melatonin produced in our brains, which is sometimes a beneficial thing. This regulation of melatonin helps when people need to be awake in the morning but when you need to fall asleep it is detrimental to regulated sleep cycles. Smartphones have allowed our society to become technologically advanced resulting in wonderful things such as new forms of communications and education but just like everything good, they have bad traits if you look deep enough. 

Although smartphones do have a positive educational aspect their detrimental effects on the mental and physical health of children outweigh those beneficial aspects.  Society today does realize millennials and younger generations have a so called “addiction” to technology. There are currently time restricting applications on the market that allow parents to monitor the time their child spends on devices, and allows the parents to shut off the devices when the time is exceeded. Also in 2009, YouTube developed a parental control filter that allows parents to monitor or block things they do not want their children to watch. This does prevent young people from seeing videos they should not be watching but that is only if the parent implements the parental screening device. These strides society is taking to improve the use of smartphones fix the problem minimally but no concrete fixes have been implemented and our youth is still at risk. My solution of implementing a government regulated age restriction on smart phones will allow children to avoid most of the developmental health effects that come with the over usage of smartphones from such a young age. 

As already previously stated smartphones are beneficial when it comes to modern day communication and education. What we haven’t clarified is the detrimental health effects smartphones have on children’s mental and physical health. In regard to physical health, children’s brains are effected by the over usage of phones leading to over exposure of radiation. Author Mohana Saha explains how “the radiation emitted by smart phones can have adverse effect on children. Children absorb more than 60 percent of the radiation into the brain than adults” (Saha 1).  This is because a child’s brain has thinner skin tissues and bones, which allows the radiation to absorb faster. A study preformed in 2008 by Dr Gaby Badre which was quoted by Saha in her article states that this over exposure also leads to sleep disruption, fatigue, and eyestrain that includes burning, itchy and tired eyes.  These symptoms where found excessively more in children who used their phones a higher amount of time then children who did not. Once children develop stronger brain tissue after puberty they will be less susceptible to over exposure to radiation. Since my regulation would not allow children to receive the smartphone until after the primary puberty stage they would avoid the symptoms of over exposure to radiation. 

Along with the overexposure to radiation another health risks posed by the overuse of smartphones that is happening in our youth is the lack of physical activity. The more time children spend on their smartphones the more time they are not getting exercise. As author Cris Rowan discusses in her book, “Technology overuse is the salient reason why children of the new millennium are less physically active than they have ever been in recorded history” (Rowan 39).” She also states there is a direct correlation between childhood obesity and the amount of time a child spends on his or her phone. This correlation comes from the fact that children are spending more time inside on their phone playing on apps or scrolling social media, than they are outside getting exercise.

The introduction of smartphones into younger generations’ lives have affected them strongly when it comes to physical well-being.  Smartphones have compromised the physical health of the younger generations as shown in test and research from authors quoted above. But not only has the introduction of smartphones and modern-day technology affected the physical well-being of children, it has been said to detrimentally affect the psyche of young children as well. 

Growing up in a technology driven world and the introduction of social media has directly affected the way young children perceive themselves to be. Social media introduced by smartphones has ruined how children perceive themselves and have destroyed the younger generations’ self-esteem. Author of the article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, Jean M Twenge states “Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on non-screen activities are more likely to be happy” (Twenge 3). This fall in happiness correlates to social media usage and activity on screen.  Social media shows children lives they want to live and how they want to look and failure to live up to something like that causes children, especially young girls, to have mental health issues. Growing up as a millennial and sadly slightly addicted to my smartphone and social media I have experienced first-hand how this affects my mental health. Social media allows us to see everything everyone is doing so we know if we got left out, see beautiful models and their bodies and worry about why people are not talking to us every second of every day. The proposition of regulating smart phones for ages after puberty will allow young teens to already develop a sense of self before getting their self-esteem shot by social media.

Along with the mental psyche drain, smartphones have detrimental effects when it comes to emotional development. As stated by author Amy Williams, “If a child relies on electronics to communicate, they risk weakening their people skills and children can become detached from others’ feelings” (Williams 2). This hindering of people skills will affect the younger generations to come in future job interviews and professional situations.  When approached with a situation where they have to communicate with people on a professional level, they will not be experienced enough. The proposed regulation will allow children to develop their people and communication skills before they are allowed a phone which will prepare them from the real world. 

After evaluating all the good and bad that has come with this new found technological revolution society is experiencing today, I have proposed what I think is a solution to decrease the detrimental mental and physical health affects smartphones have on the younger generations. What I am suggesting is that the government restricts the use of smartphones until the age of thirteen.  Receiving a smartphone after the age of thirteen and the finishing of puberty will allow children to develop a strong self-image and their frontal lobes to develop, this will allow them to avoid most of the physical and mental side effects that come with the over usage of phones. This will be more effective because children have found a way around the already implemented parental controls and regulations society has in place. 

This regulation is not perfect, just like most government regulations. People will find loop holes and find a way to break the regulation.  This regulation will be beneficial because people will finally be aware that there are problems with smartphones and our younger generation are at risk of being not equipped to deal with the real world. Now that society is aware of the effects on health and wellness of younger generations, they know things need to change. If society does not make a change within our habits regarding addiction to technology our younger generations will turn into technology driven robots. As long as society is informed, that this is a problem we are facing today something is going right. Smartphones are damaging to younger generation and unless we do something to stop these detrimental effects future generation will struggle. 
