Smartphone Addiction Is Like ‘Heroine’, Teens Being ‘Hypnotized’

A mother says her daughter’s smartphone addiction is ‘like heroin’. She is one of the Bristol parents who have spoken out about the impact of phones on their teenagers.

Many are joining now Smartphone Free Childhood groups where they can meet other parents who are in a similar struggle.

While parents of elementary school-aged children make pacts to delay buying their children a smartphone, for many parents it’s too late. Like adults, children and young people use phones to stay in touch with friends and family, and in some cases may use one to access homework.

Bristol parent Nikki Berridge got smartphones for both her children when they started high school. She says it’s been a constant battle to restrict phone use with her youngest child, who is now 13. While she felt it wasn’t practical to ditch the phones completely, she admits she bribed her daughter to stay off social media.

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In addition to addictive behavior, she worries that young people are missing out on childhood and the space to think critically without being told what to do by an algorithm. “It’s the biggest task of this generation and there’s no guidance,” explains Nikki, who remembers having to invent her own games as a child and watching TV with her parents in the evenings.

She said: “It’s a massive distraction for my daughter and it feels like taking heroin. It’s that dopamine hit I’m looking for when I take it too. I see the terrible addiction of it in her.”

Chanel, who has three children, regrets getting her teenage sons, now 13 and 18, smartphones when they started high school. She decided to delay getting her younger child one until she was at least 14 years old.

Like many parents, she believed it was the right thing to do to keep them safe. Chanel said: “They became very secretive, hiding it. They still had it late at night, even when we took it and woke up tired.

Chanel was particularly concerned when her son started using Instagram, despite its ban, and encountered disturbing images. “My eight-year-old keeps asking for a phone, but with the movement, there’s this solidarity and we can all hold the phones together. There will be more information about why it is better not to use the smartphone,” she added.

Although smartphones are targeted because they are portable, computer consoles, televisions and tablets can often produce similar effects. Dr Susie Davis, a GP in South Bristol, said the number of young people with mental health problems had increased and although the problems were not gender specific, in general she found that men and women had different habits.

Dr Davis worked with students in 2018 and said he would see young men with depression after spending up to 20 hours a day locked in their rooms playing computer games. And she encountered female students, exposed to idealized images and advertisements, who suffered from low self-esteem.

Dr Davis, who now delivers workshops in Bristol schools through her charity Papaya, decided not to give his daughter a smartphone who was 10 years old at the time and wanted one. “We have to go back to the real world, we are now seeing a mental health epidemic in young adults who have grown up with this technology,” she said.

Her advice for parents whose children already have a smartphone is to make sure they don’t use it at night, have time limits and are able to have open conversations about their use. Dr Davis said: “It’s about getting a healthy person. balance and it’s different for every family. My 10 year old went to high school with a basic phone and now at 16 he is thanking me.

“We can all become addicted to it. I delete instagram every weekend to be present for my kids. It’s like being involuntarily hypnotized and before you know it, you’ve lost half an hour of your life.”