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No evidence early childhood phone ownership hurts kids: Stanford study

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There is no significant link between childhood phone ownership and kids' well-being, according to new research out of Stanford University.

Researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine followed more than 250 children from low-income families in Northern California for five years in order to track their well-being as they transitioned to phone ownership.

In the end, they found the age at which kids received their first phones had no meaningful impact on their grades, sleep habits or depression symptoms.

The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development on Sept. 2.

"We found that whether or not the children in the study had a mobile phone, and when they had their first mobile phone, did not seem to have meaningful links to their well-being and adjustment outcomes," lead author Xiaoran Sun said in a media release.

"There doesn’t seem to be a golden rule about waiting until eighth grade or a certain age."

Children were between seven and 11 years old when the study began, and between 11 and 15 when it ended. The average age at which they received their first phones was 11.6 years, with the rate of phone ownership rising steeply between 10.7 and 12.5 years of age. During that period, half of the children enrolled in the study received their first phones. Nearly all the children had phones by 15 years old and 99 per cent of those were smartphones.

Each child and one of their parents went through an initial baseline assessment at the beginning of the study, plus annual follow-up assessments.

During each assessment, researchers took note of whether each child had received a phone that year, and whether it was a smartphone. They also took note of each child's depression symptoms, school grades, bedtime, waking time and general daytime sleepiness. After each visit, children wore accelerometers for a week to help the researchers measure sleep onset and sleep duration.

The researchers controlled for factors that could have skewed the results, including each child’s age at the start of the study, their sex and birth order, their birth country, the parents' marital status and education level, family income, how often English was spoken at home and how far each child had progressed through puberty.

They did observe some changes after kids received their first phones. Whereas the entire group’s depression indicators dropped over time, the decrease was slower when children owned phones than when they did not.

The researchers also noticed slight differences in sleep. Parents reported that kids had less sleep on school nights when they owned a phone versus when they didn’t own a phone.

Ultimately, though, Sun and her colleagues found these differences too minor to be statistically significant. They concluded that, in general, phone ownership was not linked either positively or negatively to children’s overall well-being.

"These are average trends on a population level," she said. "There can still be individual differences. It doesn’t mean you can’t take your kid’s phone away if you think it’s taking too much sleep time."

The Canadian Paediatric Society this week also released new guidance around screen time for toddlers and preschoolers. Where the organization previously recommended a firm cap of one hour per day for kids two to five years old, it no longer suggests a hard-and-fast cap for that age group.

The new guidance released Thursday morning still says kids aged two to five should only have one hour per day of "sedentary screen time," but now makes allowances for additional interactive uses, including educational programs and family movie nights.

It also still recommends zero screen time for kids younger than age two, except to video-chat with loved ones.

With files from The Canadian Press

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