In recent years, the evidence against smartphones for children and teenagers has only grown. There is clear correlation between the use of digital technologies and mental illness, anxiety, identity confusion, loneliness, and depression. So much so, that many schools are banning phones. In fact, all of them should.

The biggest holdouts, according to the heads of schools and educators I speak with, are not the students. It’s the parents, many of whom are either fearful of not being able to contact their student in an emergency or who feel as if the cat is already out of the bag when it comes to smartphones at home.

In her new book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, Clare Morell, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, demonstrates that it is possible to get back ahead of smartphones within our homes. Recently, Morell was a guest on a recent bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast. Here’s what she had to say:

Brain research really shows that even a small amount of time on social media, smartphones, any type of interactive screen, is highly addictive to the brain. It shows the brain actually goes into this dopamine deficit state as soon as the person gets off. And so, no time limit is ever enough because as soon as you leave an app or leave the screen, your brain does not return to a normal baseline. It actually dips below baseline to create this craving for you to repeat that behavior and do it again. And so, the brain imaging studies of heavy users of social media resemble the brains of those who have been addicted to highly addictive drugs. The structural changes happening at the brain level are the same.


Another convincing piece of research was a doctor named Victoria Dunckley who was seeing kids coming into her practice with mood issues: having trouble focusing, attention spans, a lot of behavioral issues, emotional dysregulation, mood swings, irritability, tantrums, etc. And she found that in a lot of cases just taking away the screens reduced the symptoms entirely … like eliminated them. Parents were coming in saying they thought their kid had ADHD or autism because of these behavioral changes they were seeing in their kids.

She found that these changes were actually induced by electronic screens. Doing a screen detox for 30 days eliminated the symptoms. In a lot of cases, the kid didn’t have autism or ADHD. It was a screen-induced response, even from 30 minutes of screentime a day. If it’s an interactive screen, like smartphones, social media, or video games, it puts the kids’ developing nervous system into this fight or flight mode.

And that cumulates over time with that chronic stress. They’re in this kind of stress response, and the body is not expending that energy. Their cortisol and their adrenaline are so high that it dysregulates their mood and their behavior. Again, Dunckley was seeing this even from kids with regular use of screens, not excessive screen time. So, it just convinced me that the design of these technologies are so addictive and create such a strong response on a child’s developing brain and nervous system, that they aren’t safe in any amount.

Especially for Christian parents, I would say, even if you’re thinking, we’re not letting them watch any bad content; we’ve made sure the content is really safe—you still need to be concerned that the design of the technology itself is harmful to your child’s development, their health and wellbeing, their brain, their nervous system, even in small amounts. That’s why I argue for a total exit and show parents how to do it.

That was Clare Morell, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of the new book The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. Listen to the entire bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast by searching for Breakpoint wherever you download podcasts.

According to author and researcher Jonathan Haidt, nearly one-third of parents regret giving their child a smartphone or access to social media when they did. Only 1% say they wished had provided these devices sooner. Take the tech exit. Your kids may not thank you now, but they probably will later on.

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