There is growing concern among parents, educators and mental health experts that excessive smartphone use may be contributing to the recent surge in adolescent depression and suicide. But what qualifies as “excessive”? At this point, no one’s sure. Specific, evidence-based guidelines take time to determine—years, and sometimes decades.
And the pace at which kids have incorporated mobile devices into their lives has left parents in the dust. Keep devices out of kids’ bedrooms: There is already strong data linking bedroom screen time with a variety of risks—particularly sleep loss, even among adults, before-bed media use is associated with sleep loss and insomnia. And kids need more sleep than grownups,taking away a child’s phone at bedtime can be a battle, but it’s worth the fight. Setuponline firewalls and data cutoffs: It’s unrealistic to expect young people to stay away from illicit…
