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Smartphones have become an integral part of modern life, offering a multitude of benefits that enhance communication, productivity, entertainment, and convenience.
Here’s just a few ways they have transformed our lives which I love:
Communication: Smartphones revolutionised communication by allowing people to stay connected regardless of their location. With features like calls, texts, emails, and various messaging apps, we can easily reach out to friends, family, colleagues, and clients.
Information Access: Smartphones provide instant access to a vast amount of information through the internet. We can quickly look up news, research topics, find directions, and access educational resources, empowering us with knowledge at our fingertips.
Productivity: Smartphones offer numerous productivity tools such as calendars, reminders, notes, and productivity apps that help us stay organised and efficient. They enable remote work and collaboration, allowing us to respond to emails, edit documents, and attend meetings on the go.
Navigation: GPS technology in smartphones enables accurate navigation, helping us find directions, locate businesses, and avoid traffic jams. Navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze provide real-time updates, making travel more convenient and efficient.
Entertainment: Smartphones provide a plethora of entertainment options, including streaming services for music, films, and TV shows, as well as mobile games, e-books, podcasts, and social media platforms. They offer a convenient way to unwind and relax during leisure time.
Photography: The camera capabilities of smartphones have advanced significantly, allowing us to capture high-quality photos and videos without the need for a separate camera. With features like portrait mode, night mode, and editing tools, smartphones have transformed photography, enabling anyone to express their creativity.
Health and Fitness: Smartphones can be powerful tools for health and fitness tracking, with built-in sensors and apps that monitor physical activity, sleep patterns, and nutrition. They facilitate access to workout routines, meditation guides, and health-related information, promoting overall well-being.
Convenience: Smartphones consolidate multiple devices and services into one portable device, reducing the need to carry separate gadgets such as cameras, MP3 players, calculators, and physical maps. They enable mobile payments, ticket bookings, and shopping, simplifying everyday tasks.
Accessibility: Smartphones have features and apps designed to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, including screen readers, voice commands, magnification, and captioning tools. They empower users with diverse needs to navigate the digital world more easily.
Social Connection: Smartphones facilitate social interaction and community engagement through social media platforms, forums, and messaging apps. They allow people to stay connected with friends, participate in online communities, and share experiences, fostering relationships and a sense of belonging.
Smartphones have transformed the way we live, work, and communicate, offering unparalleled convenience, connectivity, and functionality in a single device.
BUT
Is your child ready for all that? Able to navigate the open door that smartphones offer?
Able to handle the notifications, access to gaming, open access to betting, porn, malicious and damaging content?
The cyberbullying, the constant scrolling instead of playing, exploring, talking in real life to real people?
Able to break free from the addictive qualities and addictive algorithms that entice kids in and keep them hooked?
Just asking!
There’s a huge body of evidence that smartphones are best given to kids once they have been prepared for them, have parental controls and conversations and boundaries put in around them.
We don’t just drop kids off in the park and leave them to it do we so why do we just drop them off in the online world and leave them to it?
Jonathan Haidt in his fascinating and compelling book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness suggests waiting until kids are 14 for smartphones and 16 for access to social media
It’s not the only answer but it’s a beginning.
Access to the internet too early and too soon damages kids
Pause to Ponder as a Parent
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt explores the simultaneous rise in teen mental illness across various countries, attributing it to a seismic shift from a “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” around the early 2010s.
He argues that the negative effects of this “great rewiring of childhood” will continue to worsen without the adoption of several norms and a more hands-on approach to regulating social media platforms.
He suggests 4 simple ways to change the narrative and make kids lives happier.
More unsupervised play: allow children to gain social skills and become independent
No smartphones before 14: limit usage to simple mobile phones.
No social media before 16: protect those in the most vulnerable stages of brain development.
Phone free schools: store devices in lockers to promote real-life interaction, connection and focus.
If you’d like help with what to say and how to handle it with your kids download my free ‘Tips and Scripts’ Guide
And listen to me talking to Nick Ferrari on LBC Radio about it.
Discussing every possible aspect of parenting, giving you advice and support on topics which affect your daily life. Each free, weekly episode is bursting with practical tips, techniques and ideas.
I will teach you my no-nonsense, simple techniques & give you hundreds of my expert parenting articles, videos & podcasts so you can get back to the business of having fun with your family!
