Smartphones' Impact on Children's Mental Health - Essay Sample

Introduction

The smartphone technology is here to stay, no doubt about that. The impact that this technology has brought in the modern world are widespread and comprise of both positive and negative sides. These impacts have been widely studied over the time of the technology's existence, with a wide range of conclusions being drawn from this research. Perhaps little studied, however, are the effects of the smartphones on children and more so on their mental health. It is crucial to understand the impacts of this new technology, especially on growing children since little is understood so far, given the relative infancy of the technology, which hs only picked up in the last decade. As such, no conclusive impacts have been observed in children through to adulthood to understand the implications that it may have thoroughly. This formed the central point of our research; thus, in an attempt to understand the effects of smartphones on the mental; health of growing children.

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Some of the previous research that has been done about the effects of smartphone use includes their impact on the nerves of the hand resulting from prolonged use. Such an investigation was conducted by Woo et al. (2016), involving a sample population of 30 adults who volunteered to have sonography taken of their wrists for the research. Following the study, it was observed that prolonged smartphone use caused deformation in the wrists of the subjects increasing the chances of developing carpal tunnel syndrome, due to excessive hand movements. Similarly, smartphone use has been linked to decreased physical activities in the subjects, increasing lifestyle disease. Such was the basis for research by Kim et al. (2015), who investigated the link between extreme smartphone use and physical activities. The study concluded that smartphones have adverse impacts on overall physical health, further highlighting the harmful effects of smartphone technology.

On the other hand, smartphones have also been found to have positive impacts on physical health. Such was the nature of the study by Glynn et al. (2014). In a population sample of 139 people aged above 16 years, it was found that the majority were willing to adopt the use of Android applications in their workout routines, resulting in increased physical fitness of the subjects. This led to the conclusion that applications available through smartphones were also beneficial to the physical fitness of willing subjects.

Subsequently, our research was aimed at investigating the thesis statement that; "Smartphone use is detrimental to the mental health of children," through the following hypothesis:

• Null hypothesis: Smartphone use among young children has no adverse impacts on their mental health
• Alternate hypothesis: Smartphone use among small children has adverse impacts on their mental health

Methodology

To gain a better understanding of the topic of our research, it was necessary to conduct interviews involving the members of this population to identify how smartphone use related to their mental health. To accomplish this task, a population sample comprising of 30 children aged between 5 to 16 years of age with access to a smartphone was randomly selected to participate in the study. A control group consisting of 10 children of the same age brackets who have never used a smartphone was also involved in the study. Interviews were conducted in a supervised environment, with the questions designed to explore the length of time they spent on a smartphone, how long they have had access to it as well as how they use them. To gather this information, questions were asked about the websites they visit as well as the frequency in which they do so. The subjects were after that evaluated by a psychologist to establish characteristics such as temperament, curiosity levels, self-control and emotional stability. Comments were placed by the experts on their respective interview sheets following their assessment. The data was after that compiled and analyzed to establish the outcome, which was then interpreted and the results presented. A conclusion was then drawn from the analyzed results in regards to our hypothesis and presented at the end of the chapter.

Results

From the interviews done and the evaluation by psychological experts, the results were analyzed and presented after that as seen below. The results from the interviews were collected, and upon analysis, it was observed that the majority of the selected population of children with access to a smartphone used it under supervision of their guardians and thus had limited exposure. This comprised the first group segment and was made up mainly of children under the age of 12. However, the rest of the sample making up the second group segment was observed to have exposure over extensive periods. This group mainly comprised of children over the age of 12. Of this group, the majority were found to have had unsupervised access to a smartphone over the past five years. This group was also found to be the most affected according to the psychology experts assessments.

Of the first group segment, there was little engagement with smartphones and the subjects spent an average of one hour on the gadgets daily. The subjects in this group were also found to mostly use the devices to chat and catch up with friends at school, as well as checking up on assignments over the internet. A small number among them were found to visit social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook these devices. According to the expert's assessments, this group was found to be the least affected by the various mental disorders assessed. The majority of the subjects were found to score highly as far as curiosity and self-control was concerned. Similarly, their score regarding temperament and emotional stability was commendably high, save for a few isolated cases.

The second group segment, on the other hand, displayed mixed results as far as these factors were concerned. Of this segment, the majority were found to spend more than 5 hours a day on their gadgets, and the majority were fond of social media websites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook among others. Also, a substantial number of them were found to have at one point or another accessed adult websites such as pornographic sites. Furthermore, the average score in regards to temperament, self-control, emotional stability as well as curiosity levels was found to be very low as compared to those of the control group.

Conclusion

The results obtained from analyzing our interviews seem to suggest the existence of an inverse relationship between early exposure to smartphones and the occurrence of mental diseases among children. From our analysis, we can conclude that the earlier and longer children are exposed to smartphones, the higher their chances of developing mental disorders such as addictions due to low self-control. This conclusion would, therefore, lead us to adopt the alternate hypothesis that "Smartphone use among small children has adverse impacts on their mental health."