How much should we worry about our children using screens? It’s hard, as a parent, not to worry. Not least because we’re constantly surrounded by doom-laden warnings about how smartphones have “destroyed a generation”.
The problem is that, while the headlines are really, really stark, the evidence is really, really weak. Those headlines, which one psychologist I spoke to described as “scaremongering”, are based on studies that show small, ambiguous effects; they suggest that social media is the disease, when the research cannot show that it’s anything but a symptom; and almost all the studies are weak and badly designed, so even what little they do show we can’t take very seriously.
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