‘Digital fentanyl’: Why you should never give your kid a smartphone

Most parents these days are aware that too much screen time is harmful to their children, so they implement, or at least try to implement, a system of guidelines regarding how and when their kids can use digital technology.

But now that smartphones are basically universal, how do parents protect their children from the inherent dangers of the internet, social media, and addiction when the digital world lives in their back pocket?

Clare Morell, director of the Technology and Human Flourishing Project for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, tells “Zero Hour’s” James Poulos that, as countercultural as it is, the only way to protect your children is to say no to smartphones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_mAr4pLokg

“Most parents know that these digital technologies aren’t good for kids, but they’ve been sold this illusion from the tech companies themselves that if you just put on screen-time limits and our parental controls, then you can mitigate these harms, but fundamentally, these strategies are just harm-reduction measures,” she says.

Even under the strictest screen-time parameters, some harm is inevitable.

It’s a “lose, lose” situation for parents, says Morell. “The screen-time limits don’t work; the kids always want more because these technologies are addictive by design … and the kids aren’t sufficiently protected” because they “continue to encounter dangerous content or find ways around the screen-time limits.”

Morell argues that it’s the tech companies who we should blame. They are the ones who are lying to parents by suggesting that they can “stand between a child and this drug-dispensing machine” that was intentionally designed to be “inherently addictive.”

But is it really possible to cut out smart technology from your child’s life completely?

It’s certainly not the easy path, but it’s the best path, Morell says.

“I ended up interviewing dozens for my book and found that not only was it possible to opt out completely from these addictive digital technologies, but these families were flourishing. Their grown children in college were grateful that they had not been given smartphones; they saw the differences even among their peers on the college campus,” she tells James.

Morell’s book, “The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones,” drops in June this year.

“What kind of harm are we talking about here? How severe is the problem?” James asks.

Smartphone usage is “causing this mental health epidemic among kids,” says Morell. “Anxiety, rates of depression, suicide, self harm have skyrocketed, and it lines up exactly with the release of social media” and the “ubiquity of smartphones among teens.”

Big tech companies are keenly aware of the damage their products are causing to children, but actual change would require them to transform their highly lucrative business model, which is predicated on addiction. Thus, change isn’t likely.

“They want to maximize user attention, time, and data to sell it to advertisers,” so they are not motivated to change, Morell explains.

The parental controls, which again don’t really work, are something they can sell to create the illusion of concern for children while keeping their business model intact.

“It’s like putting a Band-Aid on this kind of gaping wound,” says Morell, calling the Big Tech industry “inherently predatory.”

Parents, she says, would do well to ditch the faulty metaphor that smartphones should be treated like sugar — something to enjoy in moderation.

The amount of dopamine released in the brain when a child engages with social media is equivalent to “highly addictive drugs,” she explains.

“Sugar is really not the right metaphor. It’s more like digital fentanyl.”

To hear more about Morell’s research, watch the episode above.

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