New Study Offers A Surprising Take On Middle Schoolers & Smartphones

When it comes to parenting older kids, little strikes fear into the hearts of thoughtful parents more than the subject of smartphones. You hear so many horrible things about screen use in general and cell phones in particular, but at the same time it’s getting harder and harder to go through life without some kind of smart device. But the Life in Media survey —a new study out of the University of South Florida that surveyed more than 1,500 11 to 13 year olds — offers some hope for worried parents.

Children were asked questions about smartphone ownership and usage, social media use, gaming, news consumption, and cyber-bullying, as well as their activities, relationships, and mental health offline. In a twist nobody was expecting, those who have their own smartphones (and it’s a large majority, about 78%) fared better than kids who don’t on nearly every measure of well-being assessed. They were less likely to report depression and anxiety symptoms and had higher self-esteem. They were even less likely to report having been cyber-bullied.

And this isn’t simply an issue of “More affluent families are more likely to give their kids smartphones and affluent kids are understandably happier.” According to the Life in Media survey, less affluent kids were more likely to have smartphones than their more affluent peers.

“It’s the opposite to what we thought going into this survey, to be honest,” said lead researcher Justin D. Martin during an appearance on The Poynter Report Podcast. “We thought that smartphone ownership would be associated with ill-being in a number of different cases … We’re hoping that our findings will bring down the temperature a little but in the room in terms of some of the fears about kids and their smart phones. Because it might not be as bad as we previously suspected.”

The report highlighted some facts we’ve come to fear. Children surveyed get smartphones early — 9 and a half on average — and spend a lot of time on them and tablets: four and a half hours on a school day and six and a half on weekends and holidays. A lot of that time is spent scrolling short-form media like YouTube and TikTok, but that’s not all they’re doing.

In fact, kids with smartphones were more likely to spend more time with friends in-person and be physically active.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. As demonstrated in the graph above, 54% of smartphone owners felt relief when they couldn’t access their phone. Moreover, One in four surveyed report sleeping with their smartphones in their beds and get less sleep — 8.6 hours versus the 9.3 enjoyed by kids who don’t keep their devices in bed.

And while cell phones in and of themselves are correlated to positive outcomes, posting publicly to social media was associated with multiple harms. Children who report posting “often” were twice as likely to report moderate or severe symptoms of depression or anxiety as those who “never” or “rarely” post.

Cyber-bullying was more prevalent for kids who don’t have smartphones (Martin hypothesizes on the Poynter Report that this could be because they are excluded since they don’t have as much access to the internet and are perhaps less able to defend themselves) but it is nevertheless common regardless of smartphone ownership: 57% of kids report at least some degree of cyberbullying within the past three months. Even the smallest amount of cyberbullying is associated with adverse outcomes, such as anxiety, depression, volatile emotions, and ironically, increased dependence on technology.

And yet when all is said and done, the harms did not appear to outweigh the benefits of smartphone use among young teens.

“There are large, formidable movements to withhold smartphones from kids until they’re in high school,” Martin shared on the Poynter Report. “But our data are such that we can’t really support that recommendation. We’re not necessarily telling every parent and adult ‘Go out and buy your kid a smartphone right now and let them do whatever they want with it,’ but having a smartphone for kids is associated with so many positive things we can’t recommend taking smartphones away from kids.”

Martin hopes this survey can expand in scale — he hopes to recruit 8,000 children across the country — and scope. He wants to continue to track children’s relationship with their smartphones for the next 25 to 30 years. Of course, he understands that technology will certainly change in that time and that too many kids’ attitudes towards their smartphones. But for now, it might not be as bad as we fear.

“We don’t find evidence that smartphone ownership is harmful to children,” he concluded on Poynter, continuing, “I guess I would say that the kids are probably going to be just fine.”