Inside the fight for smartphone-free childhoods

A rising number of parents around the world, who have become addicted to handheld devices themselves, want to ban under-16s from having them.

Pippa Bailey

May 3, 2024 – 9.37am

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In the early 2010s, something went wrong with adolescent mental health. Rates of depression among American 12- to 17-year-olds rose by more than 150 per cent. The suicide rate for boys aged 10 to 14 increased by 91 per cent, for girls by 167 per cent.

The picture in the UK is similar: the 2017 National Health Survey found that since the previous poll in 2004, anxiety in 11- to 15-year-olds in England had risen by about 70 per cent. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of 13- to 16-year-olds hospitalised for self-harm increased by 78 per cent for girls and 134 per cent for boys.

New Statesman