YES
Dr Sanjiv Nichani
senior consultant paediatrician, East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre and Leicester Children’s Hospital
I emphatically agree with the call to ban smartphones in schools for under-16s. Since the advent of smartphones and the 24/7 social media app culture, civilisation has changed irrevocably.
We are in the middle of a ‘screendemic’, leading to difficulties in speech and language development in early childhood and an epidemic of mental health illness in children and young people.
One study of 6,595 adolescents who spent three or more hours on social media revealed they face double the risk of anxiety and depression.
A research paper in The Lancet that studied 18,900 adolescents concluded that persistent frequent social media use was associated with significant anxiety and lower self-esteem and life satisfaction among both boys and girls.
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