Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 8/18/25

As a clinician, I often have difficult conversations with parents about how to reduce the amount of time that their children spend using screen-based devices every day. Many of the parents I encounter are unwilling to limit their children’s screen time because of a perception that children who don’t have devices will be “left behind” or potentially ostracized by their peers.

I see a fair number of folks who use devices to entertain their children rather than interacting with them, which I find sad. When I walk into an exam room and see a kid poking away at a tablet while their parent sits in a heads-down position with their own phone, it makes me wonder what happens when they are not at the physician office. Ultimately, kids become dependent on devices for interaction and this can be a problem when they reach school age, when teachers spend a good chunk of time policing phone-related behavior.

As of the start of this school year, more than half of US states have passed legislation or created policies regarding the use of cell phones in K-12 classrooms. These range from requirements that school districts create guidelines of their own to outright bans. Among the reasons for such bans, lawmakers cite the need to create a distraction-free learning environment, a desire to curtain social media use, and a hope that such strategies will have a positive influence on youth mental health.

My own local district had a well-researched plan that had been created after stakeholder listening sessions with students, parents, and teachers. It was pre-empted by a maneuver at the state level that is significantly stricter. When my district was creating its policy, it used its health advisory committee to comment on the potential risks and benefits of restricting cell phone use.

Physicians raised the issue of the use of cell phones for medical reasons, including students and faculty who use apps to manage health conditions like diabetes. It’s clear from looking at some of the state laws that these kinds of needs might not have been considered by legislators. Needless to say, people aren’t happy about it, and I’m sure there will be some settling in once school starts.

With that in mind, I ran across this article that covers the topic from the youth point of view. Although it mentions the fact that devices have addictive properties, it also digs into the ways in which childhood in the US is changing. It reviews a Harris Poll survey of 500 children ages 8-12, with the majority saying they had smartphones and half of the older members of the cohort saying that social media use was common in their peer groups.

One of my favorite quotes from the piece states that, “This digital technology has given kids access to virtual worlds, where they’re allowed to roam far more freely than in the real one.” As a proud member of Gen X who had the stereotypical “come home when the streetlights come on” childhood, this resonated with me. The article notes that many children haven’t so much as gone down a grocery store aisle alone and that a good number aren’t able to play unsupervised in their own yards.

The authors note that children expressed a desire to socialize in person with minimal supervision, but due to restrictions by their parents, they instead use their phones to socialize unsupervised. Of course, there are reasons that parents have become more restrictive with their children, including fear of injury or abduction, but one of the statistics mentioned in the article is that “a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger.”

It goes on to say: “Without real-world freedom, children don’t get the chance to develop competence, confidence, and the ability to solve everyday problems. Indeed, independence and unsupervised play are associated with positive mental-health outcomes.”

The authors mention the creation of parenting networks where kids are encouraged to get together for unsupervised play and community organizations that are promoting screen-free time. The deeper I got into the article, the more I wondered what tech companies think about these efforts and whether they feel that such advocacy for unstructured device-free play might ever be a threat to their respective bottom lines.

I’ve been a volunteer in youth-serving organizations for over 20 years, and I would say that any threat wouldn’t be a serious one. To get kids to put down their phones, we would likely need to see parents doing it first. On second thought, though, maybe if there was a TikTok influencer that started telling parents it was cool to let their kids run around the neighborhood and dig holes in the yard as some of us did once upon a time, we might see a change.

I recently read the book “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s a complex novel told from the point of view of Klara, who is an Artificial Friend purchased to serve as a companion to a child with a chronic illness. I won’t throw out any spoilers as to the nature of that illness, but it was an interesting read.

There are already enough ways that technology is impacting childhood, so I hope we don’t get to the point where life starts imitating the novel. On the other hand, there are some scenes in the book where the main human character is allowed to go outside to play with only the supervision of the Artificial Friend. It made me think a bit that if parents won’t let their kids explore the world alone, maybe there just might be a role for technology.

It will be interesting to see if there is any research published in the next couple of years with respect to these cell phone limitations and bans and whether they do have a positive impact on youth mental health. It’s estimated that mental health is impacting the US economy to the tune of $282 billion annually, so we can’t afford not to study how these interventions play out.

What do you think about the role of government in limiting the use of technology for individuals, whether they’re children or adults? Leave a comment or email me.

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