Are teenagers at risk or do smartphones? Experts do not agree
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An attempt to reach a scientific consensus about the potential damage raised by smartphones and the use of social networks in young people has descended to a discussion among researchers. This failed consensus suggests that it will be difficult for political leaders to rely on existing evidence by deciding how to regulate such technologies.
Valerio Capraro of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy and more than 100 colleagues, extracted from 11 different disciplines, have published a “statement of consensus” on the possible negative effects of the use of smartphones in adolescents. “We have one leg after the discussion about the debate, and we think that perhaps we could try to find common land between different points of view,” says Capraro.
The researchers analyzed 26 detailed statements on the use of the impact of smartphones on the mental health of adolescents, such as the intensive use of phones can cause sleep deprivation or behavior addiction. These statements were extracted from The anxious generation By Jonathan Haidt at the University of New York, a book that has an influential bone in the debate on smartphones, but also heavy criticized by some researchers. Haidt himself is also co -author of the statement.
Then, each researcher described whether they agreed with each claim, as well as the strength of the evidence that supports claims. There was a broad agreement on several critical points; 99 percent agreed that adolescents’ mental health had decreased especially in the United States, with similar trends in other Western nations. And 98 percent competed that the heavy use of smartphones correlates strongly with sleep disturbances. More than 94 percent of the experts said that the young women encountered particular problems, including the improper complex of colleagues, feeling the need to look perfect and be sexual harassment online.
However, experts also agreed in equally high proportions that the evidence of thesis claims is only correlational, non -causal. A more rigorous investigation would be needed, including longitudinal studies that track smartphone users on time, to test a correlation, many agree. In general, while more than 90 percent agreed that something was wrong with young people, only 52 percent supported political actions such as age restrictions and telephone prohibitions in schools.
Despite this warning, researchers suggest that it should not be an excuse for inaction by political leaders. “The causal evidence of high quality of the effectiveness of political decisions has been, while policy formulators or have to make decisions in rapid envies with limited data,” they wrote.
But investigators who were not involved with the consensus declaration have played their findings, and have also received criticism in social networks. For example, Pete Etchells at the University of Bath Spa, the United Kingdom, points out that only around 120 of the 288 guest experts of various Tok disciplines in the process. The suggestions that those who believe that smartphones have a negative impact on adolescents would be more likely to opt for a survey like this, so it bias the results. “I would like to see them explain possible biases of experts in their data set,” he says. “I don’t think they do this.”
Etchells, who has also written a book on the subject, wonders how 288 initially guests were selected: “I know they contact me at any time.” Sonia Livingstone in the London School of Economics does not agree with the researchers selected to form a consensus. “The long list is to get me to provide a sensation of equilibrium, but it mainly lists those one side of the argument. If science is not balanced, it is nothing,” he says.
Capraro defends the diversity of the panel, saying that “thousands of people are working on these issues worldwide”, and that “it is not feasible to contact them all.”
The questions about who apart, Livingstone also disagrees with the claims examined. “The problem is that it is a set of biased questions. They don’t ask,” Is there any evidence? [that] Can social networks improve mental health or friends ships or a sense of belonging? “There is also evidence of those,” he says.
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