Constant Cell Phone Notifications Aren't Good for Kids' Developing Brains
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the impact of constant phone notifications on young people's brain development and mental health.
Key Takeaways
- Notifications hijack attention - The constant buzz of notifications disrupts focus, learning, and emotional regulation
- Developing brains are especially vulnerable - Children and adolescents are more susceptible to the dopamine cycle that notifications create
- Parents need to set boundaries - Phone-free time at home reinforces what schools are trying to accomplish during the day
Transcript
I think we need to give young people the gift of spending much more of their lives free from cell phone notifications.
Cell phone notifications are just ubiquitous now.
Your phone will default to turning on notifications for everything if you let it.
And personally, I've turned off notifications for all social media.
So I only check social media when I want to.
And even that feels like too much.
Like I have to put my phone away, leave it in the other room, plug it in and walk away.
And I'm really concerned about young people growing up with a phone on them at all times, including at school.
And yes, it's nice to be able to reach your child or have your child reach you in an emergency, but most phone usage is not for a legitimate emergency purpose, right?
Like most of the time, kids are being pinged by their phone for some basically advertising purpose, or to create engagement with some sort of social platform.
And the effect on young people's brains, we know now, is pretty bad, and especially on young people's mental health, to be able to be constantly interrupted with this stream of feedback.
You know, somebody liked your post, or somebody unfriended you, or somebody's trying to reach you.
Like, we just got into this without really knowing what impact it would have, but we have lots of research now.
We know from Gene Twenge's research That this is just not good for people's brains when they're developing and it's not good for adult brains.
So one thing that we've been very, very slow about as parents is getting our kids into technology.
Our kids are now at the age where it's kind of awkward that they don't have phones and I'm okay with that.
We're going to put that off as long as possible.
And if your kid does have a phone, one of the things you can do to help with this is Make them turn off notifications for more apps.
Like there should be very few apps that actually need to send you notifications and maybe texting is one of them.
But I think we also have to keep an eye on texting because it is just absolutely out of control.
Like the number of texts that kids send one another is out of control.
It's not really social.
It is just noise in a lot of ways.
And I think healthier friendships...
come from less of that less drama less noise less interruption and I think especially about the school day like kids need to be able to go through the school day without being pinged all day by their parents by their friends by apps by social media like let's have the devices off let's have them put away let's have them maybe available if needed but let's give kids an opportunity to have a childhood that is not just an endless sequence of phone beeps and buzzes and notifications like kids need to be able to pay attention to the world around them kids need to be able to pay attention to the people around them and learn things in class and like the fact that a phone can be a calculator and can give you access to google search and things like that like that needs to not blind us to the harm that can be done by just being constantly distracted and constantly pulled away from the people and the things that are around us into some sort of app or some sort of online world so keep the phone away turn off the notifications let me know what you think