Banning smartphones is tempting but it won’t solve anxiety in children

PANIC is spreading – in the press and the playground – about the impact of social media and smartphones on children.

There are many questions around what modern technologies are doing to young minds. Some claim that when we first gave children smartphones, it was the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity ever performed on its own children. That young brains are being rewired, and that social media is responsible for an alarming rise in childhood anxiety.

There has indeed been an increase in anxiety in young people, as we report in our special issue, starting with “The new evidence that explains what anxiety really is”…