Overview
- Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published a JAMA Pediatrics cohort study on June 8 that tracked 1,959 adolescents from the ABCD Study to examine phone acquisition at 13 and health at 14.
- The study found that among teens who had smartphones by age 14, using them more than five hours a day was associated with roughly double the odds of depression, double the odds of insufficient sleep, and more than twice the odds of obesity compared with using them two hours or less.
- Simply getting a smartphone at 13 was not linked with higher depression at 14, which contrasts with earlier CHOP findings that acquisition at or before age 12 carried greater mental-health risk.
- The authors highlighted two practical steps parents and clinicians can take: set daily time limits and keep phones out of bedrooms at night, since overnight bedroom access was tied to more reports of insufficient sleep.
- UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded publicly the same week by proposing laws to ban minors from sending or receiving explicit images and urging tech firms to add device controls, though officials say current company measures do not block all camera or third-party app activity and key questions about which phone activities cause harm remain unanswered.