A New Study Shockingly Shows Cell Phones Are a Positive Influence on Tweens — Under One Condition

If you’re one of those parents who doesn’t want their kid to get a cell phone until they’re 30, you might want to reconsider. A new study shockingly found that cell phones can have a positive influence on pre-teens! (And, no, your 12-year-old didn’t secretly write this.)

Researchers at the University of South Florida surveyed more than 1,500 kids ages 11-to-13 in Florida in a study that will inform an upcoming 25-year national study tracking digital media use in young people into adulthood. The Life in Media Survey found that children with smartphones did better on nearly every measure of wellbeing assessed than kids without. For example, tweens with smart phones reported meeting up with friends more frequently during the week than kids who have no phone or who share a phone with someone else. The cell phone-toting kids were also less likely to report feeling depressed or being cyberbullied.

Even more surprisingly: kids who had a smartphone or tablet were more likely to say they felt good about themselves. Yay phones for helping with self-esteem!

“We went into this study expecting to find what many researchers, teachers and other observers assume: smartphone ownership is harmful to children. Not only was that not the case, most of the time we found the opposite – that owning a smartphone was associated with positive outcomes,” said Justin D. Martin, lead researcher on the project and the Eleanor Poynter Jamison Chair in Media Ethics and Press Policy as USF, said in a press release.

The report, which noted that kids in wealthier homes were less likely to have a smartphone than those from low-income homes, did find that certain cell phone behaviors were linked to worse outcomes in tweens. Most notably, how often the kids post online. “More than any other single measure, the act of publicly posting or sharing images online was associated with adverse outcomes,” the study found.

Kids who post often online were more likely to report having moderate or severe symptoms of depression, as well as severe symptoms of anxiety, compared to kids who don’t post publicly. At the same time, the kids who said they didn’t post on social media, also reported getting more than nine hours of sleep on school nights while those who posted didn’t get that much sleep. So, it makes you wonder how much posting impacts anxiety and depression levels or if it truly just goes down to getting enough shut-eye — something that phones, admittedly, distract kids and adults from doing.

Other interesting facts from the study include the statistic that 72% of 11-year-olds had their own cell phone, and more than 99% of participants use at least one kind of electronic device, either theirs or someone else’s. On average, the 11-year-olds reported getting a smartphone at 8-and-a-half-years-old.

Cyberbullying was also linked to depression and anger; however, it was the kids without smartphones who were more likely to be cyberbullied — just one more reason why cell phones might be good in tweens and teens.

Wendy Rote, USF associate professor of psychology, commented on the study in a press release.  “Our findings indicate that the effects of smartphone ownership are complex,” Rote said. “It’s what kids do with cell phones and challenges in regulating their device use, rather than merely owning a smartphone, that may cause difficulties or inversely benefit their lives.”

Earlier this month, Common Sense Media released a report on the digital habits of kids ages 9-8. They found that by 2 years old, 40% of children have their own tablet, and by age 8, nearly 1 in 4 kids have their own cell phone. Despite the prevalence of technology, 75-80% of parents in the report expressed concerns about social media and its potential effects on mental health. Maybe this new research will help parents feel more at-ease about their kids having their own smart phones and tablets!

Monitoring your child’s social media activity and phone use is critical to ensure that your child is safe online. But with a few simple rules — don’t let your child have their phone at night, limit how much they can publicly post, encourage plenty of sleep — getting your 11-, 12-, and 13-year-old children a cell phone might actually be a good thing.