2 Corinthians 12:14
"…For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children."

Recently, I witnessed another teenager fall victim to online bullying—a thirteen-year-old girl who had just received her first smartphone. With it came a barrage of explicit images, exposing her to things she hadn’t known existed. What an introduction to the online world, and how sad that neither her experience nor age at the time remains an isolated case. If such consequences exist, experienced on a day-to-day basis, why is there such a rush towards smartphones? Surely the negative results speak for themselves.

High schools can’t release enough data to educate parents about the distractions and dangers of these devices. Currently, the most sought-after speakers are those able to unpack the research, guiding us through the latest findings.

The debate centers around controlling the device rather than delaying it.

School budgets are even planned to incorporate these speakers, none of which seem to show the positive effects of phones and social media. And, rather than challenge the urge for pre-teens and adolescents to have a phone, the whole campaign is done with a mood of mitigation, and the debate centers around controlling the device rather than delaying it.

No wonder parents are making excuses for a smartphone rather than questioning whether their children are ready for it. Perhaps it is time to reconsider their necessity and, if already issued, seriously reassess the way we safeguard our children—especially given the consequences smartphones come attached to.

Commonly, parents advocate for smartphones because of the inclusive capacity they provide. The strength of this motive is often bolstered by an instinctive force—fear. Parents worry that without a smartphone, their child will face exclusion. While the online world is available on any device, smartphones are more socially acceptable—everyone has one—and the device is smaller, more portable, and easier to navigate.

For adolescents, peer relationships are commanding, and as phones allow for better access to these, they may provide an enhanced school experience. However, the price of inclusion is not only a phone. More often than not, it manifests itself in ways that negatively impact family space and time.

A kind of cognitive absence comes from smartphone overuse, and it is naïve to think this has no effect on the social climate and relational development of a child and the family unit. Rather than a child's social portion of the day ending after school, it now extends into the family space, and parents can find themselves coaching peer relationships into the night.

It is as if a child’s friends come home with them and stay socializing until bedtime. This creates an overwhelming demand on a child's time, leading to unseen and unnecessary anxiety. This unchecked, ‘extra-curricular’ activity can hinder a child's ability to enter the neutral space of the home, unwind and decompress. 

All of this has an ostracizing effect, removing children both physically and emotionally from the real world and making it difficult for them to fully engage in the familial relationships they could be fostering. Too often, they are left alone with their devices, entering online worlds difficult to exit. These worlds exert a powerful pull, making it difficult for children to reconnect and fully engage with family life.

The overuse of smartphones alters children’s perceptions, behaviors, and cognitive development.

Beyond human connectivity, the overuse of smartphones alters children’s perceptions, behaviors, and cognitive development. Underlying these effects are two truths.

First is the mechanism of the online world—it responds to actions, not intentions, and some of the most detrimental scenarios arise from sincere mistakes. These can be impulsive posts, oversharing of information or messages that are misinterpreted. While earlier generations were quietly able to learn from their mistakes, these online errors are never erased and often go on to damage—sometimes permanently—the reputations of the users.

Secondly, is the biological reality of pre-teens and adolescents. Rather than being neutral canvases, they are highly impressionable and rarely able to contextualize the media they digest. With the best intentions, they are drawn to images and videos without fully understanding their immediate or long-term impact.

While these two forces define their digital experience, children are engrossed in curated images of themselves, prioritizing digital validation over reality. Rather than occupying a physical world, they invest their time and energy into an augmented and ephemeral one where life is sensory-charged and reality becomes dull.

It is no wonder, then, that when a child tries to read or learn, they struggle; not having developed an appreciation for stillness nor skills such as patience. Faced with work that requires investment and which offers limited gratification, their brains falter, being programmed for entertainment.

Excessive smartphone use can nourish a drive towards self-centeredness.

The online space is not a neutral one, and the impact it can have on a child’s sense of belonging and identity is profound. Beyond shaping perception, excessive smartphone use can nourish a drive towards self-centeredness, encouraging a disconnect from society.

A girl I observed at a restaurant provides a good example: In her early teens, she sat with her eyes glued to her phone and headphones covering her ears. When her food was delivered, she didn’t look up once, nor did she realize the waiter in front of her. Both he and the food went completely unnoticed. What does this indifference teach our children? If repeated, it suggests the most valuable thing in this life is themselves, and when they don’t feel like acknowledging the people around them or participating in the world, they don’t have to.

Other examples are the countless instances where children share a car with their parents but sit completely removed from reality by a set of headphones covering their ears. All of the nuances that come with a shared space are lost and these children traverse the world isolated from community. This removes a sense of connection to society, or any urge to relate to it, and reinforces the idea that children are effectively guardians of other (digital) galaxies. In continued cases, society and the people in it become utilitarian, and if something or someone is not useful they become less important. Gone is the skill of empathy or of placing value on others’ actions.

Gone is an appreciation for how the world works and the steps needed to make things happen. A natural fascination with mystery disappears, and children form part of a fictitious reality, disconnected from the human elements that teach them to develop an authentic version of themselves and to find their place in society.

It is worth considering that the world of smartphones is promoting a separate online community, weakening traditional values and relationships, and removing a sense of societal responsibility. The immediacy and attraction of this new community are underscored by a tone of playfulness and irreverence, disengaging itself from older, traditional values of respect and authority.

The modern online world is fostering a generation that praises individualism, replacing societal responsibility with digital escapism.

Set during the mid-1900s, the book East West Street by Philippe Sands speaks to the aspirations of two legal pioneers while also following various communities in Europe under immense strain. Reading it, I was struck by a very clear theme: there existed a time when younger generations felt a duty to care for their elders and take their place in society, especially in times of great suffering. In contrast, the modern online world is fostering a generation that praises individualism, replacing societal responsibility with digital escapism.

One reason for this is that the online world thrives on a different set of governing principles, which praise a different set of skills—skills that embellish the flesh and not the soul. Harder, technologically driven skills rule the online space, while the softer skills of empathy, integrity, and respect hold a limited and fading value. Respect is reserved for those with an online resume. The character of the person is not important, and older, more conservative values of virtue and even spiritual wisdom are becoming redundant. This is a world of hedonism, and authority is given to those who can do things better and faster.

Evidence of this can be seen by the number of young people who earn their living literally ‘playing games’ while others watch them - some of these online giants have up to a million followers. Without much wisdom or virtue, these are the vessels of knowledge our children choose to follow, pushing their brightly packaged truths through the veins of smartphone media.

Before the online space, where there was one world and one community, younger generations were connected to both their immediate and extended families—whether they wanted to be or not. A certain significance was given to parents and grandparents, and there was a common feeling that something could be learned from them. It was in these spaces that children learned the value of an authority over their lives, helping them develop into functioning adults who would treat others and certainly elders with appreciation and decency.

Through the mantras of this new online world, children see themselves as individuals occupying a technological space rather than members of a society where they must take their place.

In all of this interaction lay the idea that one day this generation would take the mantle of their elders, having acquired not just practical wisdom but also a respect for authority, perhaps the foundation for reverence. An art of listening and speaking was learned and conversation was the medium of communication and even silence had something to teach. But today, through the mantras of this new online world, children see themselves as individuals occupying a technological space rather than members of a society where they must take their place.

As children find their sustenance in this tech-driven world, we cannot be surprised when a value-starved generation emerges from the dark, unwilling to fulfill the functions they should be providing. Plato wrote, “Let parents give their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.” It may be worth asking whether a generation that feasts on the glitzy allure of an online world will one day be able to fast in reverence for a God higher than itself.

Over time, this erosion of empathy and appreciation for others extends beyond social interactions. It begins to influence how children perceive relationships, worth, and even human dignity itself. These are ideas dismissed by the online pornographic industry which smartphones make readily available. Here is an industry founded on the idea that human beings are things, not people; the result of which is a loss of respect for others, leading to the belief that we can treat them however we please.

Skills that foster an understanding of social and personal context are replaced with vices of apathy and impulses for immediacy.

When children regularly visit worlds like these, they begin to extrapolate these messages into the tangible world, losing touch with the sanctity and feelings of others. The fundamental impulse in these videos is driven by feeling and experience, all of which make their viewers feel fleeting emotions of ecstasy but long-term feelings of doubt and depression. The skills essential to developing a respect for human dignity, skills that foster an understanding of social and personal context, are replaced with vices of apathy and impulses for immediacy.

Worse still is the idea that because of smartphones this content is available—freely—at any time. It is concerning to see the number of children exposed to these kinds of sites, and the sad reality is that, with one mistake, an algorithm can be created handing content to the child without them having to look. In such cases, a reliance on smartphones can manifest as addiction, quickly developing a generation of children living with scars instead of singes.

It is here where a laissez-faire distribution of smartphones is difficult for me to understand. Especially when it puts the world of mass media and popular culture into the soft fingers of a pre-adolescent. In previous generations, no decent parent would hand an explicitly adult magazine to their child. Yet today, many parents are quite comfortable buying a phone that at the push of a button, grants their child access to worlds far more detrimental than proverbial "top shelves."

The human being is sacred, made in the image of God, making the relationships between them sacrosanct and worthy of every effort to protect and nurture. The active and mental dedication given to smartphones, and the impersonal bonds they dictate, sincerely affect these sacred bonds, especially those between parents and their children. Yet it is hard to imagine anything otherwise when one world usurps another.

A child’s sense of inclusion must first come from home.

A child’s sense of inclusion must first come from home, that cave where they feel safe and heard, and much of this will come from parents willing to fight for their children, resolute against the populism surrounding smartphones, and trusting that even the angriest child will benefit from this discerning attribute of love.

Brains conditioned by an online diet are becoming ever more warped, leaving young minds as busy as a four-way stop. Similar to the back and forth of moving vehicles, smartphones provide a barrage of falsely urgent information, making clear decisions difficult. Add to this an ill-prepared driver (perhaps underage) without the experience to anticipate danger, and you have accidents waiting to happen.

Smartphones are multimedia toys that both the parents and recipients must engage with together. True safeguarding is not only fastening seat belts. It is also confirmation that the road signs and rules are being followed, and, before that, the wisdom to know whether a child is even ready to drive. These well-meaning slogans of “sign the mandate; no phone before high school” should not become our guiding principles because there is no miraculous change between the ages of 12 and 13.

Pre-teens turn a number, they don’t ‘turn responsible’, and certainly don’t become invulnerable. Laws and mandates cannot always protect our children, parents do. If the dangers of smartphones are properly explained and clear reasons provided, as much as a child may resist a parent withholding a phone, they will eventually come around.

Results show a rising trajectory when looking at younger children using phones, and because of this an equal rise in the amount of damage done to all ages of children in this space. While I can empathize with the fear parents feel, believing their child may be excluded, real-life relationships are now more than ever a priority, and this because of the profound repercussions of their absence and the consequences of the online space.

I still remember the moment in Sleeping Beauty when Princess Aurora, entranced by the orb and green smoke of Maleficent, vacantly makes her way towards the spinning wheel. As a child, all my insides wanted to scream; “No, wake up”. Fueling my frustration was the frantic hysterics of the fairies who, despite their panic and deliberation, did nothing to stop the Princess.

Much of an adolescent's life online is symbolized by this moment. Lulled by the screens in front of them, they fall asleep to the real world, replacing it with one governed by transience; nothing is concrete; neither relationships or truth, and many of the cornerstones necessary for healthy development become hollow and brittle. Often, this reality stems from the good intentions of parents who, by giving their children a smartphone, believe they are offering age-appropriate milestones and opening the door to necessary educational experiences. But this is not always the case.

When the cracks begin to show, parents, like fairy godmothers, expect to find their children safeguarded by intention and deliberation, only to arrive at the spinning wheel to find their children fast asleep, poisoned by the prick of the online world and captured by an enemy they never knew existed.

It is the souls of our children we are fighting for.

It is the souls of our children we are fighting for. They are the Sleeping Beauties of our age. Kisses, mollycoddling, and acquiescence won’t work. Rather, they need the affection of love and reason. They need parents determined to fight for the hearts and minds of their children. To stop them following these trails of wonder—trails founded on slogans of so called independence and freedom. They need guardians to tell them the truth: that what they actually follow, dressed in the quirky colors of the online space, are whiffs and scents, glittering orbs only mimicking the truth. What they follow are the turbid trails of green smoke, and it is time to wake them up.

Greg Kyle has been a dedicated high school educator for 16 years and currently serves as the Head of Student Affairs, specializing in History and English at his High School. He is also a pastor in a church in South Africa. With a passion for the well-being of children and adolescents, as well as that of adults, he has spent years addressing the challenges people face, both personally and spiritually. His commitment has extended to writing, having contributed to newsletters and essays over time as an educator and pastor.