Parents often feel like once their tween starts moving around more autonomously through their neighborhood or town more, the child needs a smartphone to be safe, Cherkin says. Even adults sometimes don't have enough self-control to do that or handle some of the emotional impact of them." Right-size your parenting fears "You have games, social media, and even pornography and shopping online, and the brains of children are just not yet ready to have the level of self-control needed to regulate their behavior with these activities. "It's almost as if you have the perfect storm," Samaha explains. Neurologically, children's brains haven't developed enough to handle the magnetic pull of these devices and the apps on them, says neuroscientist Anne-Noël Samaha at the University of Montreal. And when they come home from school, they're likely engaging with social media, instead of educational videos." "Flash forward to age 12, and now they have a phone. "A child using a tablet at age 6 to 8 comes to expect screen time after school," she says. They tell the child's brain that this activity is super critical – way more critical than other activities that trigger smaller spikes in dopamine, such as finishing homework, helping to clean up after dinner, or even playing outside with friends. As NPR has reported, those spikes pull the child's attention to the device or app, almost like a magnet. Smartphones, social media, and video games create large spikes in dopamine deep inside a child's brain. I wish I knew then what I know now,' " she says, "because boy, once you give a child one of these devices or technologies, it is so much harder to take it back." "I have talked to hundreds of parents," Cherkin explains, "and no one has ever said to me, 'I wish I gave my kid a phone earlier or I wish I'd given them social media access sooner. Her first piece of advice about when to give a child a smartphone and allow them to access social media was reiterated by other experts over and over again: Delay, delay, delay. For the past four years, she's been working as screen-time consultant, coaching parents about digital technology. She watched firsthand as the presence of smartphones transformed life for middle schoolers. Emily Cherkin spent more than a decade as a middle school teacher during the early aughts.
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