GP Stories - Mobile phone use in children
As a parent, there are several topical parenting questions. One such popular question is “Will you give your child a smartphone?”. When I was young the old Nokias that could play snake was very popular, but I never got a phone until I was in 6th form (and it was not a snazzy Nokia). I guess parents back then did not have the dilemma they have now.
I saw a 12 year old boy called Fred with his mother at the
end of one of my duty days. She was worried that he was overly anxious, angry
and low in mood, which culminated in a suicide attempt. Upon probing this pre-pubescent
child, I found out he was addicted to his smartphone. Fred had a snazzy new
Samsung smartphone, and was playing Fortnite (a popular computer game) and
constantly scrolling through Instagram. When I asked about how he got onto
Instagram (age limit is 13) he told me he lied about his age. Whenever he has
to leave his phone charging, he gets very anxious about missing messages from
his friends or potential games of Fortnite. This led to an attempted suicide
attempt when his father took his phone away at dinner, and he tried to stab
himself with a knife. His younger sister came along to stop him thankfully, but
it was a scarring ordeal for everyone involved.
I asked Fred if everyone has smartphones in his class, and
he said “Yes – only one boy doesn’t have a good phone, he has a Blackberry”.
When I told him that Blackberry’s were very good a few years ago, he said it
wasn’t good because it couldn’t play YouTube.
I referred him urgently to our CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) and told Fred he should probably stop going on his phone so much. I negotiated 1 hour away from it a day for now, hopefully increasing in length after a week. A lot has been made about how social media is damaging our children’s mental health, and I think there is some truth to it. I think I will hold of giving a smartphone to my children for as long as I can but wonder if making them social pariahs cause other issues instead…
Comments
Post a Comment