Health warnings on smartphones are long overdue

Image: https://www.deviantart.com/theskyfx/art/Parental-Advisory-Wallpaper-FULLHD-467741707

“Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone”. So states James Merriot in his essay on the ‘post literate society’. Always on mini-tvs connected to the internet and a million channels, with backwards and forwards facing cameras, social media, a variety of apps, video games, access to so called ‘AI companions’…. smartphones are unprecedented and, from this list alone, they should carry health warnings.

But if one includes the increasing evidence of harm, from the risks of sextortion to the link between mental health problems and ‘excessive’ social media use, and then adds the recent court cases in Los Angeles and New Mexico, surely, it is case closed!

Yet, when I make this argument, there is still resistance. So, in order to make it further, I’m going to use four points that I often hear against any such regulation of smartphones.

You can use parental controls

These, so the argument goes, make smartphones safe for children, therefore no health warnings are required.

But, if a product requires parental controls, this is actually clear evidence that the product itself should carry a health warning.

Parental controls cover a range of measures, from preventing the downloading of apps to time spent on phone to when the phone can be used (eg locked during school hours) to managing the contact list to so called ‘content filters’.

These controls are needed because the device, as delivered, isn’t safe for children. An unrestricted smartphone is not ‘safe out of the box’. This is common knowledge. Yet, over half of parents do not use parental controls.

A health warning could be a vital element in changing this.

Children need to learn how to use technology. A health warning may delay their ability to do this.

First, smartphones are designed to be intuitive. A toddler can use them (and, devastatingly, many do). Children don’t need to learn how to use a smartphone because they can pick it up in minutes.

Second, the technology itself is addictive by design, a well understood fact that the trial in California has settled, despite Meta’s promise to appeal.

It is convention that we protect children from addictive products. We do this because they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, because they lack the ability to give informed consent to use addictive products and because they are going through periods of rapid physical development, including the brain, that can make the introduction of addictive products habit forming.

Children absolutely do need to learn how to use technology and we need to do so in an age and stage appropriate way. Where smartphones are concerned, there is no rush. Quite the opposite.

It is also the case that informed decision making is part of what makes a functioning market. Should a health warning lead to parents deciding to delay the age that children are given smartphones, that would be free choice, a correction of market failure, not a distortion.

It’s not the smartphone, it’s the social media

I completely agree that social media is causing harm to children. Others may disagree on that point, but that’s a separate argument about social media.

However, this is not ‘either, or’. We can both improve regulation of social media AND legislate for health warnings on smartphones. In fact, the two positions are complimentary. If social media is harming children (and to me the evidence is now overwhelming) then it is logical to me that the device used to access this product should also be regulated, including a health warning.

Also, it’s not just social media. Smartphones contain numerous potentially dangerous features, including cameras, as mentioned earlier. They are also designed to distract. They make noises and vibrations, are brightly coloured, default to deliver notifications and are often carried on the body. Smartphones are the delivery mechanism for apps that exploit the fundamental design of the dopamine system. To quote Dr Anna Lembke “The smartphone has become the modern-day hypodermic needle”.

Children have the right to access technology

Like many of the arguments in this space, there is an important truth here. Of course, children have rights, including the ability to access goods and services and to participate in society.

However, there are multiple rights, and these can be in conflict. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child contains 45 Articles, including protecting children from abuse and neglect (Article 19) and from “exploitation by the media or for medical research” (Article 36).

Without getting too much into the weeds of the debate on Rights, it is clear that arguments based on them are not a clear cut case against stronger regulations of smartphones. On the contrary, Article 3, to give another example, states that “The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all decisions and actions that affect children”. I think it would be hard, if not impossible, to say that this has been the case with smartphones, social media, BigTech and children.

The discussion here is not just about children having access to technology but the technology having access to them. This counterbalances any ‘rights’ based argument, as other rights, often taken for granted, also exist: the right to not be exploited, to not be influenced without knowledge or consent, to not be exposed to age inappropriate material, and so on.

A health warning would help to make this clearer. As Dr Danielle Einstein wrote in a recent essay “a child’s right to healthy social, neural, and cognitive development must take precedence over other competing rights”.

Conclusion

Health warnings, prominently displayed on smartphone boxes, on webpages where sold, on shop displays, contained within the verbal and written part of any sale, including in the terms and conditions, are clearly long overdue.

I would go further and state that it is scandalous that health warnings aren’t present, despite all we know, and despite there being health warnings on an array of products, including food, medicines, cosmetics, household products and, of course, alcohol, gambling and tobacco. It is clear to me that we have yet another example of institutional, market and regulatory failure.

Perhaps the opening quotation to this essay helps to explain why.

Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone. It’s past time we recognised this and started to act accordingly.