Why Parents Must Consider How Smartphones Affect Developing Brains

How many parents actually consider how smartphones affect developing brains before they surprise their teen with an iPhone for Christmas? In a time where digital technology is so popular, parents must take a step back and make sure their families are engaging with digital devices in a healthy and productive way.

How Smartphones Affect Developing Brains In the Same Way As Drugs

When we talk about the way our kids interact with technology, we have to talk about social media and the devices on which they often access social media—smartphones. Let me say this about social media: If steroids are illegal yet effective synthetic muscle-builders with bad side effects, then, if you are over 13, social media is a perfectly legal synthetic relationship-builder with bad side effects. Social media has really become a cultural staple in America. There used to be another cultural staple in America in the 1800s called slavery. Many would argue that today’s cultural staple is iSlavery.

What the makers and dealers of opioids understand, Silicon Valley also understands. Therefore, they purposely create an addictive and enslaving quality in the smartphones that we are giving our kids. Smartphones are affecting Junior’s brain-chemistry the same way addictive drugs do! That is why all the executives in Silicon Valley, who are “in the know” and make this stuff, send their kids to Waldorf schools. Waldorf Schools do everything with paper and ink. There’s a reason they do this. We have laws against addictive drugs because of what they do to our brains. Parents have to decide whether the risks are worth the rewards before giving smartphones to their kids, whose frontal lobes in their brains are still developing and are a long way off from being fully developed. You can’t even pull the lever on a slot machine in until you’re 21 years old in most states. Why? Because of the addictive nature of these machines! There are laws against kids seeing R-rated movies in theaters, but in their own bedrooms, kids can watch X-rated movies 24/7 on their smartphones?

I’ve just touched on some of the legal and the medical issues here. For a full look at the spiritual and moral issues at play, we will have to wait for another time. But briefly, let’s turn to Scripture. Romans 12:2 exhorts us not to conform to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds—not the retarding of our minds! I realize that not every parent shares my position on this topic, but if I had the power to pass one law in this country, it would be to keep unencumbered smartphone access out of the hands of minors—period. Would there still be abuses? Of course there would be. You don’t eradicate vice with law. But you can harness it to a degree. I think it could help leverage a greater degree of simplicity and peace in the lives of both parents and their kids. The students at Shepherds Hill Academy will tell you this very same thing all day long!

I’m not a Luddite; I’m actually a fan of digital technology. I own and use a smartphone myself. I’m a fan of planes, trains, automobiles, guns, sports, and sex too. But I’m also a fan of wise and age-appropriate protocols that are in league with a biblical worldview for all of these things.

Picture provided by: Esther Vargas