According to a top addiction therapist, ‘children accessing smartphones undergo similar consequences as with inhaling one gram of cocaine.’
“I always say to people, when you’re giving your kid a tablet or a phone, you’re really giving them a bottle of wine or a gram of coke,” she said during her talk at the Highgate Junior School conference in the UK.
A study has revealed that even the three and four years old spend around six and half hours on the internet. Surprisingly, children between the age group of 12-15 consume a lot of their time on mobile as well as the internet. Harley Street Clinic Director Mandy Saligari analyzed that some of her young female patients are involved in sexting. And, to them, sexting is ‘normal.’
Further, the report also says that young children are involved in sharing images that are unhealthy for their mental growth. The situation’s deep analysis found out that children often access and share pornographic images. Teens spend a lot of time in texting and streaming through various networking sites, which is excessively harmful.
To avoid the trouble, parents often submit to giving their kids cell phones. But Ms. Saligari proposed that addiction to phones is equal to the addiction of substance abuse. She has emphasized on paying much attention to limiting children’s access to smartphones. Longer screen times creates the same kind of brain impulses that drug abuse creates.
Concern thus becomes bigger as the age of accessing mobile and the internet is seeping down. Despite the normal agenda of eyesight problem, it also becomes the agenda of internet abuse.
Among around 1500 teachers, a survey revealed that two-third of them know students who share sexual content. Of those pupils, one-sixth belong to the primary school. More than 2000 cases have been registered regarding young children involved in sharing of indecent images.