It is re­al­ly quite trag­ic. First, the fact that smart­phone ad­dic­tion is the norm to­day for too many chil­dren of any age. I know of four-year-olds who throw tem­per tantrums when­ev­er an at­tempt is made to take away their smart­phones and 14-year-olds who grow up in­side their bed­rooms with their smart­phones. It’s con­sid­ered part and par­cel of the fam­i­ly ad­dic­tion.

Be­cause the sec­ond part of this tragedy is that the par­ents of these chil­dren are them­selves ad­dict­ed to smart­phones, so they see noth­ing wrong with their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour. Be­hav­iour which has spawned an en­tire­ly new vo­cab­u­lary, which, in­ter­est­ing­ly, is nev­er pos­i­tive, but is quite sin­is­ter. Among them are the fol­low­ing doozies:

The love­ly “Brain Rot” de­scribes the men­tal fog, de­clined cog­ni­tive func­tion, or hy­per-fix­a­tion that comes from spend­ing too much time watch­ing high­ly ad­dic­tive short-form videos. It was crowned the Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary Word of the Year in 2024. As­so­ci­at­ed with it is the en­chant­i­ng “doom­scrolling” or the com­pul­sive, end­less scrolling through so­cial feeds where time ap­par­ent­ly com­plete­ly van­ish­es.

There is “swipe sleep­ing.” This is the act of stay­ing awake in bed long past your bed­time, doom­scrolling, un­til you pass out with the de­vice still in your hand.

“Phub­bing” is very in­ter­est­ing. It’s a blend of “phone” and “snub­bing.” Refers to the act of ig­nor­ing the per­son right in front of you in a so­cial set­ting to stare at your smart­phone screen in­stead. Even hap­pens whilst club­bing.

“Tech­nofer­ence” de­scribes how smart­phones and oth­er screens cause every­day in­ter­rup­tions in face-to-face in­ter­per­son­al in­ter­ac­tions and emo­tion­al con­nec­tions. It’s re­lat­ed to phub­bing. And “Smom­bie,” a make­up of “smart­phone” and “zom­bie,” used to de­scribe a pedes­tri­an walk­ing down the street in­cred­i­bly slow­ly and com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to their sur­round­ings with their eyes glued to their phone screen.

“Nomo­pho­bia.” Short for “no-mo­bile-phone-pho­bia.” This is the psy­cho­log­i­cal anx­i­ety, dread or sense of pan­ic felt when you are sep­a­rat­ed from your phone.

“Phan­tom Vi­bra­tions” is that tac­tile hal­lu­ci­na­tion where you gen­uine­ly feel your phone vi­brat­ing in your pock­et or hear it ring­ing, on­ly to check and re­alise there are no new no­ti­fi­ca­tions.

And fi­nal­ly, the de­light­ful­ly named “iPhone” or “iPad Kid,” chil­dren who have been raised with screens con­stant­ly in front of them, of­ten ex­hibit­ing over­stim­u­lat­ed or dis­tressed be­hav­iour when the de­vice is tak­en away (four-year-old and above).

So, it’s not as if par­ents are not aware of the prob­lem, it’s that they can­not face up to the prob­lem of their smart­phone ad­dic­tion, far less that of their chil­dren.

Third­ly, teach­ers. There are a num­ber of teach­ers who re­alise that there is some­thing wrong with teach­ing chil­dren by us­ing smart­phones yet refuse to ac­cept that view­point be­cause teach­ing is eas­i­er us­ing the smart­phone.

Dur­ing the COVID lock­down there were sim­i­lar teach­ers who did not want the lock­down to end and re­turn to class­rooms. And why not? Who can blame them. They got up lat­er. Pre­pared break­fast for the fam­i­ly. There was no traf­fic. Leisure­ly turned on the com­put­er. Checked who was there. No prob­lem. Who came, came. Talked a lit­tle to those present. Yawns all around. Set a prob­lem they could solve by them­selves on their screens. Go pour an­oth­er cof­fee. Watched the stu­dents sky­lark. What can I do, doc? Is so they stay!

The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar with smart­phones.

For­tu­nate­ly, the ev­i­dence is in and peo­ple are re­act­ing. And as good mim­ic peo­ple, we will soon fol­low. Sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries (Swe­den, Fin­land, Nor­way, Den­mark, the Nether­lands, France, Spain and Italy), Asian (Chi­na and South Ko­rea), South Amer­i­can (Chile, Ecuador), are scal­ing back or re­strict­ing dig­i­tal screens and com­put­ers in class­rooms to re­verse de­clines in lit­er­a­cy and fo­cus pro­duced by those de­vices.

By March this year, 60 per cent of na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems had banned smart­phones in schools, up from 25 per cent in 2023. And, of course, var­i­ous coun­tries, led by Aus­tralia and in­clud­ing the UK and France, have or are about to ban the use of smart­phones en­tire­ly for chil­dren un­der the age of 16, such are the side ef­fects of promis­cu­ous use.

Last Wednes­day came the mo­men­tous news that META had set­tled a so­cial me­dia ad­dic­tion case in Cal­i­for­nia for US$16.7 bil­lion. Cal­i­for­nia, Col­orado, Ken­tucky and New Jer­sey lead 29 states in the law­suit, ac­cus­ing the tech gi­ant of know­ing­ly harm­ing young users with its prod­ucts. A ju­ry heard ev­i­dence that the com­pa­ny knew its prod­ucts harmed chil­dren’s men­tal health but de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed the apps to be ad­dic­tive. Meta de­nied the al­le­ga­tions but set­tled out of court. Of course.