Take a look at kids today and you’ll notice something that you wouldn’t have seen just 20 years ago — they’re always looking down. They immediately stare down while waiting for practice to start, riding in a car, standing in line, waiting for class, and sitting in a restaurant. Even when physically grouped together with friends, their heads are still buried deep in their phones. Individually, none of these moments seems particularly concerning. But collectively, the constant head-down-toward-phone raises an interesting developmental and mental health question: What isn’t happening while kids are looking down?
Developmental changes related to smart phone usage
Before smartphones filled every empty moment, kids spent considerably more time observing and interacting with the world around them. Kids watched other people, noticed facial expressions, and made eye contact. Kids also initiated conversations, learned how to enter groups, handle silence, read a room, deal with boredom and entertain themselves. None of these experiences appear to be very important individually, but collectively, they help us grow and develop important social skills and improve our mental health.
The reality is that kids don’t learn sophisticated interpersonal skills from an instruction manual — they develop them through thousands of authentic, in-person repetitions. When should I speak? Is that person serious or joking? Did I offend someone? Does she seem interested in what I’m saying? How do I politely join this conversation? What does that facial expression mean? What do I do after saying something awkward?
The reality is that kids don’t learn sophisticated interpersonal skills from an instruction manual — they develop them through thousands of authentic, in-person repetitions.
Face-to-face interaction provides an extraordinary amount of information through facial expressions, eye contact, posture, tone of voice and timing. Phones provide social interaction, but it’s a very different kind of interaction, one that is far more limiting than what can be developed communicating in-person.
Think of this another way — we wouldn’t expect a child to become a great soccer player without repetitions. Why would we expect kids to develop sophisticated face-to-face social skills while potentially removing thousands of their social repetitions? Reading or watching videos how to communicate with others isn’t anything close to actually communicating in-person.
There may be emotional consequences as well to smart phone overload. Previous generations had considerably more unavoidable time alone with their thoughts. Waiting meant waiting. Boredom meant figuring out what to do with time on your hands. An awkward moment sometimes meant sitting with the awkwardness and and developing problem-solving solutions.
Today, uncomfortable feelings can often be interrupted instantly. If you are bored, anxious, lonely, or embarrassed, just pick up your phone and divert your attention somewhere else. That doesn’t mean smartphones cause mental health problems, but emotional regulation develops partly through real life experience. Kids need opportunities to tolerate boredom, frustration, uncertainty, disappointment and social discomfort — and discover that those feelings eventually pass. But if distraction is always immediately available (smart phone), are some of those developmental repetitions disappearing?
Human attention presents another interesting question. The truth is the real world doesn’t operate like a smartphone. Books don’t change subjects every 15 seconds. Coaches sometimes give mundane instructions. Conversations occasionally drag on far longer than needed. Friends tell stories that take five minutes instead of 10 seconds. Learning to remain engaged when something isn’t immediately stimulating is itself an important developmental skill.
We may not understand the full consequences of these developmental changes for years. Smartphones haven’t existed across enough generations for us to know exactly what happens when screens occupy so much time and so many of childhood’s previously empty spaces. It is possible the effects won’t be dramatic, but instead appear in subtler ways: less comfort with boredom, difficulty sustaining attention, fewer spontaneous conversations, greater dependence on external stimulation or less confidence navigating face-to-face interactions.
For generations, growing up involved looking around — at other kids, adults, classrooms, neighborhoods, sports fields, dinner tables and eventually the larger world. Today’s kids have access to more information about that world than any generation before them. Perhaps we should spend less time asking kids what they’re seeing on their phones and more time asking what they aren’t seeing, practicing, experiencing and learning while they’re looking at them.
Final thoughts
Maybe the greatest developmental cost of smartphones won’t ultimately be traced to any single app, post, or hour of screen time, but instead be found in the thousands of ordinary moments that quietly disappeared — the conversations that never started, the faces that weren’t studied, the boredom that wasn’t tolerated, the surroundings that weren’t noticed, and the uncomfortable feelings that weren’t worked through. Childhood development has always occurred partly through these seemingly insignificant experiences. Kids today may have unprecedented access to the entire world in the palms of their hands, but growing up still requires occasionally putting that world down, looking up, and experiencing the one directly in front of them.
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