Probably just correlated with poverty, as with almost everything else. Only wealthy parents can afford to send their kids to summer camp.

Not JUST correlated with poverty, but likely to a large degree, I agree. Ideally, kids would get a maximum amount of quality time with their parents or siblings instead of being parented by the internet. Wealthier parents parents, I suppose, would be more likely to have the free time (or that of paid help), emotional availability, educated tendancy to read and develop and understand of the importance and structure of shared time, healthy established family norms, and genes. There's a lot going against poor families, and it's not getting easier.

In addition healthier people could be wealthier.

The causation is almost certainly reversed: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-growing-life-expectan...

Yes, money is also a factor. You can see some data in https://substack.com/home/post/p-140838494 by the same guys.

I am pretty well off and I am very guilty of letting my kids overuse electronics. Plenty of my friends are the same (we've discussed it).

They don't even need "mental health issues" because it just works. Give the toddler an iPad and it'll stop bothering you.

Scary stuff...

The school my son used to attend wanted to be hi tech (I guess) and gave all kids iPads with all textbooks and assignments provided this way. You don't need a study or aversion to technology to realize how bad they are for this purpose. The screen is small, constrained and low fidelity compared to a paper text book. It also (by default, as provisioned) turns off every ~5s to save battery life which is incredibly annoying. It is just objectively worse than paper.

Maybe.

I'm a parent (in the US). My kids got cellphone a bit before Middle School (so they could connect with outgoing Elementary friends) and better navigate NYC subways etc.

It is not perfect - but I am not one of those parents I see in the subway or on a flight that gives an iPad to their one year old. That type of parent scares me.

Yep, delaying the introduction of smartphones until children are mature enough to handle the responsibilities and risks could be the answer

You seem to be trying to generalise the behaviour of people with "mental health issues" which is rather broad with different outcomes among different individuals. It is almost like a polite way of putting people in the crazy bucket.

That is a fair point. I was asking whether the cause was bad parenting and not smart phones itself. The mental health issues reference was pointless and makes no sense.

At this point I believe confounding variables have been thoroughly considered and the case that there is a specific effect from smart phones and social media specifically is incredibly strong.

The confounding variables they are aware of, you mean. The problem is the confounding variables they aren’t aware of.

If you don't have time to parent because you're off to your second job, plonking a child in front of a screen is a godsend (for the parent, not for the child, naturally).

It used to be park your kid in front of a TV.

Content on TV (for better or worse) is regulated, and those regulations are periodically updated to address the moral outrage of the day.