Bans on social media and phones: what's the evidence? - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Hello, it's Hannah Gelbart here.
2. 0:02Welcome to this episode of what in the world from the BBC World Service.
3. 0:06Today we're talking about your phone.
4. 0:09You may have just checked yours I don't know, it's a bit of a reflex.
5. 0:11I keep on grabbing mine to check for notifications and messages.
6. 0:15It feels like if I were to leave my phone at home for even just a few hours,
7. 0:19there's this like sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.
8. 0:22I'm totally hooked on it. And as long as there have been smartphones,
9. 0:26we've been talking about whether children should have them.
10. 0:28Should they be allowed in schools, what kind of age limits
11. 0:31should there be on social media?
12. 0:33But what evidence is there that smartphones are actually bad for us?
13. 0:37And what are students make of it?
14. 0:42Here to talk us through it is Hayley Clark, BBC journalist. Hi.
15. 0:45Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for having me.
16. 0:47Welcome to our. Studio. Thank you, I love it.
17. 0:50Um, right. So I thought if we're going to be talking
18. 0:53about teenagers and their phones and we're going to be talking
19. 0:55about schools and whether they should be banned,
20. 0:58we have to be really honest as well, because I don't know about you.
21. 1:00But like every week my phone tries to tell me my screen time
22. 1:03and I quickly flick it away in like fear and shame.
23. 1:06So I want you to go to your settings, okay?
24. 1:08Okay, getting them up.
25. 1:09And if you go to your screen time, there should be a little purple egg timer.
26. 1:14My heart's actually beating really fast. I'm quite scared.
27. 1:17Right. Are you ready?
28. 1:18We're gonna we're going to have a look and then show each other. Okay.
29. 1:20Three. Two. One.
30. 1:25Mine floating. Well, mine got there first.
31. 1:29I made it out. Show me. Let's see. Okay.
32. 1:31It's four hours and 14 minutes every day.
33. 1:34Four hours and 14 minutes. Yeah.
34. 1:36Four hours and 14 minutes of time spent or wasted on on this.
35. 1:42Mine's still spinning around. I'm really surprised about this
36. 1:46because I've set time limits on most my apps, like Instagram.
37. 1:49After being on it for like 15, 20 minutes a day,
38. 1:52it tells me you have reached your time limit and you know what I do?
39. 1:56I press ignore limit.
40. 1:57Every day and then it just makes you feel sad.
41. 2:00Like mine does. Like it says, you're going into sleep mode.
42. 2:02And then I just again flick it away and just pretend I'm not sleeping.
43. 2:05Maybe my phone just doesn't want to show me. It knows I'm not.
44. 2:08I'm not ready for this information. It's come, it's here, it's come.
45. 2:11Okay. Christmas is.
46. 2:12Coming. I think that's been that's been a malfunction because mine says three hours 29.
47. 2:15But that is definitely lower. It's usually like tipping towards five,
48. 2:19I would say. What are your most used apps.
49. 2:22I can tell you without without even looking. Yeah.
50. 2:24WhatsApp and Instagram. What about. You. Yeah.
51. 2:26Mine are the same with some embarrassing ones thrown in
52. 2:29like eBay and Amazon and Hinge.
53. 2:34I have ADHD and I just cannot resist.
54. 2:37So the notifications, the distractions, I'll go on it
55. 2:41for like actually useful purposes.
56. 2:43Maybe internet banking, maybe to read something on the news,
57. 2:47maybe to reply to a message I actually need to see and I just cannot resist.
58. 2:51Then the other notifications and the dopamine hit
59. 2:53that comes from from scrolling.
60. 2:55I can't have like an unread notification.
61. 2:58I can't have an unread email like that gives me anxiety.
62. 3:00I have to make sure that all of my notifications are checked,
63. 3:04and then there's like a kind of constant element of doing that
64. 3:07to just make sure that all my ground is covered, that I've got a clean slate
65. 3:11so that I can think about other things I understand.
66. 3:13Oh, not healthy. Um, I don't know about you.
67. 3:16I think I'm using my phone way too much.
68. 3:18Like, how does it compare to the average?
69. 3:20So it's hard to get sort of
70. 3:22a consistent, um, account around the world.
71. 3:25But some statistics say that adults
72. 3:28like over 18 are using their phones for almost five hours a day.
73. 3:32So kind of towards my like us higher one exactly like us.
74. 3:37It makes me feel slightly less less guilty.
75. 3:40Um, and actually the centres for Disease Control
76. 3:43and Prevention estimated screen time, um,
77. 3:46like screen time overall for 11 to 14 year olds as nine hours a day, um,
78. 3:51and 7.5 hours hours.
79. 3:54Okay, that actually that makes me feel a bit better about my, uh.
80. 3:57But we didn't add in our computer and TV time and all of that.
81. 4:00So that screen time overall, I think so, yeah.
82. 4:03Um, and also nearly half of teens
83. 4:05self-report that they use the internet almost constantly.
84. 4:08So it does seem like the data is showing
85. 4:11that phone use and screen time is just consistently rising.
86. 4:15So it kind of makes sense, right, that some countries are now talking
87. 4:19about bans or restrictions or limits on phones and social media use,
88. 4:23which are the main countries that are talking about it.
89. 4:25So in 2023, a UN report recommended that smartphones should be banned in schools.
90. 4:31They said to reduce classroom disruption and protect kids from online bullying.
91. 4:36And there's lots of different countries trialling lots of different things.
92. 4:40So in France, there is a trial happening called a digital pause, where
93. 4:44over 200 schools are asking teenagers to hand in their phones at reception.
94. 4:49Um, here in the UK, it's a big topic, it's a big debate.
95. 4:53And, uh, the government's looking at legislation to potentially ban
96. 4:57under 16 from social media.
97. 5:00And in the US it kind of varies state by state.
98. 5:02But in Florida, um, a bill has passed to ban social media for under 14,
99. 5:08and that's going to come into force in January 2025.
100. 5:13Um, and Australia wants to go further than this, um,
101. 5:16and wants to go further than banning phones in schools.
102. 5:19So Australia's government says it will introduce
103. 5:22world leading legislation to ban children under 16 from social media.
104. 5:27And I saw that the Australian prime minister said,
105. 5:30like parents, we're listening to you. So a lot of the rhetoric and debate kind
106. 5:35of seems to be people in power and parents.
107. 5:39I'm not sure how much the teenagers
108. 5:41and young people are being involved in these discussions.
109. 5:44Um, and Hannah Ritchie is a BBC journalist based in Australia,
110. 5:49and she's going to tell us a bit more about what's going on there.
111. 5:52The Australian government is proposing to ban all children
112. 5:55under the age of 16 from social media.
113. 5:58There's a lot that we still don't know, and how this will be enforced
114. 6:01or implemented needs to be decided by Australia's internet regular, which
115. 6:05will happen over the next 12 months before these laws come into effect.
116. 6:09But so far, here's what the government has said.
117. 6:11They say, well, we know exemptions for kids with existing accounts or those who can get parental permission.
118. 6:16Tech companies will face fines for not complying,
119. 6:19and messaging services and gaming sites will be exempt,
120. 6:22which has prompted questions over the status of apps like Snapchat and how
121. 6:26regulators will ultimately define what is and isn't a social media platform.
122. 6:31The government has said it's trialling age verification technology to make all of this possible,
123. 6:35but there's very few details about how that technology will work and
124. 6:39if it will work, as well as privacy concerns over the risks involved,
125. 6:43as it might entail collecting a whole generation of users ID documents.
126. 6:48Overall, parents and families have applauded the proposed ban,
127. 6:51but the tech companies themselves have warned it could push children
128. 6:54into more unregulated parts of the internet,
129. 6:56while experts have criticised it as too blunt an instrument.
130. 7:00They say that the evidence base isn't solid,
131. 7:03and also that the focus should be on tougher regulation
132. 7:06to make platforms safer, as well as educating kids about
133. 7:09how these platforms work rather than just cutting them off altogether.
134. 7:14It's really interesting, she said. There isn't a solid evidence base.
135. 7:17So what evidence do we actually have that smartphones,
136. 7:21you know, affect our brains, our mental health?
137. 7:24I think that's really still emerging. So you're absolutely right.
138. 7:27Scientists don't agree on this.
139. 7:29Some scientists say we definitely have data.
140. 7:32We know smart. We know phones are bad for young people's mental health.
141. 7:38But then on the other side, some scientists argue
142. 7:40there's not robust data we don't know yet.
143. 7:43And actually more needs to be done over longer periods of time
144. 7:46to say whether this is definitely an issue.
145. 7:49And so there's one guy who's American
146. 7:51and he's written a book which has had loads of publicity.
147. 7:54He's a social psychologist called Jonathan Haidt.
148. 7:57And this is him talking about his theory.
149. 7:59It's the complete transformation of childhood that took place
150. 8:02between 2010 and 2015,
151. 8:04so that before then, hardly any kids had a smartphone.
152. 8:07They didn't have high speed data plans, they had to pay for their texts.
153. 8:11So you couldn't really be online for six hours a day before 2010.
154. 8:15You had a flip phone. By 2015, everything's changed.
155. 8:18The great majority have a smartphone with a high speed data plan.
156. 8:21They have an Instagram account, and now they can be on ten hours a day
157. 8:25and they're on more than ten hours a day in that
158. 8:27even when they're not, they're thinking about it.
159. 8:29And so my argument is that human childhood evolved
160. 8:32for young people to play, learn social skills, learn adult skills.
161. 8:35And they used to do that. But once we developed this phone based childhood,
162. 8:39it just blocks almost every avenue of development.
163. 8:42And that's why we see for boys and for girls,
164. 8:44an elbow, a bend in the mental health stats. They all begin going north.
165. 8:48They all began going up, up, up the rates of mental illness around 2013.
166. 8:52There's some really stunning data just out now.
167. 8:56Now that we're past Covid and we have, you know, kids have been in school
168. 8:58for a couple of years and what you see is a little increase from Covid,
169. 9:02but this is on like a mountain range going up
170. 9:05from baseline to the top of Mount Everest.
171. 9:07And along the way, just near the top, you do see a little spike that's Covid,
172. 9:11but Mount Everest is from the phone based childhood.
173. 9:14It's not from Covid. It was. Covid didn't leave a lasting mark
174. 9:17in anything like the way the transformation of childhood did.
175. 9:19And those graphs, those numbers were going down a little bit
176. 9:22in the 20 tens for the millennials, you know,
177. 9:24born in 1981 to 1995, they have actually pretty good mental health.
178. 9:28And it was getting slightly better. And then when the first member
179. 9:30of Gen Z born 1996, when that first kid got a smartphone
180. 9:35and an Instagram account and moved her life onto that,
181. 9:38that cut off real relationships with other kids.
182. 9:41Going back to the arguments,
183. 9:43what are some of the what some of the other evidence.
184. 9:45So a big study in Norway was
185. 9:48really kind of making waves across the world this year.
186. 9:50So it was a longer term study than,
187. 9:54than others that have existed and what it found,
188. 9:58what its results showed was that smartphone bans in schools meant
189. 10:02less bullying, better mental health and better outcomes for teenagers,
190. 10:06particularly girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
191. 10:09So that was a really interesting study and is one that scientists have told me
192. 10:13have has really kind of propelled the debate, particularly around
193. 10:18like parents who are campaigning for phones to be banned in schools.
194. 10:22Um, but what the professor I spoke to said is that there was variation
195. 10:27in the study. So some schools were a lot more,
196. 10:29a lot more strict and others were more lenient.
197. 10:31And he said that there isn't enough evidence to show
198. 10:34that a strict ban is really necessary
199. 10:37and that in many cases maybe a more lenient ban.
200. 10:40So say, for example, where um, students could keep their phones
201. 10:44on them but just not use them in class.
202. 10:46He said that actually that can be just as effective as the stricter side,
203. 10:50where maybe you hand in your phone to reception in the morning at school.
204. 10:55Um, so like I said, there's lots of academics
205. 10:58who maybe disagree that phones should be banned
206. 11:01and social media should be banned for under 16 seconds.
207. 11:03And one of those is the professor I mentioned before.
208. 11:07So that's Professor Pete Etchells, and he told us this.
209. 11:10I haven't yet really been any good studies, you know,
210. 11:13things like randomised controlled trials that look at
211. 11:16what the potential positive or negative effects
212. 11:18of bands might look like, especially in the long term.
213. 11:21Anecdotally, though, we know that in situations where children
214. 11:24and young people have had their access to digital tech restricted,
215. 11:28those sorts of regulations tend to backfire.
216. 11:31So in South Korea, for instance, a law was passed
217. 11:33in 2011 to prevent young people from accessing the internet
218. 11:37between about midnight and six a.m.
219. 11:40and this was so that they could get more sleep.
220. 11:42But actually it only led to an extra minute and a half of sleep per night,
221. 11:46and it increased the amount of time that they spent on the internet.
222. 11:48It just happened earlier in the day.
223. 11:51There's nothing magical about the age of 16.
224. 11:54That means that if you get a phone at that age,
225. 11:56you'll suddenly just know how to use it appropriately.
226. 11:59What we need to be doing is thinking about how do we support people
227. 12:02of all ages, especially children and young people,
228. 12:05in developing healthier habits and healthier relationships
229. 12:09with digital tech so that whenever they do get their own smartphone,
230. 12:13they're properly equipped to use it in a safe way.
231. 12:16If we can have more sensible, rational conversations
232. 12:19about what we like and what we really don't like
233. 12:22about the technologies that are a part of our day to day lives,
234. 12:25then actually we can better hold tech companies to account.
235. 12:29And what we ultimately want to do then is make sure that they put
236. 12:31our well-being and our safety at the core of their design,
237. 12:35and not treat it as an afterthought. Around this whole debate.
238. 12:38It's really interesting because it's hard
239. 12:41to determine what is correlation and what's causation.
240. 12:44So whether yes, you can see in the data
241. 12:48that mental health for teenagers is is appears to be getting worse.
242. 12:52But some some scientists and academics are arguing that maybe that's because
243. 12:56the conversations around mental health are happening more often.
244. 12:59And actually we have the language about anxiety and depression
245. 13:02that maybe we didn't have back in 2013.
246. 13:06So it's really difficult to know it, whether it is a correlation
247. 13:10or whether the phones are actually causing these mental health issues.
248. 13:14Let's hear from some of the people who would be affected by these bans
249. 13:18if they were introduced now. Hi, I'm Sonia.
250. 13:22I'm 16 years old and if I couldn't use my phone at school at all,
251. 13:28I feel like honestly, I'd be pretty okay with that
252. 13:32since I like socialising with a lot of my friends during the day anyway.
253. 13:36Um, but I would feel a little unsafe
254. 13:40if I couldn't contact anyone if I got into trouble,
255. 13:43and if I couldn't access any social media until I was 16 or 17,
256. 13:48I feel like I would, um, not be as knowledgeable as I am
257. 13:55about real world experiences and a lot of struggles
258. 13:59that a lot of people go through, because I get a lot of stories
259. 14:03about people's personal experiences through social media.
260. 14:08Um, and it really just gives me like an insight into people's daily lives,
261. 14:14um, through, like in different places in the world
262. 14:17and what different people go through and different living conditions.
263. 14:20So I feel like if I didn't have social media until I was older,
264. 14:24I wouldn't be as aware of, um, my surroundings.
265. 14:29And here are some school students who sent us voice notes from France.
266. 14:32So my name is Isar.
267. 14:35I'm 16, I'm in high school.
268. 14:37In my opinion, the digital experiment that's happening
269. 14:41in France is a great idea, but I'm still
270. 14:46for the fact that students in high school can have their mobile phone
271. 14:53because with the help of their mobile phones,
272. 14:56they can be more independent.
273. 14:58They can manage their own schedule.
274. 15:01There are appointments. There are all the notes.
275. 15:04I think, in my opinion, to manage all of this.
276. 15:08And for the students in media, schools are too young
277. 15:12and need to stay away from all these distractions of the phone
278. 15:16because the phone can have a true impact on their life.
279. 15:21Hi, my name is Arlene and I'm 17.
280. 15:26In our high school we use most of the time our smartphone,
281. 15:31except when we are in the class with the teacher.
282. 15:35So we use our phone everywhere in the high school.
283. 15:40So for me, this experiment might be a very good idea in the high school.
284. 15:46Uh, because it's very important to take polls, you know,
285. 15:51and to draw away from the screen.
286. 15:55Otherwise you become addict and you start to do nothing
287. 16:00and to be a sedentary person.
288. 16:04For me, for example, when I'm not with my friends, I'm 30, obviously,
289. 16:09but most of the time I use my phone to watch some video.
290. 16:14So it's very important to take a pause and to discover it.
291. 16:17Something about your high school or to go in the library to read.
292. 16:22See you soon. Bye. Hello, my name is Richard
293. 16:25and I'm a 16 year old second year high school student.
294. 16:30Uh, there are so many times where I've just seen people, uh,
295. 16:34lock themselves in the bathrooms to use the phone or, like,
296. 16:37film TikToks or just, uh, people waiting for the opportunity
297. 16:42to, like, quickly whip out their phone and use it a little bit.
298. 16:46And I just found that very annoying.
299. 16:49And I feel like the newer generation,
300. 16:51or myself included, can really have trouble focusing
301. 16:55for a long period of time just because of all the content we watch,
302. 17:00or just getting easily distracted by the phone.
303. 17:03So, Haley, how have the phone and the social media companies
304. 17:06responded to calls for bans?
305. 17:09So not many of the companies have commented,
306. 17:12but meta, who own Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,
307. 17:16has raised concerns about how age verification would work.
308. 17:20Um, and the amount of personal data that might need to be shared.
309. 17:23So meta and meta is also argued that app stores run by Google
310. 17:27and Apple should be the ones to enforce these age restrictions, um,
311. 17:32and age verification rather than the apps themselves.
312. 17:36Um, some apps are starting to to introduce protections for younger users.
313. 17:40So Instagram has teen accounts, um,
314. 17:43and they have default private settings and sleep mode.
315. 17:47And meta says this will limit the contents teens can see as well.
316. 17:51So tech companies are trying to do things to reduce the amount
317. 17:54of time that people are spending on phones,
318. 17:56and also like the harmful material they can access.
319. 17:58But what can I do to try and get some of my life back for hours a day or more?
320. 18:04I'm spending on on this thing.
321. 18:06Like, what can I do to try and fix that dependence?
322. 18:09Well, you could do like the extreme option,
323. 18:11which some teenagers are doing around the world,
324. 18:14which is just to abandon your smartphone altogether and get a brick phone.
325. 18:17Not even a digital detox like, not have a smartphone.
326. 18:20I think some people do a mixture. So maybe you would have a smartphone,
327. 18:24but then when you're going out, you take a brick phone.
328. 18:26So you've still got that safety element, but
329. 18:28you're not going to be distracted by something.
330. 18:31I don't think I could because I like I need the maps,
331. 18:34I need the taxi apps, I need to plan my journeys.
332. 18:37Or my ADHD coach did recommend.
333. 18:39So back in the start of the year, I was really thinking about this a lot.
334. 18:43And like New Year's resolutions were coming around
335. 18:45and I was like, I'm going to do it. This is the year I'm going to like,
336. 18:49crack it with my phone and just, like, not use it as much.
337. 18:52Um, obviously totally failed as we've seen on my screen time,
338. 18:55but, um, my ADHD coach was recommending I make a little box
339. 18:59and he was like, decorate it really nicely, and
340. 19:01you can have this thing called phone in a box time where you put the phone in,
341. 19:04and it's not a punishment because it's all decorated.
342. 19:06It's all really nice and pretty. Obviously, I never even made the box.
343. 19:10Like putting the phone to foam bed.
344. 19:12Yeah, but I'm talking about maybe next year, maybe next January.
345. 19:16Hayley, thank you so much for coming into the studio and
346. 19:19and revealing my sins. Thank you so much for having me.
347. 19:22I will try and practice what I preach as well.
348. 19:24And thank you for joining us. I'm Hannah Gilbert.
349. 19:27This has been what in the world from the BBC World Service.
350. 19:30You can get in touch with us anytime. You probably have to use your phone
351. 19:33for it. So I don't know if that's very helpful, but we are on WhatsApp,
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353. 19:39You can leave us a comment below and we'll be back with another episode soon.
354. 19:42See you then. Bye.