All In The Mind

Smartphones are bad for the mental health of children and adolescents. At least, that’s the popular perception that has led to calls for smartphones to be banned for children under a certain age, with numerous media reports drumming home the narrative that smartphones are damaging a generation. But the evidence for a link between smartphones and poor mental health is surprisingly weak, and smartphones also have uses that can be beneficial to children and adults alike. Claudia Hammond talks to Dr Amy Orben, who leads the digital mental health group at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. As well as her own research, she’s reviewed huge numbers of studies on the topic and says that the panic around smartphones mirrors previous panics about other technologies such as the radio. So how do we allow children to become part of the digital world while also keeping them safe?Claudia is joined in the studio by clinical psychologist Linda Blair, who brings along a new research paper