Excessive smartphone use can have a catastrophic effect on 14-year-old girls’ mental health
24/7 online pressure can lead to lack of sleep as a fifth of kids wake up at night to check social media

IMAGINE sending a 14-year-old girl alone into a park at night.
A park where she will be bullied, called fat and ugly, approached by perverts, told to take her clothes off, made to see things no young girl should ever see.
Horrified? Parents happily wave their daughters off into a virtual version of this every single day.
It’s called the internet — and 24/7 access to it is having a catastrophic effect on girls’ mental health.
It's been revealed that one in four 14-year-old girls is depressed — double the number 12 years ago.
What’s changed? Hormones are the same. Worries about zits are the same.
What’s changed is the wifi-enabled extension that teenagers have grown on the end of one arm.
Teens now sleep with their smartphone, eat with their smartphone, see their smartphone as part of their identity.
Behold the zombies leaving school each day, slack-jawed, thumb-scrolling through the latest app.
Many spend more waking hours in the virtual world than the real one.
We have sleepwalked to a situation where it is perfectly normal for children of 12, 13, 14 to have unfettered internet access through their phone.
I used to watch Neighbours after school. Today’s teens might instead view hardcore porn, “happy slappings”, anorexia websites or self-harm tutorials.
The Sun's Block The Bullying campaign aims to educate young people that
filming and sharing attacks on social media can be just as
damaging to a child as the actual physical assault.
If you or anyone you know have experienced this kind of bullying
contact the NSPCC via help@nspcc.org.uk,
phone 0808 800 5000 or .
That isn’t even the most damaging part of smartphone culture. The worst is that it takes all the normal pressures of being a teen and turbo-charges them.
Yes, we all had a bit of name-calling. But were we hounded by cyber bullies round the clock, so there was no respite?
Yes, we were insecure about our looks. But were we confronted constantly with unattainable celebrity beauty — tanned limbs, pert boobs and Kim Kardashian’s bottom? Yes, we all compared ourselves with our friends. But were we inundated with Facebook images edited to look perfect — perfect holidays, perfect meals, perfect families, perfect lives?
Social media offers up a toxic stew of inadequacy and jealousy to teens. It creates the perfect forum for bullying.
And all this is worse for girls than boys. While a quarter of 14-year-old girls are depressed, only one in ten teenage boys feels the same.
Anyone who has been a teenage girl may not be surprised by this.
Their behaviour can make the Hunger Games look like a tea party, or Lord Of The Flies like a team-building exercise. Friendships go through break-ups, make-ups and break-ups again in one school day.
Teenage girls can be hypercritical — and hypersensitive to criticism.
At least we used to get a break from all that psycho-drama at home time. Now those bitchy games can be played 24/7.
Add to that the pressure to look like someone in Towie, the pressure to be “having fun” on social media all the time and the pressure to send that boy in science class a picture of you with your bra off. Is it any wonder so many girls feel they are cracking up?
Studies have shown a link between social media and mental health problems. Glasgow University found that the pressure to “respond 24/7 on social media accounts can cause depression, anxiety and decrease sleep quality for teenagers”. The Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research found that a fifth of children are waking up in the middle of the night to check social media.
How to tackle bullying videos on social media
Brutal videos of children beating up other children are becoming more common by the day. But what should you do if you see one pop up on your social media feed? And worse still, what should you do if you discover that your child is a victim of this kind of bullying, or even that they are taking part themselves? It is an incredibly tough position for any parent to be in, so click here for a step by step guide from the NSPCC.
Leading addiction therapist Mandy Saligari recently said that handing your child a smartphone is like giving them “a gram of cocaine”.
Smartphone culture is turning children into socially inept zombies at best and anxious depressives at worst.
And what is the response from adults? Adults, who are supposed to protect children from harm? Adults, who are meant to shield children’s innocence?
The response is largely utter indifference, probably because we’re too busy scrolling through our own iPhones to wake up to what is happening.
The depressing news that parents now spend almost four times as long staring at their phone or computer than they do reading to their children confirms the bleeding obvious.
Adults have become smartphone zombies, too.
How can parents tell kids to put their phones down, have a real-life conversation or get into the fresh air when they’re failing to do it themselves?
For the sake of teenagers’ mental health, parents need to wake up to the damage being done under their noses.
They must make an effort to put down their own phones and talk to their children. They should insist on their kids having hours a day to play, chill out and BREATHE without their smartphone and its constant pressures.
It’s the job of parents to set boundaries and show there’s life beyond Snapchat and Instagram.
If they fail to do that, Britain’s kids will only get unhappier.
Clare Foges is a former No10 speechwriter and children’s author.
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