Since the information revolution, smartphones have proliferated and made our lives easier, but smartphone addiction is causing mental and educational problems, especially for children and adolescents. Parents need to carefully manage their children’s smartphone use, and schools and society need to strengthen education.

The world has been changing rapidly since the information revolution, and the pace of change can be felt in the means of mobile communication: beepers became popular in the early 90s, followed a few years later by the first commercially available cell phones in the late 90s. About a decade later, in the 2010s, old cell phones became obsolete, and smartphones spread rapidly, with the majority of people using them. According to statistics on the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning website, the number of smartphone subscribers exceeded 37 million in December 2013 and is expected to grow.
There are so many things you can do with a smartphone: play, love, and business. Whether you’re playing games, listening to music, watching videos, or texting with friends, the possibilities are endless. For this reason, it’s become a common sight to board the subway and see most people on their smartphones. This has made it possible for people who have to constantly use public transportation to travel distances that take more than an hour to get around to spend that time in an informative and entertaining way. In addition, there are many other net functions of smartphones, such as rapid dissemination of information and convenient remote communication.

Benefits and impacts of smartphones

There is no doubt that smartphones are a technological breakthrough for mankind and have allowed us to live a more advanced lifestyle, but the problem is that while they have become ‘smart’, the people who use them are becoming the opposite of ‘smart’. Smartphones are like candy in your mouth, instantly entertaining and addictive. Smartphone addiction is causing people to lose sight of the fun and happiness that comes from higher-order things like friendships, exercise, and most people have long since forgotten the pleasure they get from reading.
Smartphone addiction is worse among children than adults. According to statistics from the Korea Information Society Agency, the rate of smartphone addiction among children is higher than that of adults. As a result, unlike children who used to go out to the playground and play small games with friends or kick a ball around, today’s children are more used to playing with their smartphones indoors. This shift has serious implications for their emotions and education.

The impact on children and teens

Children and adolescents who feel like playing on their smartphones while studying are less able to concentrate, and their ability to control and inhibit their desires is impaired by prolonged exposure to stimulating videos on their smartphones, leading to impulse disorders. They become numb to reality because they are accustomed to only stimulating things, and they are easily bored by quiet and static things. In addition, smartphone addiction affects their school life. According to Ji-Cheol Lee’s study ‘ The effects of smartphone addiction on school adjustment in children: focusing on the mediating effect of mental health’, the more severe a child’s smartphone addiction is, the more it negatively affects school adjustment and mental health.
In addition, one study found that the more addicted a child is to their smartphone, the worse their relationship with their parents, and the lower their self-esteem, and another study found that students with low smartphone use have higher academic achievement than students with high smartphone use.
Another problem is that smartphones take away opportunities and time for reflection. People don’t have much opportunity to reflect and be curious these days because smartphones are so entertaining that they don’t have time to be quiet, and everything you want to know is just a search away. To expand your thinking and come up with new ideas, you need to enrich your own thinking, but you don’t have time to reflect because your smartphone is like a teacher who can answer your questions instantly, and you can only reach for your smartphone when you want to reflect. Since Korea’s education is a tight education centered on efficiency, this is an even bigger problem for Korea’s children. According to a paper titled ‘ Effects of smartphone addiction on career barriers and career undecision among adolescents, the more severe the smartphone addiction, the more often adolescents are undecided about their career path. This can be seen as a result of smartphones taking away children’s opportunities for reflection.

How to address smartphone addiction

These serious problems are caused by smartphone addiction, so parents shouldn’t take it lightly when raising children. However, many parents don’t see smartphone addiction as a big problem and use it as an easier way to appease their children. When kids aren’t listening in public or need motivation, smartphones are incredibly tempting because they provide instant gratification, but this attitude only confuses kids. Instead of rewarding kids with smartphones, you should take them away from them once and for all. If you give them a smartphone as a reward, they will think of studying or doing household chores as a pain that they have to endure in order to have a smartphone, and they will become inactive.
Another option is to free up their leisure time, for example by reducing the number of excessive academies they attend. One of the reasons kids choose smartphones over playing with friends is not only because they are fun, but also because they are convenient. They don’t have a lot of time, or they’re playing in spare time, such as during recess at school, or in the late evening when they’ve finished their schoolwork and have some leisure time, so they use their smartphone, which is less constrained by time and space than going out and playing.
Many papers have proven that smartphone addiction is mentally and educationally harmful to children and adolescents, so parents need to take the problem of smartphone addiction in children seriously and recognize that it is more serious than smartphone addiction in adults, because even if it is only an occasional and small use now, if children and adolescents become addicted to smartphones from a young age, it can have a huge impact on their lives after a long time. To spread this awareness, schools should educate about smartphone addiction, and broadcasters should educate children and parents about smartphone addiction through impactful methods such as public service announcements.