HEALTH MINUTE (CBS) – Experts warned that health risks of screentime are more damaging then people think. Some British doctors compare the danger to smoking, saying the harm can happen even faster.
“With smoking, you know the effects tend to be longer, more insidious over time – whereas with social media, you know if only takes five seconds to be shown a traumatizing video or to be sexually exploited and have a photo of you sent round the school,” Dr. Emily Sehmer, a consultant child psychiatrist, said.
Many schools in the U.S. and Europe have adopted phone-free policies. At Astrea Academy in England, students lock their phones away. If caught, students lose them for four weeks.
Facebook’s parent company, META, said it wants Apple and Google to lock devices belonging to children by checking a user’s age when they set up a new phone to stop underage kids from downloading apps.
Some critics insisted the focus should be on making platforms safer, not keeping kids off of them.
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