7 Reasons Why Mobile Phones Are the New Junk Food for Kids

7 Reasons Why Mobile Phones Are the New Junk Food for Kids

In this article, we’ll uncover 7 reasons why mobile phones are the new junk food for kids and how to

protect your child’s mental health.

Today you can just as easily give a phone to your child they have been issuing an Ipod or similar.

Mobile phones may be innocent looking– praiseworthy even for distracting or pacifying a child,

but, like most other things in life they likely carry far worse consequences over time.

The immediate analog of junk food that immediately satisfies your taste buds with absolutely

no nutritional benefits is exactly what a mobile phone becomes — fast, entertaining,

elevated with the force of modern cults of narcissism. Those habits become dangerously

addictive both in real and in the digital worlds, influencing not only preferences but also health,

behavior patterns and even brain development over time.

📱 1. Phones = Digital Junk Food

Mobile: Just like junk food, mobiles are tasty and not good for you, fast too…also addictive.

They tap into an adolescent’s reward circuit, flooding the brain with a hormone called

dopamine — and movies are crackerjack at this. The issue is: this dopamine loop can

easily spiral into addiction, shoddy self-regulation and shallower attention spans.

Scientific research in neuroscience tells us that children’s brains are particularly sensitive

to what they are fed — whether food or digital content.
Think mobiles of the digital kind: they are like candy bars, delicious and engrossing, killing

you if taken in excess.

2. Brain Development at Risk

The Brain before You are Born

It is important that early childhood is the best time for brain growth. By nature, the brain

thrives on ideas from the real-world: human interaction, outdoor adventures, problem

solving and creativity. Mobiles on the other hand provide only immersive passive

engagement — scrolling, tapping…and watching mostly mind-numbing things develop.

Studies show:

• Too much screen time in Preschoolers Slows Down Language Development
• Increased phone use with lower memory and cognitive performance in school aged children
• Would it surprise you to learn that kids who play on screens are missing out on empathy and patience, strategic thinking?
  (No this by no means means screens are the only way to play)

3. Shortened Attention Spans

Blood sugar spikes and crashes from junk food, just as screen time induces mental overstimulation

leading to burnout. Separately, mobile app and games are meant to be addictive due to instant

gratification that ensues from grabbing our attention immediately.

Consequences include:

• Incapable of focusing on long tasks (reading)
• Too Much Boredom or Quiet Time
• Impulsivity and agitated in school

A kid who can’t sit through 10 minutes of conversation without having the screen /topen

can be in big trouble with patience, focus or emotional regulation later in life.

4. Emotional Instability and Behavioral Problems

Poor diet effects mood and behavior, the same as too much screen time for emotional functioning

of a human being. The problem with children who are constantly on screens for hours will be

Tweens pout or are irritable when the device is confiscated

Social comparison (especially on videos or social media) leads to an increase in anxiety and depression

Avoid of family or usual activities

Now we have a common phrase—“digital tantrum,” the epithet applied to extremes of behavior

extreme kids enact when their screen use is over.

5. Sleep Disruption

One more thing that junk food and phones have in common: sleep. Sugar before bed messes

with sleep, watch the screens — blue light suppression melatonin so as it comes especially

from, which is exactly a phone.

Many children:

• Sleep until seven on binge watching and video games
• Less than the recommended amount for their age
• Mood swings, fatigue and lack of focus during the day as well.

* Lack of Chronic sleep can result in stunt growth, learning and immune function (children)

6. No Real Life Social Abilities

Like junk food that kills vitamins in the body, overuse of screens kill kids social experience from a diet.

In the real world kids learn empathy, competition and communication — not from screens.

Having your children spend a full 3+ hours each day on the tablet means, amongst other things:

Reading body language and facial expression

Take Turns and Share

Playing to develop EQ

Busy with screen time becomes socially stilted, awkward crianças

7. Addiction Risk

Junk food and mobile phones are both addictive, just like many apps which are using infinite

scroll, bright colors and game mechanics to addict your users (mostly children) forever. This results in-

• Screen dependency
• Loads of Time
• Ignorance towards offline activities

Electronic addictiveness especially in children is slowly becoming a recognized issue by

psychologists, many requiring therapy to help reset their behaviors.

Things Parents Can Do: Better Digital Diet

So, Teaching kids to eat junks i.e. parents should teach kids healthy screen habits :

1. Limit screen time:

• For ages 2–5: no more than 1 hr/day (according to WHO)
• 12-18: balanced use with rests and screen-free

2. Tech-free zones:

• Put down your phone during dinner and bedtime
• Avoid screens in bedroom

3. Solicit alternatives

• Outdoor play, Reading Drawing, Puzzles, real toys
• Creatively bored? That’s just the start of imagination!

4. Role Model:

Kids emulate everything they see. Limit your own use of screens.

Kids Need Digital Wellness Can You Help?

Final Thoughts

Treat Tech Like Junk Food — With Caution

No parent ever wants their kid to subsist on chips and soda as they grow up, neither parent should be using screens as digital babysitters. Technology, no question is not evil in its own right but the excessive use without rules perpetuates long-term harm.

Mobiles — Junk Food — to be had sometimes, not on the menu. Through mindfulness, and education we can raise generation kids who are not only tech smart but, increasingly experienced emotionally and mentally; socially skilled.