The Effects of Mobile Devices on Children’s Health Essay Example

First and foremost, mobile devices are detrimental to children’s health. As many people usually said  “The eyes are the windows of the soul”, this is even more accurate when talking about children’s eyes. While healthy vision is critical for every child’s life, the appearance of mobile devices is a big threat to their eyes. In a research which was carried out by Ayesha Malik - a pediatric optometrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers have found that children who spend more time indoor using mobile devices have a tendency to develop nearsightedness. To give an explicit explanation for this, the HEV light and blue light, which are emitted from the screen, has high energy in comparison with the sunlight (Anaheim Eye, Children’s myopia risks linked to smartphone use, n.d., para. 5). This energy has been associated with myopic macular degeneration which is a significant cause of vision loss. For the specific example, a four-year-old Thai girl suffered from severe eye damage and had no choice but to perform a surgery because her dad chose to give his baby a mobile phone to play with, as a temporary method of  keeping her busy while he worked. Additionally, extensive use of mobile devices can make children face postural risks. Children who having poor posture while using mobile gadgets for a long period of time without modifying their position and sitting improperly leads to neck and back pain. This also causes serious consequences as it tends to last for age affecting the posture of the child life-long if not taken into consideration promptly. In particular, "Text neck", which refers to a repetitive stress injury to the neck caused by having your head in a forward position for extended period, is more common in children who spend several hours a day hunching over their mobile devices (National Library of Medicine, 2021, Definition). Moreover, these mobile devices have proved to be linked to the threats of mental health on children. A study from the PEACH project (Aby, 2015) in 1000 children age between 10 and 11, found that the children who consume more than 2 hours in a screen or other mobile gadgets were more likely to have psychological issue such as anxiety and depression due to the approaching of many inappropriate contents which are spreading uncontrollably on the Internet like pornography, violence, extremist behaviour and so on. Children are susceptible to such things as they are vulnerable to emotional and behavioural disturbances because of their undeveloped awareness. As an example for those mental issues, suicide attempt among children is now considered to be the most challenging issue to deal with. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of iGen, found that among kids who spent two hours or more a day on smartphones or other handheld devices, 48% had at least one suicide-related outcome. In short, these effects of mobile devices towards children’s health such as eye damage, severe postural threats and mental health are attracting the human concern in the recent years because of its detrimental impacts.