Reasonable people are wondering what in the world is happening when the following have occurred:

  • In 2006, a 12-year-old girl in Medicine Hat, Alberta, assisted by her 23-year-old boyfriend, stabbed to death her mother and father and her 8-year-old brother.
  • In 2021, a 17-year-old boy in Toronto murdered a taxi driver. The judge stated that the murder was irrational and impulsive.
  • In 2021, a 17-year-old boy in Winnipeg killed 3 Indigenous adults without any known motivation.
  • In 2022, a group of 13-14-year-old girls in Toronto stabbed to death a homeless man, seemingly without any motivation.

Where has the innocence of childhood gone?  There seems to be a breakdown in the mental health of children.  This phenomenon was analyzed in the recent book, The Anxious Generation:  How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, (Penguin Press 2024).  Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University.  He states that children’s heavy reliance on screen media is the source of the current predicament.  He detailed the statistical decline in mental health among children, showing how it affects boys and girls differently (yes, boys and girls are different, contrary to the feminist assertion that the sexes are interchangeable).

For girls, excessive screen time results in a rise in depression and anxiety due to feeling watched, judged and found wanting by a jury of her peers.  The most harm for girls is caused by social media apps.  For boys it is gaming and online porn.  For a boy this is an escape from adolescence, social expectations and an environment that discourages physical risk. Instead, they enter into a place where sexual curiosity, gratification, and the sense of challenge and danger are satisfied alone at home in their own room where they indulge in screen time.

Technology is Inescapable Today

The reality is that technology has become an inescapable part of every child’s experience.  The expansion of technical knowledge by way of apps, video games, smartphones and TV, has sparked intensive research into the effects of technology on children and youth development.  The research is consistent in finding that children’s intelligence, social development, and emotional stability are being affected by technology.

Simply put, excessive screen time is a monumental problem today.  For example, during the very early years of childhood, which are crucial for acquiring language skills, children develop various aspects of language usage including phonology (the science of speech sounds).  These speech skills are acquired by interacting with adults.  Many studies have highlighted the significance of human interaction in the development of language skills, particularly in the frequency and quality of exchanges between adults and children.  Screen time diminishes the quantity and quality of this interaction between children and their parents, resulting in fewer chances for the child to practice and develop their language skills.

Screen Time

Although there is no specific physiological mechanism known which underlies the adverse outcomes related to screen time usage, the detrimental effects of screen time have been clearly established.  This includes the impact that background television has when children are present, which causes an adverse effect on language usage, executive function (mental processes in carrying out goals) and retention of knowledge (cognition).  One study has found that TV exposure between 6-18 months of age was associated with emotional reaction, aggression and externalizing behaviours witnessed on the screen.

Another problem is that screens emit a blue light which interferes with melatonin (a hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles).  This undermines children’s ability to retain information as sleep is essential for good mental health.  For example, although the child may be awake during a lesson on algebra the next day, that child may not be as capable of retaining the information from the lesson.

Screen Time and Intelligence

Research carried out in Toronto at the Hospital for Sick Children and St. Michael’s Hospital on more than 3,000 children from 2008 to 2023 was published in the JAMA Network (Journal of the American Medical Association), on October 3, 2025.  This study is particularly important because most existing studies on screen time have focused on youth 12 years and older, but the Toronto study focused on children under 8 years of age.  The study found that each additional hour of daily screen time was associated with a 9-10% reduced likelihood of a child achieving a higher academic level.  In effect, heavy screen time hurts academic achievement in children.  Other research indicates that screen exposure impacts on the overall wellbeing of children, including their physical, emotional, intellectual and social development. In short, screen usage is an independent risk factor for children.

Parenting Styles Have Changed

Parenting styles have changed today, in that parents are now excessively concerned about the safety of their children.  Consequently, children are constantly under supervision.  This parenting style is called “helicopter parenting” because the parents are always hovering over the children.

It is normal practice today for both parents to be in the paid workforce.  They return home at the end of the day, tired and exhausted, but cannot rest or relax because they must perform household chores such as laundry, meal preparation, etc.  While they are so occupied they do not want their children to be outside in unsupervised play and want them “safe” in the home.  During this time, their children usually occupy themselves by racking up screen time playing video games, watching TV or scrolling on their smartphones.  It is ironic that parents no longer allow their children outside alone for even 10 minutes to walk through the neighbourhood to the corner store for safety reasons.  Yet, parents allow the children to go online for several hours which is known, definitively, to be harmful to them.

Solutions to Children’s Excessive Screen Time

A bill was passed nearly 25 years ago by the U.S. Congress called Online Privacy Protection Act.  It prohibited a child from having online access to social media, defining a child as anyone under 16 years of age.  Unfortunately, the age restriction was pushed down to 13 years after a campaign by progressive civil liberties groups raised concerns about the bill, claiming that it would make it harder for teens to find information on birth control, abortion and other sensitive topics.  This resulted in a political compromise to reduce the age to 13 years.  Even that lower age, however, was regarded as too restrictive and unreasonable by tech companies.

Denmark, however, has passed legislation to ban social media access for children under the age of 15.  Australia has legislation that will come into effect in December 2025 which will prohibit those under 16 years of age to have access to social media.   This policy change has been put in place by these countries because parents were having difficulty restricting their children’s access to their smartphones.  The children were under intense pressure to obtain a smartphone, so that they could join in collective group activities with their classmates.

Good News in Canada

There is good news in Canada, however.  Last year, David Pelletier, a father in Toronto, started an organization to keep smartphones out of young people’s hands until they are at least 14 years of age.  Mr. Pelletier, a software developer, called his organization Unplugged Canada. It is a grassroots initiative that includes a pledge for parents to sign, agreeing not to give their children smartphones until they are at least 14 years of age.  He hopes that childhood will return to a time of play and real-life connections instead of time wasted on screens.  Unplugged Canada also hopes to convince the federal government to pass legislation to ban access to social media for those under 14 years of age. So far over 5,000 people have signed the pledge to remove smartphones from their children.  Parents as a community, thereby, are making a collective commitment to restore childhood to their children. This collective agreement to delay smartphones until the age of 14 is a supportive community effort rather than a lone individual parent resisting pressure from their child.

All parents want their children to be happy and confident and to have good mental health, and Unplugged Canada may be a route to achieve this.  It also is a way to influence the government to bring in appropriate legislation to protect children from harmful access to social media influences.  The website for Unplugged Canada is unpluggedcanada.com.