In the late 1800s, a patented medicine geared towards children called Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was made accessible to the public. The product claimed to calm children down, help them sleep, and whiten their teeth. There was no prescription necessary for purchase, and furthermore, no disclosures of the ingredients.

The stuff worked miracles. It really seemed to work. It turns out, unfortunately, that Mrs. Winslow’s magic potion was brimming with both morphine and alcohol. Nothing like getting a baby drunk to get it to go to sleep, right? Mrs. Winslow must have decided that drugging and intoxicating kids was the best way keep them in check. Consequently, medical companies started being required to disclose what was actually in their products, and eventually, you had to have a prescription to receive the medicine of choice. Despite public outcry against the product following several infant deaths, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup could be found in stores as late as the 1930s, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum.

While that story sounds crazy (and is) it reflects a similar kind of wanton neglect of kids’ health taking place in our own day. Since 2012, kids’ mental health has significantly declined. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and sociologist Jean Twenge have been at the forefront of researching how smartphones, and social media in particular, are not only correlated to anxiety and depression but that they actually cause such conditions.

An Old Story Wears a New Hat

Big Tech is the new Mrs. Winslow, handing out devices that promise to soothe and calm users but end up addicting and harming them instead. Recently, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) released a public policy brief on the “current harms to children caused and facilitated by smartphones (and tablets) and the app stores they host, driven by Big Tech companies’ financial incentives that misalign with the welfare of kids.”

Based on the findings, both centers are urging parents against giving their children phones or tablets. According to the research, no one should have access to social media or a smartphone until they’re nearly adults. Clare Morell writes,

We strongly advise parents, individually and as groups, to resist providing their kids a smartphone or tablet. Given how unsafe these devices are, they should be avoided and delayed until as close to adulthood as possible. We realize that, in many cases, such strong measures are not possible. This brief thus addresses the question of policy solutions that can be implemented to regulate smartphones and tablets to make them safer for kids and to ensure these devices provide an age-appropriate experience of apps and the internet for children.

Making Smartphones and App Stores Safe for Kids: Federal, State, and Industry Measures | Institute for Family Studies (ifstudies.org)

They also set out a list of regulations and safeguards for both federal and state governments to implement in order to protect children from premature engagement with smartphones.

Haidt writes in The Atlantic that smartphones ought to be banned from schools because “they impede learning, stunt relationships, and lessen belonging.”

All the evidence shows that these devices are druglike and have harmful effects. Eventually people stood up to bad medicine practices in the 1800s, despite it taking so long for the “soothing syrup” to leave the pharmacy shelves. Hopefully reports like the ones heralded by IFS, Haidt, and others will help the nation and the world take the problem more seriously.