Some children spend hours every day on their smartphones. Why is this the case? Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

Nowadays,

children

and teenagers devote hours to using their phones each day.

This

, in my opinion, results from social media’s exceptional ability to keep users’ attention. It should be viewed as a negative development because it can make

children

’s mental health receive bad influences. In

this

internet era, social media are extremely good at providing people with

content

that holds their attention. They track user behaviours like search history and video types watched most, and analyze these data by the methods of machine learning so that they can produce more personalized

content

for users, which can make users stick with the smartphones. Since

children

tend to lack self-control, they could spend all their

time

on “interesting”

content

and

consequently

waste most of their precious

time

that should be used to pursue their dreams. Unfortunately, hours of phone

time

every day can affect harmfully

children

’s mental development.

For example

, short videos in TikTok, which are thoroughly selected to attract adolescents, are filled with others’ perfect lives. Many kids feel frustrated after watching these videos and probably strive to keep up with each other.

Furthermore

,

this

can keep

children

from concentrating on the things that really matter,

such

as learning, sports and accompanying families. Imagine that people don’t communicate with each other and are immersed in their own virtual world,

while

the real world becomes unreal, I think no one wants to see

this

in the future. In conclusion, some

children

spend a large amount of

time

on their phones every day because social media constantly presents them with

content

designed to keep their attention. Sadly,

this

can cause adverse influences on their mental health.