Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

When the par­ents of an 11-year-old girl first al­lowed her ac­cess to so­cial me­dia, it seemed harm­less — a way to con­nect with friends and share fun­ny videos. With­in months, how­ev­er, sub­tle changes emerged.

She checked her phone the mo­ment she woke and the last thing at night. Soon, it rarely left her hand. No­ti­fi­ca­tion sounds trig­gered in­stant re­ac­tions. Once a live­ly chat­ter­box ea­ger to de­scribe her school day, she now of­fered one-syl­la­ble an­swers. Swim­ming lessons lost their ap­peal. Fam­i­ly movie nights felt like in­ter­rup­tions.

At school, teach­ers no­ticed she was dis­tract­ed and with­drawn. She be­came un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive to peer com­ments. By 13, she showed signs of anx­i­ety, low self-es­teem and per­sis­tent sad­ness. She con­fessed feel­ing “less than” when com­par­ing her­self to care­ful­ly cu­rat­ed im­ages on­line.

This sto­ry is no longer rare. Re­search in­creas­ing­ly mir­rors what fam­i­lies ob­serve. Large re­views have linked heavy so­cial me­dia use among ado­les­cents to high­er rates of anx­i­ety, de­pres­sive symp­toms, sleep dis­rup­tion and body-im­age dis­sat­is­fac­tion. While cau­sa­tion is com­plex, as­so­ci­a­tions are strong enough to con­cern clin­i­cians. Poor sleep alone — of­ten dri­ven by late-night scrolling — is a well-es­tab­lished risk fac­tor for mood dis­or­ders and aca­d­e­m­ic de­cline.

It is with­in this con­text that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s in­di­ca­tion that Gov­ern­ment may con­sid­er a ban on so­cial me­dia use for chil­dren un­der 12 de­serves com­men­da­tion.

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don has like­wise urged leg­is­la­tion sim­i­lar to Aus­tralia’s re­stric­tions pro­hibit­ing so­cial me­dia ac­cess for those un­der 16.

This re­flects a grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al shift. Sev­er­al US states now re­quire parental con­sent for mi­nors. France, Ger­many and Nor­way have tight­ened child on­line pro­tec­tions. The de­bate is no longer fringe — it is glob­al.

Neu­ro­science sup­ports cau­tion. Ear­ly ado­les­cence — rough­ly ages 12-15 — is among the most neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble stages of life. The pre­frontal cor­tex, re­spon­si­ble for im­pulse con­trol, emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion and long-term de­ci­sion-mak­ing, con­tin­ues de­vel­op­ing in­to the mid-20s. In this win­dow, peer ap­proval car­ries am­pli­fied weight. A “like” can feel like af­fir­ma­tion of iden­ti­ty; on­line re­jec­tion ac­ti­vates neur­al path­ways sim­i­lar to phys­i­cal pain.

By 16, cog­ni­tive con­trol and emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion are gen­er­al­ly stronger. I sug­gest rais­ing the age thresh­old to 16. It grants four ad­di­tion­al years be­fore ex­po­sure to plat­forms en­gi­neered to cap­ture at­ten­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 15, 2026, the US Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, Sci­ence and Trans­porta­tion heard tes­ti­mo­ny on youth screen use. Ex­perts re­port­ed chil­dren av­er­ag­ing five to eight hours dai­ly on screens. Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Jared Hor­vath stat­ed that Gen­er­a­tion Z — born be­tween rough­ly 1997 and 2012 — is the first gen­er­a­tion to un­der­per­form across mul­ti­ple cog­ni­tive mea­sures com­pared to pre­vi­ous co­horts.

For much of the 20th cen­tu­ry, IQ scores rose steadi­ly — about three points per decade (the Fly­nn Ef­fect). That up­ward trend has flat­tened and, in some re­gions, re­versed.

Hor­vath and oth­er re­searchers high­light­ed in­ter­na­tion­al da­ta sug­gest­ing that once dig­i­tal de­vices are wide­ly adopt­ed in class­rooms, aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance de­clines. Stu­dents us­ing com­put­ers for around five hours dai­ly for school tasks scored more than two-thirds of a stan­dard de­vi­a­tion low­er than peers who used lit­tle class­room tech­nol­o­gy.

Den­mark has re­spond­ed by re­vers­ing course. Be­gin­ning in the 2025–2026 school year, Dan­ish schools re­moved many cell­phones, tablets and lap­tops from class­rooms, re­turn­ing to phys­i­cal text­books and hand­writ­ten as­sign­ments. Ear­ly re­ports in­di­cate im­proved con­cen­tra­tion and en­gage­ment.

Our Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Michael Dowlath, with over three decades of ed­u­ca­tion­al lead­er­ship, should take note of this glob­al shift, hope­ful­ly prompt­ing lo­cal re­flec­tion.

While pro­vid­ing lap­tops to stu­dents was once seen as pro­gres­sive, ev­i­dence sug­gests re­cal­i­bra­tion may be nec­es­sary.

In­stead of “lap­tops for all,” school com­put­er labs with time lim­its could pre­serve dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy with­out con­stant screen ex­po­sure, yield­ing both ed­u­ca­tion­al and fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits.

The is­sue is not whether tech­nol­o­gy has val­ue. It does. The ques­tion is tim­ing and de­vel­op­men­tal readi­ness.

Par­ents would not al­low a 10-year-old to cross a busy high­way alone. Yet, many per­mit chil­dren to nav­i­gate an un­reg­u­lat­ed dig­i­tal world of strangers, com­par­i­son cul­ture and al­go­rithms de­signed to max­imise en­gage­ment.

When a prod­uct demon­stra­bly af­fects sleep, mood, at­ten­tion and self-worth in chil­dren, reg­u­la­tion be­comes a pub­lic health ques­tion. Clear age re­stric­tions send a cul­tur­al sig­nal: child­hood is not sim­ply a small­er ver­sion of adult­hood.

Im­per­fect en­force­ment does not negate the prin­ci­ple. Age lim­its on dri­ving and al­co­hol ex­ist be­cause de­vel­op­men­tal sci­ence de­mands them.

This is not fear of progress. It is recog­ni­tion that plat­forms built for adult at­ten­tion economies may be de­vel­op­men­tal­ly in­com­pat­i­ble with ear­ly ado­les­cence.

The ques­tion is no longer whether so­cial me­dia shapes young minds. It clear­ly does. The ques­tion is whether we will act on mount­ing sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence — or al­low an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion to qui­et­ly bear the cost.