American teenagers decided to break free from technology and social networking sites through an initiative to give up their phones and pay attention to other traditional hobbies such as drawing, reading, and others.
Teenagers in Brooklyn, New York, founded the “Ludette” club, or “anti-technological development”, influenced by the story of the textile worker “Ned Ludd”, who led a protest in the eighteenth century against the introduction of modern machinery to British factories because of the unemployment and poverty they might cause, according to “Al Jazeera”, reports a local Arabic daily.
In 2022, teenagers decided to protest against their Smartphones, because of the problems they cause to their mental health. The club’s weekly meeting includes reading novels, drawing, and enjoying manual skills without phones. Some of the teens participating in the club still have Smartphones, while some have other old phones “in order to calm their anxious parents.”
Young people reported that they were finally starting to “use their brains”, finding it easier to manage friendships, and that their lives had changed because of the activities they were doing (they had started to come home to dinner).
According to a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, 25 percent of children own a smartphone by their tenth birthday, and this percentage rises to 75 percent before their thirteenth birthday. And by the age of 15, everyone (nearly 100 percent) has a phone in their pocket.
The study indicates that anxiety and depression are on the rise among children, as seamless access to Smartphones and social media is one of the big causes of these diseases.
And with cyberbullying, trolling, and posting body images always a click away, anxiety and depression are skyrocketing among children between the ages of 3 and 17 today.