Child Addiction To Smartphones: How To Recognize And Overcome?

February 4, 2025

February 4, 2025

Mobile phones, which seemed to be a boon at the end of the last century, today cause anxiety for many. Especially when it comes to children’s phones, which can not only serve as a means of communication and an effective learning assistant but also cause serious addiction. How to limit the time spent by a son or daughter on the Web within a reasonable framework, especially when monitoring children’s phone time 24 hours a day is beyond the power of any of the most responsible parents?

An african american girl sits on the couch with a smartphone in her had to show how addiction to smartphones can be overcome.
Source: DepositPhotos.com

What Is Digital Addiction And How Does It Occur?

The mobile phone is constantly in the child’s hand, accompanying him at school, on a walk, and even during sleep. How can you resist and not launch your favorite game, go to a friend’s social network page, or watch a new interesting video on YouTube, instead of boring lessons and homework?

Gradually, step by step, the passion for electronic toys develops into addiction. The child loses interest in everything that is outside the smartphone screen and spends more and more time in the virtual space. And the more actively the family protects its smallest member from an unexpected threat, the more violently it resists.

How digital addiction shows itself:

  • The child uses a smartphone even while eating, communicating with family, and watching TV.
  • Attempts by elder family members to control kids in their irrational use of the phone lead to reciprocal aggression or panic.
  • If adults try to monitor children and stop their too frequent access to the Internet, they begin to do it secretly: at night under the blanket, in the toilet, or a secluded place.
  • The likes of random users under the posted photo become more important than the approval of friends and relatives.
  • A teenager’s attention becomes distracted, and memory deteriorates. As a result, performance drops.
  • Communication skills in real life worsen; the socialization of the child slows down or regresses.
  • Due to the blue light of the screen, which inhibits the production of melanin, insomnia appears. Add to this the fact that many children play on their smartphones before bedtime, unable to limit app time with entertainment, games, or social networking independently, the situation turns out to be quite sad.
  • Headaches appear, eyesight falls and the spine suffers due to the constant tilt of the head.
  • A sedentary lifestyle with a phone in hand leads to overweight.
  • Wandering the Web, teenagers often see content that can shock them, provoke depression, or lead to unwanted thoughts (for example, sites about suicide).

A side effect of addiction is the risk that a child who is carried away by virtual communication will fall into the field of view of scammers. In cyberspace, where they look for their victims, it is extremely difficult to guarantee the protection of children. Deftly allowing themselves into a teenager’s social circle, criminals can provoke him into antisocial acts, find out personal information, and even remotely monitor the child through his posts on social networks. Even a selfie from his favorite comic book store will give a criminal a clue to a child’s location, while a funny message “We are going to the sea!” will indicate at what time the house will be empty.

Finally, a teenager immersed in watching a screen may attempt to cross the road in the wrong place or get into another dangerous situation and suffer physically.

Why Does The Smartphone Ban Not Work In Real Life?

Seeing clear signs of digital addiction, many parents resort to serious measures: take away the phone, try to establish tight control over the children, even spy, secretly check correspondence, or visit history. But these steps are ineffective! By acting in this way, you will not only teach your son or daughter how to safely control gadgets but also destroy a trusting relationship with him or her. In addition, children perceive strict prohibitions as a challenge and enthusiastically begin to invent the most sophisticated ways to circumvent family control.

To impose a ban on smartphones these days, when even the poorest family tries to provide their child with a phone, means to make him an outcast among his peers and deprive him of many opportunities. The phone allows him to communicate with friends, provides access to the limitless knowledge that the Internet is filled with, and ensures the child’s security so that they are always in touch with their relatives.

Solving the problem of addiction is required not with an ax, but with a jewelry tool, precise and delicate. Such a tool in the hands of a caring adult can be a simple monitoring app of a child’s phone, which will provide full family control over a son’s or daughter’s smartphone, allowing not only to minimize the listed risks but also to be aware of the lives of their children. This is a real kid guard, present next to him day and night!

The Functionality Of The Parental Control App Kroha

The best family monitoring app Kroha is designed to turn a child’s unmanaged interaction with a smartphone into an open and correctable process, and empower parents to protect children from threats in cyberspace and the real world. Its functionality is built in such a way as to find a solution to literally any problem related to the gadget in one way or another.

Internet Time Limit

With Kroha statistics, you can monitor the screen time of your phones and make sure your kids don’t use it during school, sleep, sports, and more.

How to do it:

  • Set daily smartphone usage limits.
  • Schedule according to your child's schedule for every single day of the week.
  • Set screen limits for the time of communication with your family.
  • Set parent blocks.
  • Turn the phone off and on at certain times. To do this, there is not even a need to take the child’s gadget in hand – everything happens remotely.

Monitoring The Actions Of The Child On The Smartphone

Kroha will give daily or weekly statistics of children’s activities, after which you can decide whether to leave everything unchanged, set an app time limit and games, or use a parental lock that prevents them from downloading and launching. The same goes for social media if a parent feels that the kids have become too addicted to it.

Malicious Content Ban

Be aware of what websites your child visits due to the function of Web Control, and use child lock to close unwanted web pages, YouTube channels, and individual videos. Create a cozy kids’ place on the vast expanses of the Internet, free from violence, 18+ content, and other negative information.

Prevention Of Visual Impairment

Night Mode cancels out blue light, and a pop-up window (a unique feature that other family monitoring apps don’t have) will remind your child to keep a distance between his eyes and the screen every time he tries to nuzzle his phone.

Avoiding Bad Company

Use the child monitoring feature in WhatsApp, Viber, and 9 other popular messengers to protect your family from bad people. Phonebook contacts, photos, SMS, and call history – any event in which the gadget took part will be in front of your eyes.

Tracking The Location Of The Child When He Is Away From Home

The parent tracker will show the location of the children on the map at any time and let you know if they go beyond the safe geofences you set.  And so that a suddenly discharged battery does not make all the functions of Kroha meaningless, the kid monitoring application will report on the level of its charge and the state of the traffic.

The younger generation is famous for its ability to understand gadgets, and digital addiction is an insidious disease. It may happen that a child, outraged by the restriction of screen time and other “repression”, will try to delete the application. However, Kroha will not allow him to do this, immediately signaling what is happening.


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