Kids with smartphones at very high risk of eating disorders as teens : Study

A smartphone in a child’s hands at 12 may be doing more than connecting them to friends. A large US study that may have a message for Indian parents as well- has found that owning one at that age is associated with greater symptoms of eating disorders, including binge-eating and tying self-worth to weight.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), is a cohort analysis drawing on 8,957 adolescents in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which recruited participants from 21 sites across the US.

Schools were selected through a stratified, probability-based sample and oversampled by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and urbanity to reduce sampling bias.

Percentages were weighted using American Community Survey data so they represent population estimates.

Researchers ran cross-sectional and two-year longitudinal analyses on data from years 2 to 6 of the study, covering 2018 to



2024, using generalised linear models. The data were analysed in 2025 and 2026.

The headline number was how common early ownership has become in the country: 70% of participants had a smartphone by age 12. Ownership was linked, both at a single point in time and over the following two years, to a greater likelihood of eating disorder symptoms, which are linked with severe long-term physical, mental and metabolic consequences.

The authors underlined the findings suggest the timing of ownership may be associated with eating disorder risk, a question that had not been examined before, even as children get phones at ever younger ages.

The case in India is hardly different.

There is no government-backed data on mobile phone ownership or usage among kids in India but a McAfee study that came out in 2022 said that smartphone use in the country among children aged 10–14 years was 83 – 7% higher than the global average of 76% for the age group.