Early mobile phone ownership: influencing the wellbeing of girls and boys in Ireland?

ABSTRACT

Children live in a technology-mediated world, and most young people use a variety of technologies in their daily lives. However, despite intense public discourse, we have little empirical evidence on how technology use impacts on children’s development across a number of psycho-social domains. Research that has been conducted tends to be largely small-scale or cross-sectional in nature and most often focused on (young) adults rather than children. Using longitudinal data on one-in-eight Irish children, we use econometric methods to test for associations between early mobile phone ownership and two measures of children’s psycho-social development between 9 and 13 years of age. We examine the Piers Harris Self-Concept Scale, reported by children, and the Strengths and Difficulties (SDQ) score, completed by the primary caregiver. We find no generalised associations between early mobile phone ownership and psycho-social outcomes. However, there is evidence that associations differ by gender and across psycho-social sub-domains. We find no robust associations affecting boys, but girls who receive phones earlier fare less well in terms of their behavioural adjustment and academic self-concept scores at 13 years of age, all else being equal. Further research is needed to identify causal mechanisms and explore possible mediating effects of family/social context.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile phone ownership
• psychological adjustment
• self-concept
• gender
• longitudinal data
• Piers Harris
• SDQ

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for funding from the ESRI Programme of Research in Communications, which is in turn is funded by contributions from Ireland’s Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and the Commission on Communications Regulation (ComReg). The usual disclaimer applies.

Growing Up in Ireland has been funded by the Government of Ireland through the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) in association with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Department of Social Protection (DSP). These data have been collected in accordance with the Statistics Act, 1993. The DCYA, CSO and DSP take no responsibility for the views expressed in the research. The project has been designed and implemented by the joint ESRI-TCD Growing Up in Ireland Study Team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Both the reliability and validity (concurrent, construct, and discriminant) of the SDQ total and five sub-scales, and the Piers Harris scale, have been established – for details see Murray et al. (2011); Thornton, Williams, McCrory, Murray, and Quail (2016).

2. Based on the NUTS 3 8-fold classification.

3. For example, the Wave 1 survey took place in 2007/08, before smartphones were widespread.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESRI Programme of Research in Communications which is funded by Ireland's Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and the Commission on Communications Regulation (ComReg).

Notes on contributors

Seraphim Dempsey

Seraphim Dempsey is a labour economics doctoral student at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). Prior to this she worked as a Research Assistant at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin, Ireland, where she undertook applied microeconomic research using longitudinal data.

Seán Lyons

Seán Lyons is an Associate Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Sean manages the ESRI's Electronic Communications Research Programme. He has a PhD in Economics from TCD and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. He formerly worked in economic consultancy and telecoms regulation roles.

Selina McCoy

Selina McCoy is an Associate Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin and an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She is also the Irish Expert at the European Commission Independent Experts on Education and Training. She has published extensively on education; one key focus being the role and impact of digital technologies in the education and development of children and young people.