Smartphones and social media: transformational technology or dangerous digital overlords?

What impact are smartphones and social media having on our lives and in particularly on those of adolescents? This article is intended to be an objective look at this transformational technology and how we are managing to live with being hyper-connected. It is inspired by the 40th anniversary of mobile phone networks, which went live in the UK in 1985, as well as recent events such as the TV drama, Adolescence, the debate about restrictions planned or imposed by governments, social media companies and schools, and what role parents play.

To do this we spoke to Dave Miles, Meta’s Director of Safety Policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa and provide a short case study from Beverly Clarke MBE, Strategic Adviser and Educator, both previous AIT interviewees. We also looked at recent research, legislation and some of the headlines that have been grabbing our attention including the Australian government’s recent – and world first – ban on under-16s using social media.

In 1985 the first mobile phone networks in the UK went live and the first mobile phones to be sold were the size of bricks. They had no capabilities to text or take photos and the World Wide Web had yet to be established.

Now, 40 years later, smartphones are at the forefront of technological and telecommunication ingenuity. Smartphones are sophisticated pieces of technology that bring together many of the innovations that tech pioneers have accomplished over the past 75 years such as stored-program computers, microprocessors and microchips, human computer interaction, the internet, WiFi, digital videos and photography, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), touch screens, voice recognition and AI.

We are now not just people: we are people with phones. For example, we all have the mantra running through our heads when we leave our homes: ‘keys, wallet, phone’. And we all – well most of us anyway – pick up our phones at least 50 times a day and on average spend 4 hours and 37 minutes on our phones.

That’s because smartphones are computers in our pockets that open us up to the digital world and make us hyper-connected. As smartphones get more powerful with faster processing power, larger memories, larger screens and long-lasting battery life we are able to add more apps from banking to weather, news to social media and entertainment all with 24/7 updates and feeds. All this means we rely on them more and more to plan our day, pay bills, book and track tickets and appointments, for entertainment and to communicate and keep up to date with the world around us.

How did we get here?

In 2007 the launch of the Apple iPhone ushered in a new era of smartphones with the culmination of the internet/World Wide Web, cameras and video capability, a large 3.5inch touch screen and storage space for apps that made it not only desirable but necessary and ubiquitous.

Dave Miles, Meta’s Director of Safety Policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, who has a depth of experience working in technology stretching back to microcomputers, believes the merger of social media apps and mobile phones has been a key to the growth of Facebook and Meta’s subsequent acquisition of apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

“Looking back, although the first part of my career was focused predominantly in PC hardware with companies such as IBM and Compaq, my first insight into the potential of mobile phones was with Motorola,” he says. “In 1989, as part of the Systems Division, based in Tempe, Arizona, I saw the first cellular flip phones or MicroTAC being manufactured. Given the brick shape of phones at the time, it was a revelation. What we forget is the six sigma manufacturing standards that made this smaller, more robust phone format of today, was pioneered then. The meantime between failure standards paved the way for the pocket-size devices we have today.

“But it would be another 12 years really before mobile phones and social media platforms began to converge. It’s well documented but Facebook in its early years was predominantly designed for desktops and its app was built in HTML5, which is great for web pages but not for building apps native to iOS or Android devices. That rapid transition was key to the future success of the company.”

The rise of the app

With the launch of Facebook on the iPhone in 2007, and Google Android in 2008, app stores began appearing for the first time. This led to Facebook’s user base growing from 50 million in 2007 to 100m by 2008. And over the past decade Facebook has expanded with the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and changed its name to Meta in 2021. In 2025 it is estimated to have nearly 4 billion monthly active users across its family of apps.

Meta is now one of the top five leading tech firms worldwide along with Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, highlighting the power of social media. YouTube is the second most popular social media app with 2.53bn monthly active users followed by Instagram and WhatsApp both with 2bn, and TikTok, established in 2016, has approximately 1.6bn users.

It was in 2016 that smartphones became the primary means for accessing social media platforms. And the growth in apps has been staggering since the iOS App Store was launched in 2008 with 500 apps. Now there are 4 million apps available in iOS and Android app stores according to B2B media and information platform, Business of Apps.

Digital natives

This means that if you were born on the cusp of the millennium, there’s a high chance your whole life experience will be one of hyper-connectivity. You will be the first generation of digital natives who, as adolescents, will most likely have been given smartphones connected to the internet and a myriad of apps including social media platforms. According to Ofcom, 97% of children in the UK own a smartphone by the age of 12, which rises to 100% by 17.

“On when is the right age for teens to have their first mobile phone, parents know best,” says Miles. “Clearly, in terms of social media, they should be 13 or over. Remember too that in Africa for example, more basic feature phones are used.”

So, smartphones and social media come with benefits and disadvantages, of which the latter are a cause for concern for parents, schools, media companies and governments around the world. The disadvantages include the addictiveness of mobile phones and aggressive algorithms which has now become more apparent 40 years after their conception, affecting not only on this generation of adolescents but all mobile phone users. And 2025 has been a year of increased research and debate regarding adolescent (and general) phone use, along with school phone bans, the implementation of government restrictions and online laws as well as increased social media company regulations.

Mental health issues

Reports of mental health and psychological problems in adolescents from mobile phone use are increasing and include reports of anxiety, low self-esteem, dependence (fear of missing out), reduced attention spans and poor sleep. These are exacerbated by negative content, harassment, abuse, cyberbullying, exposure to porn, misogyny, promotion of self-half and eating disorders. These factors can have knock on effects such as social isolation, reduced physical activity and time outdoors, as well as strained relationships.

However, Miles thinks it is important to note that social media offers teens an opportunity to explore, connect with friends and family, and express themselves and teens should be able to do so in a safe and age-appropriate way. He does not believe that social media is the sole contributor to adverse mental health issues with teens.

“Naturally, this is something that parents are worried about and we built Teens Accounts with this in mind to address some of their biggest concerns. Mental health in particular is a complex, individualised issue impacted by a variety of societal, biological and emotional factors. It’s wrong to suggest a single factor is responsible for trends in teen mental health, nor does the available research support this hypothesis.

“The existing body of research does little to rule out other common factors in teens’ lives, such as economic instability, substance use or academic pressure. Many experts believe the explanation for declining teen health is multifactorial, and that more research is needed to understand the bigger picture. Indeed, there’s a growing body of research that suggests social media can play a positive role in teens’ lives, and provide support to those who may be struggling or are members of marginalised groups.”

Online Safety Act 2023

Regulation to keep people safe online has been piecemeal over the past decade but recently major steps have been put in place to codify how individuals and companies behave.

The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 ushered in a new set of long-awaited laws that aim to protect children and adults online. It put a range of new duties on social media companies and search engines, making them ‘more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms’.

The strongest protections in the Act have been designed for children. As of 25 July 2025, online platforms have a legal duty to use highly effective, mainly AI, age assurance to prevent children from accessing pornography, or content which encourages self-harm, suicide or eating disorders. Platforms and websites are required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content and provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they do arise.

The Act also protects adult users, ensuring that major platforms will need to be more transparent about which kinds of potentially harmful content they allow, and give people more control over the types of content they want to see.

“Regulation has been a long time coming and we absolutely share the goal of keeping teens safe online,” says Miles. “Governments, companies and civil society have a shared responsibility here and collaboration is key.”

Government bans

Other countries have gone further. Australia, for example, announced a social media ban on under-16s in November 2024, which was enacted in December 2025 with its eSafety commissioner saying the ban would limit the harmful impacts of social media and be met with fines of up to £24.4m. In October Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, said his government is planning to ban social media for under-15s because mobile phones and social media were “stealing our children’s childhood”.

Some have been calling for a ban on mobile phones: “I think the first thing to say is smartphones are very personal devices,” says Miles. “Many parents rely on them to ensure their child is safe, particularly if they are away from home, on their way to or back from school for example. Of course, smartphones can be a distraction and most schools already ban their use for that reason. It’s why the call for a smartphone ban in law seems heavy handed in my view.

“Regulation should be evidence-based and helps inform the way we design our apps. This very much reflects our approach. User safety and privacy are always a priority. For example, in 2024, when we launched Teen Accounts, first on Instagram and then on Facebook and Messenger, we consulted extensively with parents, teens and experts. The result is hundreds of millions of active Teen Accounts and interestingly, 97% of teens aged 13-15 have stayed within these built-in restrictions.”

Adolescence drama

Phone use in school was put into the spotlight with the Netflix series Adolescence, which aired in March 2025, and was a sensation (with 141.2 million views within 100 days of airing). It revealed the potential toxicity that young people experience online through their smartphones particularly through social media platforms. It sparked a national debate about the role of smartphones in schools, whether they should be banned by the school or government and how parents need to take more control over screen time and what children are accessing online.

Miles said he had watched Adolescence and like Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who watched it with his teenage children, found it both challenging and valuable viewing and supported regulation for younger users of social media.

“It’s started an important discussion around a range of issues, including the ‘manosphere’ a loosely connected network of online communities that promote hyper-masculine, anti-feminist ideologies. Adolescence has drawn praise for highlighting real issues, but I know some experts warn that using it as a teaching tool, as the Prime Minister has suggested, may do more harm than good.”

Research on mobile phone use in schools

In a ground-breaking study by the University of Birmingham – School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): a cross-sectional observational study – published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe in February 2025 they found school bans alone were not enough to tackle negative impacts of phone and social media use. The study found that restrictive school policies do not lead to lower phone and social media use overall, nor better outcomes among students.

The report says that students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren’t necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing and that just banning smartphones is not enough to tackle their negative impacts.

Dr Victoria Goodyear, Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and lead author of the study said: “This is the first worldwide study of its kind to evaluate the impact of school phone policies on adolescent mental health and wellbeing, and other health and educational outcomes.

“We did find a link between more time spent on phones and social media and worse outcomes, with worse mental wellbeing and mental health outcomes, less physical activity and poorer sleep, lower educational attainment and a greater level of disruptive classroom behaviour.

“This suggests that reducing this time spent on phones is an important focus. But we need to do more than focus on schools alone, and consider phone use within and outside of school, across a whole day and the whole week.”

In the UK, England’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, says banning phones in schools should not be imposed nationally by the government but by headteachers if they deem it necessary. Her report, School phone policies in England: Findings from the Children’s Commissioner’s School and College Survey, published in April 2025 found that 90% of secondary schools in England have policies restricting mobile phone use during the school day, with the vast majority allowing students to possess phones as long as they are out of sight with primary schools even more restrictive, with 99.8% having similar policies.

Some schools follow a policy of ‘locative disconnection’ which means pupils are disconnected to their phones, and use new technologies such as the Yondr pouch and the Phone Away Box to restrict mobile phone use during class time. The same technology is also now being used at music concerts to restrict the use of phones and increase the enjoyment and participation of the audience.

The Yondr pouch, used by approximately 250 schools in the UK, is made of a strong synthetic rubber and locked with a magnet and can only be unlocked with a counter-magnet. In schools utilising this technology, students keep their phone in their possession, but are unable to access it until teachers unlock them. The Phone Away Box, on the other hand, is a see-through box attached to the outside of each students’ locker, which they store their phones in according to school rules. This provides teachers with the opportunity to easily see if any phones are not where they are supposed to be.

Looking to the future

Despite all the negativity, mobile phones and social media have brought the world together like never before. Some of the concerns about the current technology were shared in the past when radios entered our homes in the 1920s, and ranged from inappropriate content, the breaking up of family dynamic and security. This extended to TVs in the 1950s onwards with fears they would promote sedentary lifestyles, addictiveness, ‘square eyes’, and have an adverse impact on children’s development.

Today children are learning to create on their phones and many will take this into their careers. “We work with digital creators who display innovative approaches to video content and interactive entertainment across our apps,” says Miles. “Many of these creators start in their teens and have exciting careers ahead of them. Whether it’s in the metaverse or through Generative AI, we can provide cutting-edge tools, education and resources so they are at the forefront of new opportunities and innovation.”

And looking to the future Miles says you could argue that smart glasses will likely replace our mobile phones and we therefore face another pivotal technological shift.

“AI-powered Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta glasses see what you see and hear what you hear through the day. Adding displays will unlock significant potential and as a wearable, will likely usher in a format mobile phones can’t match.

“Personal devices such as glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear and interact with us throughout the day, will become our primary computing devices.”

This could mean that in the next decade smart glasses will make an important contribution to people’s ability to connect. However, as we become more educated about the power of these devices and their apps, and become increasingly aware of the risks, we also become empowered to manage how we use them. With regulation now in place, it means that what Miles referred to in his 2022 interview with AIT as the ‘wild west’ of the internet is finally at a turning point and we can now possibly envisage, and continue to push for, a more mature digital world and user experience.