Using Screens as Babysitters Severs Normal Human Social Interaction
The most profound changes that smartphones bring to families often begin when children are very young. Modern parents are busy, and phones are convenient — “screen babysitting” has gradually become a regrettable yet widespread daily reality. However, research shows this habit is severing the most important foundations of childhood development.
Studies indicate that young children who have prolonged exposure to phones or tablets face significantly elevated risks of language development delays, social difficulties, and attention problems. In families that rely heavily on screen babysitting, children have less interaction with their parents — and interaction is the crucial source of emotional security and empathy development in young children.
In real life, this change is visible almost everywhere: at restaurants, families each stare at their own phones or tablets with less and less conversation; children need videos to eat, tablets to go out, and phones to calm down when upset; after the food arrives, the first thing is no longer sharing — it’s photographing and posting. “Feeding the phone first” has seemingly become a new social ritual of the era.
Screens are gradually occupying the time that once belonged to family interaction, eroding not only emotional bonds but also the child’s ability to learn language, emotional regulation, and social norms through human interaction.
The authentic interactions stolen from childhood by smartphones will manifest in a different form as children grow: a greater tendency to depend on phones, a greater tendency to become absorbed in the online world — ultimately making teenagers more vulnerably susceptible to the control of algorithms.
Addicting People and Adolescents to the Internet — The Harm Brought by TikTok and Short Videos
When this generation raised with screens reaches adolescence, the phone often becomes their emotional outlet, source of companionship, and center of attention. Short-video culture centered on TikTok draws teenagers in especially deeply. The saying circulating in society — “Once TikTok rings, all parents’ efforts are wasted” — sounds exaggerated but truly reflects the helplessness of many families: children’s interests, attention, and values are increasingly shaped not by parents but by algorithms.
International research confirms this is not alarmism. Numerous studies have shown that the “dopamine-chasing cycle” caused by short videos impairs adolescent prefrontal lobe function, making them more impulsive and less able to sustain long-term focus. The brain is trained to constantly seek new stimuli — stopping feels empty.
Daily exposure to large amounts of this high-speed stimulating content causes children’s concentration to decline, their emotions to become sensitive and unstable, and deep reading and independent thinking to feel laborious or even repugnant. Children who lack human interaction in childhood are more likely in adolescence to fill the void through internet addiction — and algorithms relentlessly push them into one captivating torrent of information after another.
Making People Unable to Find Calm, Keeping Life in a State of Chronic Anxiety
Teenagers may appear to simply be scrolling and watching short videos, but their attention, emotional development, and life direction are actually being reshaped by the mechanisms behind the screen.
The invisible harm smartphones bring is making it harder and harder for people to calm down. The rapid and intense stimulation of short videos gradually makes the brain unable to tolerate stillness. Without images or sounds, people begin to feel restless, empty, and mentally scattered. More alarming: short videos are comprehensively destroying humanity’s ability to read long-form content and engage in deep thinking. This “anti-long-form capacity” is an unprecedented social phenomenon — the brain is trained by short content to accept only immediate stimulation, while simultaneously and gradually losing the ability to think, comprehend, and reflect.
Altering the Social Structure That God Created for Humanity
Behind all these phenomena, smartphones are quietly changing the way human civilization operates. The original social order was founded on family interaction, authentic exchange, and traditional values.
“Modern people have forgotten traditions, forgotten the goodness in human beings within traditional culture, the beautiful aspects of mutual respect, mutual love, and mutual assistance between people, and the traditional interpersonal relationships.” (Why Shen Yun Can Save People)
Today, people increasingly depend on the virtual world, their gaze led by fragmented information, their emotions driven by algorithms. Many international studies also indicate that as technology excessively penetrates life, social warmth is declining, family bonds are weakening, and human relationships are becoming increasingly distant…
“Yet humanity continues down the path of emphasizing technology at the expense of traditional morality — drifting ever further from the path God told people to walk when He created them, and ever further from the road back to Heaven.” (Why Shen Yun Can Save People) Smartphones were supposed to bring convenience to life, yet have imperceptibly altered the human ethics and way of life that God arranged. People have lost patience, lost depth, lost their sense of the real world, and have step by step moved away from the path they should be upholding.
This is therefore precisely why we created SyPhone — no algorithmic manipulation, no fragmented information interference, a simple and direct way of calling to reconnect through your own voice with real people.
Try leaving the smartphone behind. Choose the traditional way of calling. Let people’s hearts return to the traditional, beautiful path.