Exposed to Too Much, Too Soon: Why Our Kids Are So Anxious and How We Can Help

As an Integrative Child Psychotherapist with 20 years of experience in the UK, and now in New Zealand, I bring my expertise in mental health and well-being to a whole-school community approach. I’ve worked with children exposed to the darkest corners of the internet and witnessed the impact firsthand—the anxiety, the depression, the disconnection. For over eight years, I’ve been voicing my concerns about the effects of digital exposure on children’s mental health. It became increasingly clear to me that there was a direct link between devices and the changing landscape of our society.

I’ll never forget the moment I realized things were heading in a dangerous direction. I was riding the underground in London when a mother with a baby in a pram entered the carriage. Shockingly, no one interacted with the baby. This stood in stark contrast to seven years earlier, when I would get on the train with my own baby. Back then, people would smile at her, play peekaboo, and generally interact. But this baby saw only people with their faces glued to their phones.

With my years of training, including two years of baby observation to understand what a child needs to develop socially and mentally, I recognized the signs of a crisis in the making. I even predicted the mental health crisis among teenagers we are now witnessing. At that time, we had already seen a 25% increase in teenage mental health issues. But as I said back then, this was nothing compared to what was coming, because those children were not raised on smartphones, nor were their parents parenting while distracted by phones.

Unfortunately, it is only this year that we can definitively say that smartphones are a major cause of the mental health crisis facing children around the world.

I recently attended the Smartphone Free Childhood NZ webinar held by Katrina Colombié and Laura Massey, and, in a rare moment of stealth parenting, casually invited my 15-year-old daughter to join. To my shock, she agreed. During the session, as the speakers explored the content young people encounter online, my daughter confidently stated that she didn’t see anything negative. Later, the presenters showed a Dove commercial featuring four mothers and their teenage daughters. The setup was simple—interview-style—and the mothers all expressed confidence that their kids weren’t exposed to harmful content. Then came the shock: on a big screen, a deepfake video of one of the mothers appeared, endorsing dangerous beauty trends like extreme diets and filing teeth. Her horrified reaction—“That’s not me. I didn’t say that!”—was gut-wrenching. The daughters admitted they’d seen similar content, and the mothers broke down in tears.

I turned to my daughter, who casually said, “Yeah, I’ve seen those trends.” My heart sank. I felt a mix of sadness and anger as I told her, “You shouldn’t have to see this toxic content.”

When I was a teen, my exposure to the world was limited to Top of the Pops once a week. Even that could leave me questioning everything—Boy George and Annie Lennox were enough to blow my small, mainstream Kiwi mind. If those brief glimpses unsettled me (in a good way), what is today’s constant flood of curated, harmful algorithm-driven content doing to young, developing brains?

The Hidden Impact

Scrolling is addictive. It’s a dopamine hit, much like a drug. But as with any addiction, there’s a cost. A friend shared how her teenage daughter can no longer sit through a movie—her attention span has been eroded by endless scrolling. Teachers tell me how kids now struggle to sit through stories being read aloud but can watch even the most boring YouTube videos without blinking.

Even innocent mistakes online can lead to harmful exposure. My daughter reminded me of the time she was 10 and searched “Count on Me” online but accidentally dropped the “O.” The explicit results shocked her. If we had proper filters in place, that moment could have been avoided.

Thankfully, tools like pre-configured routers now exist, and there are great Kiwi products available, like SafeSurfer, making it easier for parents to block harmful content. But even without overtly dangerous material, the drip-feed of subtle toxicity—unattainable beauty standards, glorified eating disorders, and influencers peddling unrealistic ideals—seeps into our children’s subconscious.

Dr. Richard House, a child psychologist, shares, “Children’s mental health is in crisis. We have created a world where kids are overexposed to stress, technology, and pressures, but underexposed to meaningful human connection and outdoor play.”

A Growing Crisis

The data is staggering. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s team posed as a 13-year-old girl on Instagram, and within minutes, the algorithm fed her content glorifying eating disorders and self-harm. Similarly, New Zealand filmmaker Nadia Maxwell created a fake social media account for a 13-year-old. Within 22 minutes, it was serving suicide-related content. By day three, 30% of the feed was related to suicide, despite Maxwell’s chosen interests being animals, fitness, and Taylor Swift.

Let that sink in—30%.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation tracks the correlation between the rise of smartphones in 2010 and the sharp decline in youth mental health. In New Zealand, kids spend an average of 42 hours a week online, compared to a global average of 25 hours. Over the last 12 years, we’ve seen a 300% increase in child mental health issues, according to a new report by CureKids. We no longer need more evidence—the harm caused by smartphones can now be firmly placed as a causative factor.

Anxiety and Disconnection

At its core, anxiety stems from disconnection—a lack of alignment between mind and body. There is no ease in the present moment; instead, anxiety keeps us fretting over the future or the past. For children, endless scrolling keeps them in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze, flooding them with cortisol, which manifests physically—racing hearts, sweating, stomach aches, and that “washing machine” feeling in their tummy.

Research shows that scrolling dulls activity in the brain’s frontal cortex—the area responsible for logical thinking, impulse control, and decision-making. It’s rewiring children’s brains for stress and addiction, setting them up for a lifetime of shallow scrolling and surface-level engagement.

Haidt warns of an existential crisis brewing among young people. Disconnected from their inner selves, they’re left feeling lonely, friendless, and purposeless. The studies don’t lie: today’s children are lonelier than ever, despite being more “connected.”

Endless scrolling features on apps, often referred to as "infinite scroll," are a design element used to keep users engaged by providing an uninterrupted stream of content.

What Can We Do?

The question isn’t just about raising resilient children—it’s about reclaiming our collective humanity. If we want our children to thrive, we have to take action.

Switch to simpler devices: Dumb phones are back for a reason. If that’s not an option, turn off notifications, switch your phone to grayscale, and remove addictive apps.
Prioritize presence: When you’re with your kids, be with them. Model the behavior you want to see. How often are you scrolling or checking work emails?
Set boundaries: Use parental controls and pre-configured servers to block harmful content. Establish clear screen-time limits.
Foster creativity, play, and expression: Teach kids how to self-regulate and ground themselves. Encourage creative expression—drawing, writing, playing music—and good old-fashioned play like hide-and-seek or torch tag.

Not all screen time is harmful. Creating content, starting businesses, or using technology for genuine learning can enhance well-being. The problem lies in endless, mindless consumption.

Reclaiming Our Future

As an Integrative Child Psychotherapist with 20 years of experience in the UK, I’ve worked with children exposed to the darkest corners of the internet. I’ve seen the impact firsthand—the anxiety, the depression, the disconnection.

We cannot allow another generation to lose their childhoods to the digital void. One lost generation is enough.

As a speaker and workshop facilitator for SFCNZ, I offer my Digital Reset program to help families regain control of their digital lives. Together, we can create a future where technology serves us, not the other way around. It starts with us—the adults in the room—to lead the way.

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