Framework: Utilitarianism Okay, my first contention is that children should not be able to have smartphones under 13 because their brain is not fully developed. Their prefrontal cortex only develops at about age 25, which shows the children's immaturity to the smartphones. The preteens do not have enough willpower to control these attractive smart devices, and it exposes to vulnerabilities they possibly will struggle to deal with. Secondly, the multi-billion dollar corporations behind the engineering of the smartphone make it purposely addicting. There are teams of psychologists responsible for attracting factors such as infinite scrolling, or rewards just to make it more addictable. This especially affects most preteens and teens, since their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed, and they are easily manipulated by these factors developed by companies and psychologists. Lastly, their are severe negative effects to this addiction/usage. According to research published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), giving a child a smartphone by age 12 corresponds to sharp spikes in negative physical and mental health outcomes: • 62% higher odds of insufficient sleep • 31% higher odds of suffering from depression • 40% higher odds of struggling with obesity. This further highlights how the usage of smart cellphones deteriorates children under 13's sleep, mental health and other factors.

The opponent fell into a major trap in his last argument. Firstly a kid under 13 spends about 1 hour of their day without a trusted adult to help with an emergency. The average amount of time spent at home unsupervised by adults was just one hour, varying with age from 47 minutes for children ages 5-to-7 to one hour and 15 minutes for children ages 11 and 12. (University of Michigan News). But emergencies do end up happening even if rare. In this case though, wouldn't a simple gps-phone or text-only watch fix the problem? There are many other devices with no access to social media or the internet that can call 911 or parents in an emergency. Those yes can be used as a tool, something used to help with the situation, not an addicting device developed to be addicting by multi-billion dollar companies exposing kids to unecesary content or creating emotional problems. A simple flip phone could easily fix the problem of communication and emergencies without containing the addicting and unecessary factors a kid who doesnt have their fully brain developed doesnt need. My opponents argument on parent controls has big flaws. These parental controls are pretty easy to be bypassed, with about 67% of children reporting to have bypassed parental controls on their devices. (Detroit free press). Even crazier is that about 45% of the adults don't notice that the children bypassed the security system, showing an illusion of safety. (USwitch). And the children don't need to be hackers, they could easily find a YouTube video on how to do it in less than a minute. It's like giving a 13 year-old a sports car with a governed engine, knowing they can look up how to clip the wire on YouTube in five seconds.

Supervising is clearly not possible based on my previous evidence. The kids can easily bypass parental controls and they don't have enough willpower to say no to more YouTube. The problem is that smartphones with access to Internet aren't easy to supervise. Research by the online safety charity CyberSafeKids found that 82% of children aged 8 to 12 are allowed to use smartphones and other smart devices unsupervised in their bedrooms. Additionally, 28% of these pre-teens reported they could go online whenever they wanted without restriction. They were desinged by psychologists to be attractive and to make people want to use it more. While the phone itself is not the weapon, the billions of dollars used to make it addicting and the person without a full prefrontal cortex developed using it creates severe damage. As stated previously many effects such as lack of sleep and obesity directly relate to the phones and just screen time in general to these pre-teens. Clearly judge, you can not give a 13 year old a supercar and expect them to use it with supervision and in a safe method. The strategy would be waiting until the child is at least 16. So I relate the same to smartphones, they create addiction and target kids without a fully developed, implying negative emotional and physical effects.