12-Year-Olds With Smartphones May Face a Higher Risk of Eating Disorder Symptoms by Age 14, Study Finds

Many parents who hand a 12-year-old their first smartphone are thinking about practical questions: Can we reach you? Are you safe? Will you text when you arrive? A new study is raising a different question: What else comes with that device?

Research published on September 25 in JAMA Network Open followed nearly 9,000 American adolescents and found that children who owned smartphones at age 12 were more likely to report eating-disorder symptoms by age 14 than those without their own devices.

Among phone owners, 24% reported developing at least one symptom two years later. The findings come from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a large federal research project tracking children’s brain health and development over time.

The study points to an association between early smartphone ownership and later reports of eating-related concerns.

The Numbers That Go Deeper Than the Headline

The symptom-rate comparison is striking, but findings beneath it get more specific about how early phone ownership connects to body image.

Children who owned smartphones at 12 were twice as likely as peers without phones to link their self-worth to their weight. They were also about 1.5 times more likely to report weight-control behaviors by age 14, including restricting calories and exercising heavily.

The scale of smartphone access makes the findings especially relevant for families. Seventy percent of study participants already had their own phones at age 12, meaning personal devices were already part of everyday life for a large share of the group.

Dr. Jason Nagata, the study’s lead author, highlighted one possible concern in a statement to CNN: “A smartphone can put a world of appearance-focused content in a young person’s pocket,” exposing young people to images and messages that may encourage unhealthy patterns around food and the body.

The Ownership Question Nobody Was Really Asking

Most research on kids and devices has chased screen time: how many hours, how many nights, how late.

Nagata’s analysis asked a different question: whether owning a personal smartphone at a specific age was linked to a greater likelihood of reporting disordered-eating symptoms later.

That distinction matters. For instance, a child occasionally using a shared family tablet has a different experience from one with a personal phone, private accounts, and constant access to whatever content appears on their feeds.

Early adolescence is already a period when many young people become more aware of appearance, identity, and how they compare with others. A personal smartphone can expand those comparisons beyond classmates and friends to a much larger online environment.

Related: Warning Signs of an Eating Disorder You Should Know

What Filtered Images Are Actually Doing to Kids

The pathway from phone ownership to body dissatisfaction isn’t theoretical.

When young people scroll through influencer content featuring carefully selected, edited, and filtered images, unrealistic examples can shape their ideas about what bodies should look like.

“When you’re comparing yourself to influencers whose images are curated, edited and filtered,” Nagata continued to CNN, “that can lead to more body dissatisfaction and poor self-esteem, and then that can be a risk factor for eating disorders.”

Previous research has connected social media exposure with depression and lower self-worth among young people. Nagata’s earlier work also found a link between screen time and binge eating. This study narrows in on a particular transition: the moment children move from occasional device use to personal ownership.

What “Eating Disorder Symptoms” Actually Means Here

Eating disorder carries clinical weight, and precision matters.

The study measured reported eating-disorder symptoms and disordered-eating behaviors, not confirmed diagnoses. Those terms overlap, but they are not interchangeable.

Disordered eating can involve concerns about food or weight, body size, eating patterns, or other behaviors. A clinical eating disorder diagnosis requires meeting specific criteria that a self-reported symptom measure alone cannot establish.

According to research, 22% of children and adolescents worldwide show signs of disordered eating. In this study, the symptom rate among smartphone-owning 12-year-olds by age 14 was slightly above that global estimate, while the rate among those without phones was lower.

What Parents Are Supposed to Do With This

The findings do not identify a single age that is guaranteed to be safe or risky. Instead, they suggest that how children enter the digital world may matter.

Dr. Mitch Prinstein, a psychologist not involved in the study, described the process to CNN as something that should happen gradually: “slowly, gradually get more exposure to social media over time. We don’t want to give them a completely unlocked phone with all the opportunities to visit whatever they want for as long as they want.”

The research still leaves important questions unanswered. Scientists do not yet know whether these associations continue beyond age 14, whether certain types of content have a stronger effect, or whether parental involvement changes the relationship between smartphone ownership and eating-disorder symptoms.

For families making decisions about phones, those unanswered questions are part of the challenge. The device itself may be only one piece of a much larger conversation about how children experience the digital world.

At what age did your kids get smartphones, and looking back, do you think the timing made a difference?

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