BYU-Idaho student, Elijah Newell, a senior in communications, launched a Tech-Free Child Rearing campaign at BYUI, in an effort to counter the issue of kids being given access to smart devices.

He has been working on this campaign all semester. Newell is trying to influence future, expecting and current parents at BYUI to withhold smart devices from their children until they are older.

"We need to go back to children being able to grow up without these things with addictive properties," Newell said.

Newell's campaign presents evidence and facts about the consequences of giving children smart devices. The end goal is to influence people to spread the information to their home communities when they go home for the holidays or graduate.

Newell was inspired to begin this campaign because of the negative effects he had seen in children from too much technology use, both online or in person. Kids would sit in shopping carts with phones and electronics, and Newell would think to himself, "What are these kids learning?.... If you think about it, this isn't preparing kids for their futures."

Newell wants to make a difference in how children grow up, reverting to a tech-less childhood, and a "future brighter than a screen," according to the campaign website. On his website, he includes a 58-page publication about the research he has done on the negative impacts of too much technology for kids.

"If we give children smart devices when they're too young for it, then that harms their development, and they become dependent on it," Newell said.

Newell explains that if technology quit, he'd be able to get by, but kids who were raised with smart devices have had their brains molded by the devices.

Another of Newell's concerns is that giving a child an iPad or phone when they are upset is not a good way to teach kids to regulate their emotions.

His campaign encourages parents with practical, real-life steps they can do to help their children avoid some of these "too much tech" consequences. Some of these recommendations are as simple as putting on older, lower-stimulation shows for your children to watch, instead of the high-stimulation childrens shows produced now, such as Cocomelon, which are shown to negatively impact children's attention spans and are more addictive.

Newell said that many people who came up to his booth agreed with this campaign. Some students admitted to him that they didn't know whether to raise children with some electronics or not.

When asked how parents can communicate with phone-less children in case of emergencies, Newell provided a compromise where families could get a phone, one that couldn't have any apps, for their children. If you give a child an open and unmonitored communication device when they are young, they gain that many more opportunities to "get away with things behind their parents' backs," he explained.

Jacie VanderLouw, a sophomore in food science, agrees that it is possible to educate and entertain children without technology.

"I feel like the overuse of technology, and the introduction of technology too young, has shown to create more negative consequences than positive," she said.