Smartphones, tablets and video consoles can be addictive. They interfere with sleep. They draw kids into an alternate universe, often distracting them from more productive — and healthier — real-world activities. And they are linked to anxiety and depression, learning disabilities and obesity.

That’s according to a growing body of research emphasizing the physical and psychological dangers of heavy screen use.

“Nobody should spend eight or nine hours doing anything except sleeping and working,” says Dr. Sina Safahieh, medical director of ASPIRE, the teen mental health program run by Hoag Hospital in Orange County, Calif.

Yet for many teenagers, mine included, cellphones and social media are also indispensable tools for planning their social lives, keeping up with schoolwork and staying in touch with out-of-town friends and relatives.

I recently talked to Samantha Dunn, a former journalism colleague, who spoke glowingly about her 10-year-old son’s use of digital technology in the pursuit of knowledge. Her son, Ben, became curious about the American Revolution and the British Empire after listening to the soundtrack to the musical “Hamilton,” and he used his mother’s smartphone to research them intensively.

Ben’s fascination with the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman and major-general who helped win the Revolutionary War, motivated him to learn French. So, he downloaded the language-learning app Duolingo and got busy. “I genuinely think he has learned a love of languages,” Dunn says.

But she says she and her husband, Jimmy Camp, are embroiled in an ongoing battle with Ben because they won’t let him get Fortnite, a popular video game that involves a lot of killing but also serves as an online venue for friends to talk about what’s going on in their lives.

“We said no, and it was like, oh, my God, we had ended his life,” Dunn says.