So You're Thinking of Giving Your Kid a Smartphone...
What parents need to consider before caving into the pressure and buying their kid a smartphone too early.
Hello Bar-setters!
Christmas is around the corner and many parents are considering giving their kid a smartphone. By the time a child is in the fifth grade, many parents have begun to hear a common refrain: But all my friends have one. I’m the only one who can’t…. I promise, I’ll just use it for calling, texting, and…
We think it’s too early to get them a smartphone…
But we also wonder if we are depriving our child…
Are we keeping them from participating in the modern social ecosystem…
And aren’t they going to need to learn to deal with this technology at some point, anyway?
Some Perspective
To answer these questions, let’s start by looking at the Sapien Labs study. This broad study looked at the mental health of 27,969 young adults (between ages 18 and 24) and plotted their mental health score (MHQ) against the age at which they first got a smartphone. The results were overwhelming:
As Sapien Labs explains their findings:
The later the age at which these young adults first got a phone or tablet that they could carry with them in childhood, the better their mental wellbeing as adults. In particular, the dimension of mental wellbeing most improved was the Social Self, an aggregate measure of various elements such as self-confidence and the ability to relate positively to others. (bolding is mine)
Conversely, those who got their first phone at a younger age were more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, feelings of aggression towards others and a sense of being detached from reality. These trends were stronger in females than males and consistent across all regions of the world sampled including the Core Anglosphere & W. Europe, Latin America, South Asia and Africa.
Two Roads Diverge
My book opens with a scene:
I’m riding my bike to work. The sun is rising and the air has that crisp September morning scent...
I turn the corner and find myself approaching seven high-school students waiting on their bus. You likely have memories of yourself doing the same—standing on the corner talking, joking, laughing—being a kid. Throw that image out. What I see is six kids sitting (yes, sitting) on the curb silently scanning their phones. Their heads are tilted to the side lazily, mouths open, faces empty, and thumbs swiping steadily in search of distraction. To say they are entranced is not sufficient. Each is a solitary island unconcerned for the life form just inches away. They exude a lobotomized disinterest in the world—completely removed.
I could run up in a pink tutu and start skipping in circles around them and they might never notice. In fact, they don’t even register this bald, red-bearded bicyclist, until I am right next to them. Upon seeing one former student’s surprised recognition, I succumb to the first grumpy old man comment that crosses my mind: “You could talk to each other, you know.”
As an educator, I’ve experienced a version of this nearly every day over the past 13 years. And it starts early…
A couple weeks ago, I went to my kids’ elementary school on a Friday morning to greet kids as they arrived. The doors to this school open at 7:30 am. At 7:25 there was a line of about 25 students waiting outside the back door. These kids stood in line talking, smiling, and laughing. Except for two.
At the end of the line, two kids had removed themselves from the group. They were the only two with smartphones. Empowered by their new devices, they decided to sit against the wall and scroll by themselves.
A couple years ago, I spoke at a fifth and sixth grade center where the principal told a similar story. She had hosted a family game night in the fall with bounce houses, playground balls, Gaga Pits, and food trucks. But, to her horror, most kids just walked around all evening scrolling their phones or sitting with friends, while occasionally pointing to each other’s screens.
She decided to do another game night in the spring, but this time she advertised it as a no phones allowed event. She reported that it was dramatically different. Kids running, laughing, and playing for hours. A smashing success.
Two similar events. Two very different outcomes. To quote the legendary poem from Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The smartphone is an infinite technology. Insert it in any situation and you’ll see a radically different course of action—a radically different domino effect.
Make it available at an evening dinner and you’ll connect less with your spouse.
Make it available while you work and you’ll find it harder to focus and get into deep work.
And make it available to your adolescent and they’re far less likely to run, play, socialize, or behave in anything resembling normal child and adolescent behavior.
Parents, for the sake of your kids, please just wait a little longer.
This is our job. Our job is not to make our kids happy in the short term. It is to know what is best for our kids and to parent accordingly.
Our job is to give them broccoli and tell them to turn the TV off and go play outside.
Our job is to recognize that the smartphone is a portal to another place.
It is a constant drain on our children’s psyches.
It is like handing a three-year-old a device that will constantly give them candy.
It is created in such a way as to be impossible for adolescents to handle well. It will change them. It will change your relationship to them. It will change how they spend their free time and what they want to do. Gen Z writer, Rikki Schlott, explains this well:
The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop — desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for… 9 hours a day….
My suggestion: delay. Wait until high school to give them a phone. (As Jon recommends, you can give them a flip phone before that.) Wait even longer to let them have an Instagram or TikTok account. The resentment is temporary. They’ll thank you later.
Yes! Get them a flip phone! An internet free flip phone! Or a light phone. What an elegant, sensible solution.
The smartphone is an unbelievable tool, but adolescents are not ready to use it as such. More still, it appears, they actually are more responsible with how the use their phone if they get ownership later.
The Norm Should Be No Smartphones Until High School
Psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt recommends waiting until at least high school. Nearly every tech insider shares that they wait until high school:
This should become the new norm and it still might. There have been fantastic strides in the past few years, particularly since the publication of Dr. Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.
Since then, at least 18 states (as well as all of the UK) have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict cellphones in school in some way. Some states have issued statewide bans, while others have chosen to incentivize local school districts to enact their own bans. California has not joined, but the second largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles United School District, has banned cellphones throughout the school day.
These bans are obvious and overdue. But so is waiting until high school to give your kids a smartphone. We all know this, but we feel pressure to give our kids a smartphone when it seems that all their friends have one.
Dr. Haidt talks about this as a “collective action problem” or a “social dilemma”:
The times, they are a-changin’
The good news is parents are talking about this. Schools are changing policies and that is empowering parents. Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, has sent shockwaves through our communities.
Keep talking to each other. Keep talking to your kids’ friends parents. They won’t all agree. But many, if not most, will be right where you are. Share articles. Share research. Share your plans, because things are changing fast.
I had advocated for phone free schools for a decade and thought schools would never come around. But I’ve been amazed by how far most schools have come in just the past two years. And I’m amazed by how many parents I talk to who plan to handle the smartphone question just like I want to.
To be a parent is to constantly second-guess yourself. But this is one of those stands worth taking. Get your kid a ping-pong table, a guitar, and a flip phone instead this Christmas. They’ll thank you later.
Thank you for reading and sharing!
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Carry the fire!
Shane
Might I also suggest a skateboard...