When Should I Give My Kid a Phone?

So many parents tell me they wish they'd waited longer.

My 13-year-old is the last kid in his class not to have a phone, a unique designation that he does not appreciate one bit. We have the same conversation every week, where he asks for a phone, I say no, he asks why, I explain, and then he rants about the perceived unfairness of the situation.

I ask him what he feels he's missing out on and the answer is "Snapchat." But then he describes the innumerable pictures of ceilings exchanged by his friends and the streak obsessions and the filters and the way his classmates were chasing down total strangers on a recent class trip just to add people to their network, and I can't help but think, "What a waste of time."

I tell him he's not actually missing out, even if he doesn't realize it now. "What you're describing doesn't add value to life!" I argue. "It depletes it of its interest. This is mass cultural stupidity!" Maybe I sound like a raving old lady to him, but I can't help it.

Sometimes I employ actress Jennifer Garner's great tactic of challenging my kid to find a study showing the benefits of smartphone ownership at his age. He can't, of course (neither can Garner's teenagers), but he conveniently educates himself on the very issues that concern me.

But I am left wondering what the right answer is. Am I being unfair, overly stubborn, idealistic? What IS the right age to give him a phone? Other parents ask me the same thing, wondering when I'll relent. Some insinuate that I'm not doing a good job, that I'm imposing unrealistic expectations on my child and making him suffer socially as a result. (For the record, he's not suffering. He is thriving.) "Get with the times," they say, more or less.

So Many Parents Wish They’d Waited

I always thought grade 10 would make sense, since it gives us a chance to work on good phone etiquette (a skill sadly lacking in society) before he leaves home. But lately I've noticed a curious trend of parents expressing regret about giving their kids tablets and smartphones when they did. More and more parents are opening up about wishing they had done it differently. This throws a wrench into my plans.

Several weeks ago, two screen-cautious mothers said they both gave their sons phones in grade 10. One told me, "I wish I hadn't. If I could go back and do it over, I'd delay even longer. It created more problems than it was worth." The other said her son struggled immensely with using the device responsibly. "He can't resist it. It has changed so much."

One mom said she worries her child has been "ruined" by the device she's been using for years, that it's too late to reclaim her childlike innocence and playfulness. "I think I've destroyed her."

Another parent said buying phones for her kids was the worst parenting decision she ever made. "I thought it would be a good idea initially, but never in a million years did I realize it would become so all-consuming." She wished she'd waited many more years.

Earlier Phone Use Linked to Worse Mental Health

A recent article in the Financial Times underscores these points. Titled "A decade on, I still wonder if I was wrong to give my daughters a smartphones," author Gillian Tett points to new research showing that young people's worsening mental health is linked to the age at which they received their first smartphone. Sapien Labs polled nearly 28,000 18- to 24-year-olds, considered "the first generation who went through adolescence with this technology." Tett writes:

This showed a clear pattern: kids who received phones at a younger age had worse mental health, even after adjusting for reported incidents of childhood trauma. The share of females experiencing mental health challenges ranged from 74 per cent for those who received their first smartphone at age six to 46 per cent who received it at age 18. For males, the numbers were 42 per cent and 36 per cent.

Perhaps most fascinating is that Sapien attributes this pattern not just to increased technology use, but to decreased time spent interacting with others. "Given the statistics of five to eight hours a day spent online during childhood, we estimate that this could displace as much as 1,000 to 2,000 hours a year that would otherwise be spent in various face-to-face social interactions."

It's a time displacement problem, in other words. You add phones to a household and suddenly other stuff has to go because there simply aren't enough hours in a day to do it all. When I think of my family's busy schedule right now, we can barely find time to put in a full work or school day, cook meals, complete homework, get to soccer, hit the gym, practice instruments, sleep for 8-10 hours (depending on who it is), and stay on top of laundry, let alone read books, go for a walk, have a good face-to-face conversation with each other, or see friends. When I imagine adding yet more devices to the mix, which would inevitably pull my kids' time and focus away from these other valuable activities, I know they'd start missing out on the good stuff that bolsters mental health.

This doesn't even touch the really scary stuff that happens online, like cyberbullying and self-image problems and sleep deprivation and addiction. I could get into those, but often I think people get lost in the weeds arguing over whether or not screen time is harmful, while ignoring the basic question of whether or not it is a good use of one's time. That in itself is enough of a deterrent for me.

The Need for a New Norm

Tett writes that psychology professor Jonathan Haidt (whose work on this topic is very interesting) thinks we have a "collective action problem" that makes it "difficult for parents or schools to impose controls or limits on phone use without 'centralised norms'." I can relate. The norm is currently to give your kid a phone pretty much as soon as they want one (definitely by grade eight, unless you're a weirdo like me) and hope that a fleeting conversation about proper use is sufficient protection against a dangerously addictive device with apps that are a "portal to God knows what," to quote Haidt again. This is followed up by bashing or criticizing anyone who doesn't want to jump on that same bandwagon. (Yes, I am a bit sensitive about this.)

I see my job partly as protecting and preparing my child for the inevitable (of course he'll have a smartphone someday), and partly as establishing a new norm. As lonely and uncomfortable as it can be, the fact that I wish there were other parents out there opting to delay phone ownership for their kids means that I need to be one of those parents myself.

And it seems that every week brings more research to back my viewpoint (such as the U.S. Surgeon General’s latest advisory citing a profound risk of harm for kids’ use of social media). Delaying phone ownership is not unfair; it might be the best thing I can do for my child's mental health. And if mental health matters, as everyone claims these days, then delaying phone ownership (or even confiscating devices) is a glaringly obvious approach to take.

I no longer know when I'll give my kid a phone. I don't know if grade 10 makes sense anymore, after hearing all these expressions of regret. But I do console myself with one parent's words: "Your child will thank you someday." I hope they're right.

Related Posts:
What Is the U.S. Surgeon General Saying About Social Media?
Is the Future Analog?
The Forgettability of Sameness