- See the recent APA study that dropped this week— a closer look at social media potential benefits and (mostly) precautions.
- personally, I am team Prof Jonathan Haidt. He says delay smartphones til 14, social til 16, for good reason (see After Babel and the Anxious Generation). Maybe read that book first and see how you feel?
- watch the social dilemma (2020), it holds up. i am gen z (2021) too. see how you feel after?
- note that a smartphone isn't a phone. it's a pocket-sized supercomputer. Max Stossel quote. He's great and speaks at schools to both parents and tweens / teens. he is the education advisor for the center for humane technology founded by tristan harris and aza raskin.
-before asking yourself is my child ready to have access to the internet, ask yourself, are you ready for the internet to have access to your child? (Catherine Price asks this question and has ample research on smartphone alternatives like the gabb, the pinwheel, the troomi, the light, flips, etc.) She is great!
- consider reframing it as a tool versus a bday gift. Like you got braces because you need them. Or you get to ride in the front because you're tall enough and weigh enough now.
- consider reframing it as this is a family phone on loan. Similar to borrowing the family car. Ie now that you have a driver's licence, you can borrow my car, but you have to make sure you roll up the windows when it's raining, lock it, and return it with gas.
-staying w that analogy make sure the child has the equivalent of driver's ed, learner's permit, etc. before a phone. scaffold and remove scaffolding gradually. start strict then cede ground over time (latter is Lisa Damour advice)
- if you go with an Apple product, their stores offer free getting started classes and you can ask all the questions you want and customize your settings with a store 'genius' guiding the way. Look at their today at apple and choose families, it's usually a 60 min session at a local store. you can also book a private group with your close parent pals and get on a similar page or at least receive the same info and bounce ideas around.
- normalize a phone basket for when the child's friends come over esp sleepovers. so they actually interact vs all stare into their screens or are "permanently elsewhere."
- no phones in the bedroom is what I hear most.
- I have a psychologist friend who has a no walking around the house with your eyes on the phone rule, and no phones in the car, love those.
- if you are going to monitor his texts / usage, make sure he knows from the get go (Devorah Heitner has a lot to say about this)
- Tech Without Stress is run by two PhD educators at Harvard and Brown and is a guide for when they have a phone. They also offer a tech without stress online course and a first phone guide that's downloadable.
- Thoughts from a Digital Mom is a substack written by a great mom who used to work at Snapchat and has recent (helpful, shame-free) things to say about YouTube shorts (mom of boys), check out her substack
- if you go with an iphone at age 13 you're opening the can of worms. gotta talk candidly about porn, digital forgery, non-consensual sexual imagery, deepfakes, deepnudes, mis/disinformation, how the algorithm works to push extreme content to its users even if they're not actively looking for it, etc. it's pretty daunting.
- Hope this is helpful, Melinda! I appreciate your substack. Found you through Adam Grant. Which reminds me... I'm sure you've seen the Sapien Labs study (2023) as well... ? That is an important look at the age of smartphone and correlations to mental health with a big sample size.
- net net I hear the most respected psychologists saying Delay Delay Delay.
- I'm holding off by giving my 11 year old more freedom and responsibility in the real world (vs the virtual world) and she seems ok with the tradeoff, most of the time. she's not 13 yet... so easy for me to say I guess.... I think there is a cultural shift that's going to happen—that is already happening— so I think a pause might be helpful. because once the toothpaste is out of the tube... I hear it's impossible to put back in.
Ooh we are not here yet but I will be following so I know what to do! One big question I have is around phone privacy. Right now, I basically have the rule that my kids have to show me what they’re watching/doing on their iPads, which I have explained isn’t because I think they’ll do something “bad,” but because I need to be aware of the content they’re viewing/know to help them if they accidentally or not get shown porn or whatever.
But neither of my kids is using a device to communicate with friends yet (my 10 yo has an Apple Watch now but I guess we were early to that and her friends don’t, or they haven’t figured out how to share numbers? She kind of just keeps leaving it around the house and seems underwhelmed by it, LOL.)
And I do know I would have DIED if my mom read the notes my friends and I passed in school, or listened to our calls… so my inclination is to give much more privacy once they do start texting with friends — except for all the terrible stuff I hear about kids weaponizing phones to be cruel to each other. Agh. Idk!
Great comments from Denise. I'll add to consider all of these concepts, AND to (of course) to consider the particular child. Our eldest is very social. When they first got their phone (age 13, sooner than I'd planned, but away-games with no commincation from the school did us in) we put a daily limit on ALL phone use. So, after a while, the only usable feature of the phone was the actual phone! We slowly expanded the time available and eventually made many apps unlimited. Our younger one was having a very difficult time socially when they first got their phone. We made texts unlimited from the start, so that if they wanted to communicate with peers, or was included in something, it would not be curtailed. (The younger one still has social media. The older one got it in sometime in their 16th year. Happy to report that the younger one is doing much better socially.)
Side note: The school has always hindered our ability to teach healthy screen use to our children, alas. They get wishy-washy about communicating directly with parents in 6th grade. Some kids are organized enough to pass along info and/or have phones at that age. Many aren't/don't; it certainly shouldn't be assumed. And, due to nearly all schoolwork being on the chromebook, it is difficult to limit chromebook time. There is an endless supply of insipid stupid junk on youtube that gets through whatever filters they use. Ugh.
This is such an important conversation and I feel comfortable sharing here, as you've been so clear on your stance that it is important not to judge or shame other parents for their choices. 👍
My 14 year old has had a phone since she was 12.. mostly because she was walking to school at that stage (not far and with friends) and it felt like the right time for her, as a very sensible child. We have a family sharing app called "family links" where we can limit her time on certain apps and time overall. We also have an 8pm rule where the phone goes off (managed on the app) and gets charged outside her room. She has a daily limit of 4 hours (which seems like a lot, but she hardly ever uses it all). No phones at the dinner table and we ask her to join us every weekday evening for an hour, so we can spend time with her and have conversations that need to be had then, rather than at bedtime!
This seems to work well for us and gives our daughter enough feeling of independence and autonomy, which makes her less argumentative and more co-operative overall. She is in complete control of when she does her homework, so long as it is done before bedtime and she is getting good grades and reports from school. She knows that if any of this slides, she will lose some of the freedom that she has. This seems to be enough to motivate her to be responsible and continue to do well at school.
She has no social media accounts (apart from Tik Tok, which we really regret) and we have made it clear that we won't even discuss changing this until she is at least 16 and we have explained our reasons why. We have had open conversations around keeping safe online and how it does not matter one bit what anyone else is doing, we are her parents and it is completely our choice to manage this minefield as we see fit. Also, that ultimately we are doing what we're doing to keep her safe and/or protect her developing mind from an unnecessary bombardment of addictive mind-numbing content.
I strongly agree that each individual family has a right to make a choice that works for them and it irritates me when people try to encourage a blanket rule amongst groups of children (i.e. a year group). I think that the emphasis should ALWAYS be on educating parents and children around safety online, rather than banning phones until a certain age, etc... No matter how much you think you're protecting your children by completely banning something, they will source it out elsewhere (through friends) and then those important conversations will not have been had and they could then not be safe.
As I mentioned briefly earlier, our only regret is allowing Tik Tok so early. However, we have managed this by limiting the app to 20 minutes a day and she has a private account, so only her friends in real life can see her content. Other people may be comfortable with social media earlier and this is fine too - my only comment would be that they are rated 18 for a reason and I would hope that conversations were being had. Each to their own - Live and let live as they say 😊
So many great suggestions already. My kids are 14 & 16, and the best advice is that it is easier to add freedoms/privileges than to take them away. So start stricter than you may think you need to be, and add more after they have shown they can handle it well. It saves you a lot of fighting, plus they have to prove to you they can manage.
We don't allow them to use their phones in the car at all.
Something no one else has brought up yet is music & headphones. Especially if they have AirPods (and most high schoolers in my area do!) there will come a time when your child will have them permanently in their ears. We had to set boundaries around them - you can have them in when doing chores, going for a walk/doing a fitness activity/practicing sports by yourself (not with others), and when we are in the car, they can only be worn on drives over 30 minutes long, and even then worn only ONE way (drive there or the drive back). If we're just chilling at home, no headphones. I work with teenagers so I know how much the AirPods limit interaction with the outside world, so I wanted to make sure there were lots of opportunities for organic conversation and chitchat to occur. If everyone is lost in their own world of their music/podcast, no one is interacting with each other! Oh, and taking out ONE airpod to talk to someone while your music keeps playing is my pet peeve and a big no no!
Last but not least, we limit phone use when friends are over. At sleepovers phones still come upstairs at a set time to charge (when the kids were younger we would tell their friend's parents in advance, that helped smooth it over for the kids with more lax rules) and even now I will remind them to interact with each other & not their phones. I am definitely known as the strict one when it comes to tech amongst my kids friends!
We reluctantly got the smartphone for texting with friends and parental contact (and tracking) while out in the real world…but basically kept all the fun app stuff off the phone. We turned off safari and the App Store completely, so there’s no temptation, and my daughter is welcome to watch YouTube etc on the family desktop computer just as she’s always done (and honestly, she has a Chromebook from school that I know she’s on during the day - but that’s the school’s responsibility to monitor).
We’re a year in, and we’re talking about loosening the reins and giving her a first social app - prob Snapchat, because she says that’s the one her friends use to communicate, and she agrees with safeguards like saving all messages and only communicating with friends, etc.
I still won’t give her YouTube or TikTok on her phone, maybe not until she’s 18, because they are SUCH a time suck and I just don’t want to hand her an addictive device that many adults can’t manage and then fight with her all the time about limits. Probably we’ll also unlock safari, but keep it as “allowed websites only” so she has to build up permissions over time. We know from the kids’ iPads that it’s a leaky enough system that she’ll be able to google search and see some videos etc that load through other pages, and we can allow sites like Wikipedia, but will still block YouTube, for instance. My feeling is that if she wants access to the WHOLE damn problematic internet, she can still use other devices that must go through the (filtered) home WiFi!
My kid isn’t anywhere close to smartphone age, but one thing I’ve observed with friend’s older kids is not allowing headphones + videos/podcasts/game chat. I guess it’s akin to when I was growing up and the computer was out in a public room - you as the parent don’t have to actively monitor per se, but you can hear anything troubling. (Of course, the downside of that is having to hear absolutely inane Twitch streams, but 🤷♀️)
Such a good topic. I have so many conflicting feelings around it. On one hand, my daughter pretty much only uses one of our phones for creative pursuits. She loves creative writing and this art app, pro-create. She only uses YouTube to watch artists draw things once in a while with permission. At nine, I trust her with content, she knows which YouTubers she can watch and sticks to them.
The problem is she wants to do these creative things on the phone or iPad ALL the time. So she is now in the habit of constantly reaching for a device whenever she is a tiny bit bored, which I don’t think is good. And we have had a hard time telling her no, she has to write or draw on paper sometimes instead. We’ve talked to her about why, but she doesn’t get it.
The whole issue came clear the other weekend when she had a friend over who has zero access to devices and they actually spent the whole afternoon outside in the woods playing. She never does that anymore. I love all her writing and art etc and she really benefits in many ways, but she’s still staring at a screen a whole lot and I just don’t know where the line is.
I would love more conversations on screen time for the exact reason you mention: people don’t want to share for fear of judgment, so a moderated space is a really valuable resource.
A few thoughts:
- I am less pearl-clutchy than most about screen time for young kids for many reasons but I view YouTube as being the least easy to hand over to an unsupervised child. I don’t let my kiddo have it on his tablet; it’s only for the TV, where I can listen and moderate even if I’m in the kitchen making dinner. Things like Netflix, Disney+ etc are easier because I can download things for him to watch and then turn the internet access off.
- For older kids, I have observed that they use YouTube to explore passions and do research, which is cool, but as you’ve noted, they don’t always have the critical literacy skills yet to determine what’s true and what’s not. In the pre-college counseling work I do, we try to redirect kids in this 13+ group to complete Khan Academy certificates, join an Outschool class, or for those who have the means, complete a project through Polygence, versus doing DIY research on [insert passion here] on YouTube. This has the benefit of being an “activity” they can list on their Common App later on.
- Texting is dicey. So is Snapchat. IG is similar. I cannot tell you how many friendships I have seen among my middle school students get torpedoed by poor text-tiquette. Some have escalated into bullying incidents that have required school staff intervention. Our teacher training involved precisely 0 minutes on how to do this so it’s really important for parents to take the lead in preventing things before they happen. At least if they don’t want to witness the cringe of adults trying to interpret teen slang so they can evaluate whether it merits a restorative circle or suspension.
- One thought I have is gathering the parents of the friends that are most likely to text each other, at a table with the kids in question (and maybe some pizza), and having your own “circle” with some open-ended prompts, to determine some shared norms the way educators would before introducing tricky new content in the classroom. Things like: What needs do you hope your phones will meet? How does texting meet those needs? What about social media? How are texting and social media different? What cons come along with the pros that we need to discuss? What norms do we need to have around how we will talk to each other, handle disputes, intervene if we see bullying, or escalate the situation to a trusted adult if we’re not sure what to do? What consequences can we all agree to (for kids) and to enforce (for adults) if we struggle to keep to our norms?
I’m not sure if this is realistic for all parents to organize, but it’s something I’d love to see more of. Because I agree — this is a shared social issue to tackle collectively, not just an individual family one.
Our (only) kid also turns 13 later this month. We got him an iPhone about a year ago. He mostly uses it to listen to music, which feels very extravagant. We haven’t allowed social media and so far he doesn’t care. That seems to be a much bigger thing with girls, based on conversations with other parents. He does not have TikTok. He does have YouTube, but has been watching that for years. He’s been using the internet on our desktop computer for quite a while. He texts with friends. It’s set up so that we have to add people to his Contacts.
Our dinner table has always been a no-phones zone for everyone, so that’s easy. It shuts off at 9. Most apps shut off at 8 but he gets the extra time for music. We also have daily limits on Safari and on YouTube but lately those haven’t been working. It’s a documented problem with Apple right now.
We do not have any monitoring. I know that is controversial, and I do worry about whether it’s the right choice.
Frankly our biggest challenge is probably setting healthy examples. My husband and I are both on our own phones way too much.
Our school district has been doing digital literacy classes for years, which is really helpful.
My daughter (12 in June) uses an older iPhone on wifi at home for music, texting/FaceTiming friends, and email. We are still a ways away from a regular phone as she has a SyncKids watch to reach us if needed. She frequently doesn’t know where either of them are or they aren’t charged. Her ND brain needs some more time to develop still.
I have very limited knowledge about TikTok but am curious why your family has elected to allow that but not other social media.
I was going to post about YouTube controls but I see that has already been shared.
One thing that I think can be really valuable about this phone intro is it is a great time to re-evaluate your own phone usage. Obviously your don't HAVE to abide by the same rules as your kid, but blatant hypocrisy (no phones at the dinner table for the kids but the parents are on them, no constant headphones but the parents have them, etc) WILL be noticed and will undermine both what you're trying to teach, and your kid's willingness to abide by your rules.
I've also seen kids react well to seeing their parents struggling with the same rules; it highlights how tricky phone use can be to regulate.
My oldest got a smartphone this summer, as he transitioned into middle school. Most of his friends also got phones either this summer or during the first semester (as birthday presents, etc.). He is 12.
We have very few rules about screen time overall. We use family link for his phone, just like his tablet. When he turns 13, he will be able to turn family link off, but we will know when he does it--and I think we are going to require his participation for a while still. He knows how family link works and that we monitor it, and that we know the limits of the parental controls. Right now, we don't allow social media because he is under 13, but he isn't interested in it either. We charge his phone outside his room and have talked about how that is a good practice to help protect sleep.
His school does not allow phone use during instructional time, and if it did, we would turn his phone off during school hours. If he used his phone during school hours, we would turn it off via parental controls or he would lose the privilege of taking it to school.
Basically, we talk a lot about the good and bad of internet usage, just like the good and bad of video gaming, just like we talk about the rules of the road on bikes, just like we talk about how to be respectful to others when we're in a hotel, and everything else. Sometimes we notice that the phone time is getting a little unbalanced and we talk about whether he needs help with that or if he can handle it on his own and go from there. He can't get better grades, he rarely procrastinates on his responsibilities, he has good friends and his mother says he's a delight to be around at least 90% of the time (haha). So far, so good with phone usage, I guess I'm saying.
It is, I admit, framed a little judge-y, not about tech use generally but about what she sees as the latest round of moral panic. To be clear, her point in this post is specifically about proposed legislation to limit kids' access to tech (mostly social) and, I think well aligned to your point that every family and every kid is different, her main argument is that we should be centering *kids* in these conversations not *technology* which I think is a great framing. Also, as other folks have mentioned here already, we grown-ups should probably start by reflecting on our own tech use and how our kids feel about it before/as we set limits on theirs.
Sorry! I know that's a little tangent from your specific question, but I just found this newsletter so useful and thought-provoking.
- See the recent APA study that dropped this week— a closer look at social media potential benefits and (mostly) precautions.
- personally, I am team Prof Jonathan Haidt. He says delay smartphones til 14, social til 16, for good reason (see After Babel and the Anxious Generation). Maybe read that book first and see how you feel?
- watch the social dilemma (2020), it holds up. i am gen z (2021) too. see how you feel after?
- note that a smartphone isn't a phone. it's a pocket-sized supercomputer. Max Stossel quote. He's great and speaks at schools to both parents and tweens / teens. he is the education advisor for the center for humane technology founded by tristan harris and aza raskin.
-before asking yourself is my child ready to have access to the internet, ask yourself, are you ready for the internet to have access to your child? (Catherine Price asks this question and has ample research on smartphone alternatives like the gabb, the pinwheel, the troomi, the light, flips, etc.) She is great!
- consider reframing it as a tool versus a bday gift. Like you got braces because you need them. Or you get to ride in the front because you're tall enough and weigh enough now.
- consider reframing it as this is a family phone on loan. Similar to borrowing the family car. Ie now that you have a driver's licence, you can borrow my car, but you have to make sure you roll up the windows when it's raining, lock it, and return it with gas.
-staying w that analogy make sure the child has the equivalent of driver's ed, learner's permit, etc. before a phone. scaffold and remove scaffolding gradually. start strict then cede ground over time (latter is Lisa Damour advice)
- if you go with an Apple product, their stores offer free getting started classes and you can ask all the questions you want and customize your settings with a store 'genius' guiding the way. Look at their today at apple and choose families, it's usually a 60 min session at a local store. you can also book a private group with your close parent pals and get on a similar page or at least receive the same info and bounce ideas around.
- normalize a phone basket for when the child's friends come over esp sleepovers. so they actually interact vs all stare into their screens or are "permanently elsewhere."
- no phones in the bedroom is what I hear most.
- I have a psychologist friend who has a no walking around the house with your eyes on the phone rule, and no phones in the car, love those.
- if you are going to monitor his texts / usage, make sure he knows from the get go (Devorah Heitner has a lot to say about this)
- Tech Without Stress is run by two PhD educators at Harvard and Brown and is a guide for when they have a phone. They also offer a tech without stress online course and a first phone guide that's downloadable.
- Thoughts from a Digital Mom is a substack written by a great mom who used to work at Snapchat and has recent (helpful, shame-free) things to say about YouTube shorts (mom of boys), check out her substack
- if you go with an iphone at age 13 you're opening the can of worms. gotta talk candidly about porn, digital forgery, non-consensual sexual imagery, deepfakes, deepnudes, mis/disinformation, how the algorithm works to push extreme content to its users even if they're not actively looking for it, etc. it's pretty daunting.
- Hope this is helpful, Melinda! I appreciate your substack. Found you through Adam Grant. Which reminds me... I'm sure you've seen the Sapien Labs study (2023) as well... ? That is an important look at the age of smartphone and correlations to mental health with a big sample size.
- net net I hear the most respected psychologists saying Delay Delay Delay.
- I'm holding off by giving my 11 year old more freedom and responsibility in the real world (vs the virtual world) and she seems ok with the tradeoff, most of the time. she's not 13 yet... so easy for me to say I guess.... I think there is a cultural shift that's going to happen—that is already happening— so I think a pause might be helpful. because once the toothpaste is out of the tube... I hear it's impossible to put back in.
good luck! :)
Ooh we are not here yet but I will be following so I know what to do! One big question I have is around phone privacy. Right now, I basically have the rule that my kids have to show me what they’re watching/doing on their iPads, which I have explained isn’t because I think they’ll do something “bad,” but because I need to be aware of the content they’re viewing/know to help them if they accidentally or not get shown porn or whatever.
But neither of my kids is using a device to communicate with friends yet (my 10 yo has an Apple Watch now but I guess we were early to that and her friends don’t, or they haven’t figured out how to share numbers? She kind of just keeps leaving it around the house and seems underwhelmed by it, LOL.)
And I do know I would have DIED if my mom read the notes my friends and I passed in school, or listened to our calls… so my inclination is to give much more privacy once they do start texting with friends — except for all the terrible stuff I hear about kids weaponizing phones to be cruel to each other. Agh. Idk!
Great comments from Denise. I'll add to consider all of these concepts, AND to (of course) to consider the particular child. Our eldest is very social. When they first got their phone (age 13, sooner than I'd planned, but away-games with no commincation from the school did us in) we put a daily limit on ALL phone use. So, after a while, the only usable feature of the phone was the actual phone! We slowly expanded the time available and eventually made many apps unlimited. Our younger one was having a very difficult time socially when they first got their phone. We made texts unlimited from the start, so that if they wanted to communicate with peers, or was included in something, it would not be curtailed. (The younger one still has social media. The older one got it in sometime in their 16th year. Happy to report that the younger one is doing much better socially.)
Side note: The school has always hindered our ability to teach healthy screen use to our children, alas. They get wishy-washy about communicating directly with parents in 6th grade. Some kids are organized enough to pass along info and/or have phones at that age. Many aren't/don't; it certainly shouldn't be assumed. And, due to nearly all schoolwork being on the chromebook, it is difficult to limit chromebook time. There is an endless supply of insipid stupid junk on youtube that gets through whatever filters they use. Ugh.
This is such an important conversation and I feel comfortable sharing here, as you've been so clear on your stance that it is important not to judge or shame other parents for their choices. 👍
My 14 year old has had a phone since she was 12.. mostly because she was walking to school at that stage (not far and with friends) and it felt like the right time for her, as a very sensible child. We have a family sharing app called "family links" where we can limit her time on certain apps and time overall. We also have an 8pm rule where the phone goes off (managed on the app) and gets charged outside her room. She has a daily limit of 4 hours (which seems like a lot, but she hardly ever uses it all). No phones at the dinner table and we ask her to join us every weekday evening for an hour, so we can spend time with her and have conversations that need to be had then, rather than at bedtime!
This seems to work well for us and gives our daughter enough feeling of independence and autonomy, which makes her less argumentative and more co-operative overall. She is in complete control of when she does her homework, so long as it is done before bedtime and she is getting good grades and reports from school. She knows that if any of this slides, she will lose some of the freedom that she has. This seems to be enough to motivate her to be responsible and continue to do well at school.
She has no social media accounts (apart from Tik Tok, which we really regret) and we have made it clear that we won't even discuss changing this until she is at least 16 and we have explained our reasons why. We have had open conversations around keeping safe online and how it does not matter one bit what anyone else is doing, we are her parents and it is completely our choice to manage this minefield as we see fit. Also, that ultimately we are doing what we're doing to keep her safe and/or protect her developing mind from an unnecessary bombardment of addictive mind-numbing content.
I strongly agree that each individual family has a right to make a choice that works for them and it irritates me when people try to encourage a blanket rule amongst groups of children (i.e. a year group). I think that the emphasis should ALWAYS be on educating parents and children around safety online, rather than banning phones until a certain age, etc... No matter how much you think you're protecting your children by completely banning something, they will source it out elsewhere (through friends) and then those important conversations will not have been had and they could then not be safe.
As I mentioned briefly earlier, our only regret is allowing Tik Tok so early. However, we have managed this by limiting the app to 20 minutes a day and she has a private account, so only her friends in real life can see her content. Other people may be comfortable with social media earlier and this is fine too - my only comment would be that they are rated 18 for a reason and I would hope that conversations were being had. Each to their own - Live and let live as they say 😊
So many great suggestions already. My kids are 14 & 16, and the best advice is that it is easier to add freedoms/privileges than to take them away. So start stricter than you may think you need to be, and add more after they have shown they can handle it well. It saves you a lot of fighting, plus they have to prove to you they can manage.
We don't allow them to use their phones in the car at all.
Something no one else has brought up yet is music & headphones. Especially if they have AirPods (and most high schoolers in my area do!) there will come a time when your child will have them permanently in their ears. We had to set boundaries around them - you can have them in when doing chores, going for a walk/doing a fitness activity/practicing sports by yourself (not with others), and when we are in the car, they can only be worn on drives over 30 minutes long, and even then worn only ONE way (drive there or the drive back). If we're just chilling at home, no headphones. I work with teenagers so I know how much the AirPods limit interaction with the outside world, so I wanted to make sure there were lots of opportunities for organic conversation and chitchat to occur. If everyone is lost in their own world of their music/podcast, no one is interacting with each other! Oh, and taking out ONE airpod to talk to someone while your music keeps playing is my pet peeve and a big no no!
Last but not least, we limit phone use when friends are over. At sleepovers phones still come upstairs at a set time to charge (when the kids were younger we would tell their friend's parents in advance, that helped smooth it over for the kids with more lax rules) and even now I will remind them to interact with each other & not their phones. I am definitely known as the strict one when it comes to tech amongst my kids friends!
We reluctantly got the smartphone for texting with friends and parental contact (and tracking) while out in the real world…but basically kept all the fun app stuff off the phone. We turned off safari and the App Store completely, so there’s no temptation, and my daughter is welcome to watch YouTube etc on the family desktop computer just as she’s always done (and honestly, she has a Chromebook from school that I know she’s on during the day - but that’s the school’s responsibility to monitor).
We’re a year in, and we’re talking about loosening the reins and giving her a first social app - prob Snapchat, because she says that’s the one her friends use to communicate, and she agrees with safeguards like saving all messages and only communicating with friends, etc.
I still won’t give her YouTube or TikTok on her phone, maybe not until she’s 18, because they are SUCH a time suck and I just don’t want to hand her an addictive device that many adults can’t manage and then fight with her all the time about limits. Probably we’ll also unlock safari, but keep it as “allowed websites only” so she has to build up permissions over time. We know from the kids’ iPads that it’s a leaky enough system that she’ll be able to google search and see some videos etc that load through other pages, and we can allow sites like Wikipedia, but will still block YouTube, for instance. My feeling is that if she wants access to the WHOLE damn problematic internet, she can still use other devices that must go through the (filtered) home WiFi!
My kid isn’t anywhere close to smartphone age, but one thing I’ve observed with friend’s older kids is not allowing headphones + videos/podcasts/game chat. I guess it’s akin to when I was growing up and the computer was out in a public room - you as the parent don’t have to actively monitor per se, but you can hear anything troubling. (Of course, the downside of that is having to hear absolutely inane Twitch streams, but 🤷♀️)
Such a good topic. I have so many conflicting feelings around it. On one hand, my daughter pretty much only uses one of our phones for creative pursuits. She loves creative writing and this art app, pro-create. She only uses YouTube to watch artists draw things once in a while with permission. At nine, I trust her with content, she knows which YouTubers she can watch and sticks to them.
The problem is she wants to do these creative things on the phone or iPad ALL the time. So she is now in the habit of constantly reaching for a device whenever she is a tiny bit bored, which I don’t think is good. And we have had a hard time telling her no, she has to write or draw on paper sometimes instead. We’ve talked to her about why, but she doesn’t get it.
The whole issue came clear the other weekend when she had a friend over who has zero access to devices and they actually spent the whole afternoon outside in the woods playing. She never does that anymore. I love all her writing and art etc and she really benefits in many ways, but she’s still staring at a screen a whole lot and I just don’t know where the line is.
I would love more conversations on screen time for the exact reason you mention: people don’t want to share for fear of judgment, so a moderated space is a really valuable resource.
A few thoughts:
- I am less pearl-clutchy than most about screen time for young kids for many reasons but I view YouTube as being the least easy to hand over to an unsupervised child. I don’t let my kiddo have it on his tablet; it’s only for the TV, where I can listen and moderate even if I’m in the kitchen making dinner. Things like Netflix, Disney+ etc are easier because I can download things for him to watch and then turn the internet access off.
- For older kids, I have observed that they use YouTube to explore passions and do research, which is cool, but as you’ve noted, they don’t always have the critical literacy skills yet to determine what’s true and what’s not. In the pre-college counseling work I do, we try to redirect kids in this 13+ group to complete Khan Academy certificates, join an Outschool class, or for those who have the means, complete a project through Polygence, versus doing DIY research on [insert passion here] on YouTube. This has the benefit of being an “activity” they can list on their Common App later on.
- Texting is dicey. So is Snapchat. IG is similar. I cannot tell you how many friendships I have seen among my middle school students get torpedoed by poor text-tiquette. Some have escalated into bullying incidents that have required school staff intervention. Our teacher training involved precisely 0 minutes on how to do this so it’s really important for parents to take the lead in preventing things before they happen. At least if they don’t want to witness the cringe of adults trying to interpret teen slang so they can evaluate whether it merits a restorative circle or suspension.
- One thought I have is gathering the parents of the friends that are most likely to text each other, at a table with the kids in question (and maybe some pizza), and having your own “circle” with some open-ended prompts, to determine some shared norms the way educators would before introducing tricky new content in the classroom. Things like: What needs do you hope your phones will meet? How does texting meet those needs? What about social media? How are texting and social media different? What cons come along with the pros that we need to discuss? What norms do we need to have around how we will talk to each other, handle disputes, intervene if we see bullying, or escalate the situation to a trusted adult if we’re not sure what to do? What consequences can we all agree to (for kids) and to enforce (for adults) if we struggle to keep to our norms?
I’m not sure if this is realistic for all parents to organize, but it’s something I’d love to see more of. Because I agree — this is a shared social issue to tackle collectively, not just an individual family one.
This post has instructions for YouTube "supervised accounts"! :) - https://technosapiens.substack.com/p/parentalcontrols
Our (only) kid also turns 13 later this month. We got him an iPhone about a year ago. He mostly uses it to listen to music, which feels very extravagant. We haven’t allowed social media and so far he doesn’t care. That seems to be a much bigger thing with girls, based on conversations with other parents. He does not have TikTok. He does have YouTube, but has been watching that for years. He’s been using the internet on our desktop computer for quite a while. He texts with friends. It’s set up so that we have to add people to his Contacts.
Our dinner table has always been a no-phones zone for everyone, so that’s easy. It shuts off at 9. Most apps shut off at 8 but he gets the extra time for music. We also have daily limits on Safari and on YouTube but lately those haven’t been working. It’s a documented problem with Apple right now.
We do not have any monitoring. I know that is controversial, and I do worry about whether it’s the right choice.
Frankly our biggest challenge is probably setting healthy examples. My husband and I are both on our own phones way too much.
Our school district has been doing digital literacy classes for years, which is really helpful.
My daughter (12 in June) uses an older iPhone on wifi at home for music, texting/FaceTiming friends, and email. We are still a ways away from a regular phone as she has a SyncKids watch to reach us if needed. She frequently doesn’t know where either of them are or they aren’t charged. Her ND brain needs some more time to develop still.
I have very limited knowledge about TikTok but am curious why your family has elected to allow that but not other social media.
Ash Brandin ("the gamer educator") has info on their website about how to add controls to YouTube if your kid is too old for YouTube Kids. https://thegamereducator.com/2023/03/26/the-surprising-way-to-keep-your-kids-safer-on-youtube/
I was going to post about YouTube controls but I see that has already been shared.
One thing that I think can be really valuable about this phone intro is it is a great time to re-evaluate your own phone usage. Obviously your don't HAVE to abide by the same rules as your kid, but blatant hypocrisy (no phones at the dinner table for the kids but the parents are on them, no constant headphones but the parents have them, etc) WILL be noticed and will undermine both what you're trying to teach, and your kid's willingness to abide by your rules.
I've also seen kids react well to seeing their parents struggling with the same rules; it highlights how tricky phone use can be to regulate.
My oldest got a smartphone this summer, as he transitioned into middle school. Most of his friends also got phones either this summer or during the first semester (as birthday presents, etc.). He is 12.
We have very few rules about screen time overall. We use family link for his phone, just like his tablet. When he turns 13, he will be able to turn family link off, but we will know when he does it--and I think we are going to require his participation for a while still. He knows how family link works and that we monitor it, and that we know the limits of the parental controls. Right now, we don't allow social media because he is under 13, but he isn't interested in it either. We charge his phone outside his room and have talked about how that is a good practice to help protect sleep.
His school does not allow phone use during instructional time, and if it did, we would turn his phone off during school hours. If he used his phone during school hours, we would turn it off via parental controls or he would lose the privilege of taking it to school.
Basically, we talk a lot about the good and bad of internet usage, just like the good and bad of video gaming, just like we talk about the rules of the road on bikes, just like we talk about how to be respectful to others when we're in a hotel, and everything else. Sometimes we notice that the phone time is getting a little unbalanced and we talk about whether he needs help with that or if he can handle it on his own and go from there. He can't get better grades, he rarely procrastinates on his responsibilities, he has good friends and his mother says he's a delight to be around at least 90% of the time (haha). So far, so good with phone usage, I guess I'm saying.
danah boyd is one of my go-to sources on technology and I was literally just thinking of sharing her latest newsletter with you: https://zephoria.substack.com/p/struggling-with-a-moral-panic-once
It is, I admit, framed a little judge-y, not about tech use generally but about what she sees as the latest round of moral panic. To be clear, her point in this post is specifically about proposed legislation to limit kids' access to tech (mostly social) and, I think well aligned to your point that every family and every kid is different, her main argument is that we should be centering *kids* in these conversations not *technology* which I think is a great framing. Also, as other folks have mentioned here already, we grown-ups should probably start by reflecting on our own tech use and how our kids feel about it before/as we set limits on theirs.
Sorry! I know that's a little tangent from your specific question, but I just found this newsletter so useful and thought-provoking.