A parent and teacher recently asked me, “How have you managed to avoid giving your children phones?”
My answer was admittedly snarky but accurate:
“We just didn’t give them phones. It’s not hard to not do something.”
Simple but true.
Then I added, “It’s also not that hard when you know it’s the healthy, safe, and right thing to do for your kid.”
This, of course, is also true. Avoiding phones for as long as possible is essential to a child’s health and well-being because handing a phone to a young person — with unfettered access to social media, the internet, and constant connection — is disastrous for a young mind.
Many adult minds, too.
We probably knew this in our hearts long ago, but the research now proves it disastrously true.
The average age that a child is given a phone in the United States is, depending on the survey, 11 to 13,
Anecdotally, I can tell you that I know many ten-year-olds who own phones, and I know children as young as five who own one.
Having read “The Anxious Generation” and worked with the book’s researcher, I believe even more strongly about a mobile phone’s damaging impact on children. Every moment spent on a phone is a moment not spent in the real world.
We wonder:
Why don’t kids love books like they once did?
Why do many kids struggle with anxiety and stress?
Why do so many children and adults feel lonely?
Why do so many people feel disconnected from the world?
The answer, or at least one of them, is staring our children in the face all the damn time. It’s the tiny screen on their constantly connected phone. It’s the means by which phones have stolen away vast amounts of our children’s attention and interaction with the world.
And I understand:
It’s not always simple nor easy to keep a phone from your children when most of their friends and classmates own phones, but as a character in one of my novels once famously said:
“The hard thing and the right thing are often the same thing.”
That said, I have some advice for parents who want to navigate this phone-based culture:
First and most important, our kids are 16 and 12 years old, and neither owns a phone. Neither child has a social media account, nor do they post online or scroll through Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or anything else like it.
Actually, I have also never been on TikTok, and neither has Elysha. Elysha also does not use Instagram, and my IG use extends only to posting the occasional photo at the bequest of my publicist.
I treat Facebook similarly. Every morning, I re-post my blog to the platform and then walk away. Later in the day, when I’m standing in a line or waiting for something to start, I will check to see if I’ve pleased or annoyed people with my post and sometimes respond.
But that’s it. No scrolling. My time and life are too valuable to be spent scrolling through an algorithmically-designed social media feed designed to hold my attention and steal my time.
I post and walk away.
I promise you that we are the better for it.
But we’ve devised strategies that work well for our kids. These strategies allow them to remain connected to their friends without being exposed to the hazards of an unfettered phone in their pocket.
Here is what we have done:
Each child owns an iPad that operates on Wifi only. These iPads allow for texting, video calls, photography, and movie watching. There is no social media on either device, and they don’t work on the cellular network, so they can’t be used outside the home.
These iPads allow the kids to text and call their friends when they are home, which makes them akin to telephones of the past, which were affixed to a wall in the house by a cord and limited to the home.
When the kids leave the house, they are no longer connected to the internet or constant messaging from their friends, which is a glorious thing.
We also purchased a “house phone,” which is a cell phone that the kids can use when needed. For example, if one of our kids goes to a place where they want to take photos or videos, they can take the phone. If they need to contact us at some point for a ride or anything else, they can take the phone. This phone also does not contain social media apps of any kind.
It’s nothing more than a phone, texting, and photography device.
When not in use and not lost, this “house phone” remains in our possession.
But it’s also important to remember that nearly everyone on the planet has a phone in their pocket, so even when our kids don’t have this third phone with them, they can always contact us at any moment because everyone around them has a phone. The world is awash in phones, so all they need to do is ask to borrow a phone and call.
When I was a kid, I had to search for a payphone to call my parents. Today, nearly every human being has become a phone booth.
This system has worked well. Our kids have never been exposed to TikTok, Instagram, or any other social media platform. When they leave the house, they rarely have a cell phone in their pocket and are more than likely to be walking around with a book or a Rubik’s cube.
Honestly, they don’t mind very much. We made it clear early on that it would be a long time before they ever received a phone, thus setting the expectation early and making it consistently and abundantly clear. Both kids have also told us that they see social media’s impact on their friends and want nothing to do with it.
Charlie actually gets angry when we’re eating in a restaurant, and he sees a family of four at an adjacent table, all staring at phones.
It happens all the time.
“We’re cooked!” he’ll say, and he’s not wrong.
I’ve also had many former students—teens and college kids—visit me and talk about the negative impact of social media and constant contact with friends on their lives. Quite a few of them describe going on a “phone diet” and removing themselves entirely from social media.
I have spoken to my own students similarly. I tell them that I don’t scroll through any social media feeds and am absolutely, positively happier and more productive for it. Somewhere in the future, I will never think:
“Boy. I really missed out on a lot by not scrolling through TikTok or Instagram.”
My hope is that this new generation of young people will be like some of my former students who have seen the error of their ways. The last thing I want for them — or any human — is to spend time staring at tiny screens while life passes them by.
