What Is The Best Age To Buy Your Child A Smartphone?

The Evidence Isn’t Clear But Two Simple Questions May Help You Make A Better Decision.

Afew years ago at SXSW, I joined my fellow festival attendees on the sidewalks of downtown Austin, Texas. As we walked past historic sites like Austin City Limits and the Alamo theater, we were all looking at one thing…our phones. In addition to the app that helped us understand what was happening where, festival attendees were tweeting with abundance and Instagram was blowing up!

When I looked up to check a street sign, I caught a glimpse of a rainbow in the sky. In my life, rainbows are a rare occurrence, and this was a sight to see! But as I looked around to share this experience with my fellow festival goers, I saw that no one else was seeing it. Everyone else was hunched over, looking down at their phone.

You know that feeling you have when you catch yourself so immersed in your phone that you miss something that happened in real life? For me, it’s a feeling of remorse, guilt and loss.

That feeling is magnified for many of us when, as parents, we witness the exact same behavior by our children.

We had delayed giving our oldest daughter a smart phone until she turned twelve. We hoped to wait longer, even though the pressure to get her a smartphone came from all sides, and was relentless. Pressure from our daughter, of course, but also from my friends, who were puzzled. “She’s a good kid. Why not get her a smartphone?”

When she returned from a sleepover with her closest friends, dejected instead of elated because “I was the only one who without a phone to look at so I just went to sleep,” my husband and I grieved that the days of staying up late to play light as a feather stiff as a board were over…and we decided that we didn’t want to “punish” our daughter anymore by having her be the only kid in her grade without a smartphone.

My youngest daughter is only nine, but in a year she will hit the lifestyle milestone of being a New Yorker able to walk places by herself. I will want to be able to contact her when she is walking around and I will want her to be able to reach me. A few of her friends already have smartphones. The pressure is beginning to mount.

What Will We Do?

For perspective, I work at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest health foundation in the country. There, I lead a team charged with the task of detecting emerging cultural, scientific, sociological and technological trends, and identifying opportunities for those trends to promote better health for all Americans.

We are not anti-technology. In fact, my foundation has a long history of championing technology — even smartphones — for better health. We appreciate that technology is not inherently good or evil, but — as is the case of seat belts in cars and helmets on bikes — we often need to employ certain protections for our children.

When it comes to smartphones, it’s still unclear what protections, if any, we might need to employ. It has been ten years since the iPhone’s release, but the research in this area, while growing, is still nascent.

If you click on these recent studies, you’ll get the sense that it’s not looking good for our kids: Smartphones are at best compulsive, at worst addictive. Smartphones may increase risk for anxiety and depression. Smartphones are an academic distraction. Smartphones impair sleep. Smartphones are a constant source of tension in the home.

While they certainly point in one direction, as a researcher, I am not comfortable claiming that the findings of the studies done to date produce conclusive evidence about the impact of cell phone use on kids.

I don’t know how smartphones may be impacting our children’s health.

I do know that I don’t want my daughter spending time on her phone at slumber parties. I want her focused on school work, not distracted by her smartphone.

I want my daughter to chit chat with her siblings after school instead of texting with her friends. I want her looking up and around when she is out of doors.

I don’t want my daughter to miss seeing any rainbows.

Wait Until Eighth

I accept the social pressures that are paramount to children at this age. And, of course, I share every parent’s desire to make their children happy. I also often have to put my child’s long-term health over their desired short-term happiness (If I didn’t, we’d have ice cream for dinner every night).

So this time, my husband and I are making the call to wait longer. More specifically, we are choosing to sign the pledge put forth by an organization called Wait Until Eighth. It is a group based in Austin (the host city for the SXSW festival) that provides social support for children of parents who want to wait a little longer before taking the smartphone plunge.

By signing this pledge, I will be promising not to give my child a smartphone (flip phones are ok) until at least 8th grade — as long as at least 10 families from my child’s grade and school take the same pledge. By asking parents from the same school to come together around the pledge it creates the social support for both parents and children that research shows is so important in keeping commitments.

If I wait until my second daughter is in eighth grade, it will mean she gets a smartphone a whole year after her older sister. My hope is that, because she will have at least nine of her classmates also waiting, it will actually be easier, not harder, for her to postpone this milestone.

Two Simple Questions

I cannot tell you, on behalf of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that delaying smartphone use will be good for your child’s health before the evidence is solid. I definitely don’t want to suggest that my peers in my community have made the wrong choice.

But I do want to urge those of you who still haven’t given your child a smartphone to consider two questions that might help you figure out where you stand on this issue.

I encountered these questions in a book by the futurist Kevin Kelly, who likes to look to the Amish for inspiration. Contrary to popular belief, the Amish are not anti-technology. Instead, they have a simple process of determining if, when, and how technologies are introduced in their community. It involves answering two questions:

• Is this good for my family?
• Is this good for my community?

If your answer is yes to both questions, you have your reasons and should feel comfortable with them. The last thing we need is more parents judging each other. If your answer is no, then you may want to talk with other parents about taking the Wait Until Eighth pledge.

Still unsure? Keep asking questions and collecting your own evidence. If you don’t, before you know it, the decision will be made for you.