What age should you get your kid a smartphone?
The Question I am probably asked most frequently pretty much wherever I go, is, what is the best age to get my child a mobile phone?
As the world becomes more screen-addicted, incredibly, the mean age a child gets a mobile phone in the UK is now 10.3, with 93% of UK pre-teens owning one by the time they hit high school (aged 11).
Over the pond, it’s as tech-bonkers with a mean age slightly higher in the USA, 11.7, but a higher proportion of kids owning a phone very young (53% of 7-year-olds own a phone in the States.) And when I say ‘mobile phone’ this is almost never an antiquated brick or flip phone to call Mum and Dad, but a full-on smartphone (the iPhone remains the most coveted phone among kids and teens) with access to the internet, their friends, and all the highs and lows of in-your-pocket technology brings including an almost instantaneous end to childhood.
Before I get accused of being a judgemental luddite, I’d like to start with the caveat that I’m well aware of the emotional and guilt capital kids and teens know and are fully prepared to use on their parents and carers when it comes to the mercenary pursuit of their first phone:
I need it for security, ‘if I don’t have one, something terrible will happen to me on the way to/home from school’ and/or ‘not having a phone singles me out as a weirdo and I won’t be included in any social events or class gossip.’ The former guilt-trip ensures they get the phone, the latter ensures it’s a smart phone, because your Nokia from 1999 sure as hell can’t keep them looped in with the latest on WhatsApp, TikTok and Snap and save them from a life of social isolation and derision a smart phone-less existence will almost certainly guarantee (so goes the argument.)
Parents will do pretty much anything to keep their kids safe and happy, and so smartphones have been weaponised extremely successfully by the manufacturers and kids alike – so far, so relatively reasonable to give a kid a phone around aged ten.
But of course, the story doesn’t end there. We have learned beyond reasonable doubt and at huge cost to Generation Z - now aged about fifteen to twenty-five - who became the kind of guinea pigs of the tech world, that exposure to smartphones particularly at a very young age when your brain is all spongy and susceptible to all kinds of nefarious influences, inflicts considerable harm. These harms can be included but not limited to (because we just don’t know yet) knackering cognitive ability, lowering concentration, lowering the quality of sleep, inhibiting social skills and desire to socialise, increasing aggression and hostility, being impossible-to-beat competition for other hobbies and interests – goodbye piano practice, hello TikTok scrolling – destroying self-esteem and of course exposure to all the less-nice parts of the internet including porn, perpetual anger and loud-mouthed nutjobs with 10 zillion followers.
When Gen Z were little people, we (well, except the tech companies and most of Silicon Valley who definitely knew) didn’t have a clue how harmful screens could be to kids and so they seemed like an ace, free-ish babysitter, but now we know for sure, this leads us with the question of why we’re still handing our little boxes of potential harm to our little ones?
Fact: an eight-year-old is exponentially more likely to come to harm online than they are in the park and yet few would let their eight-year-old take a wander down the park alone, but many are fine with letting their eight-year-old wander on YouTube alone.
The answer to this question is of course obvious. Where screens and kids are concerned, the toothpaste is out the tube, and as they all live in a world covered in screens, and of course they want part of that sweet action, and as quick as possible, right? Well, the answer to that second question, is, to many people’s surprise, not exactly.
As the new kids on the block, Generation A, (those currently about three to fourteen) learn more about smart phones, become more tech-savvy themselves and also have millennial parents who understand the damage that excessive exposure to screens at a very young age has caused, the cracks (and not just in the screens) are beginning to show. I’ve recently hosted talks with hundreds of Generation A and increasing numbers of them, about 30, sometimes 40% of the room are saying they want to make different choices and possibly not have a smartphone. Yes, they want to be connected but not in the same addicted way their older siblings and parents have become.
The more you share information with them about the impact smartphones have on their health and wellbeing, the higher this number rises.
For example, if a hypothetical 10-year-old gets a smart phone for their birthday and their screen time is the top end of that of a teenager, twenty-something, thirty-something and so on, and they live until about eighty-one, by they time they die in 2094 or so, they’ll have been on their phone or some sort of screen for 23 years. That is a mind-bending amount of time and life to have sacrificed to a screen.
When you share data and facts like this with Gen A, their antipathy to screens and phones goes up.
So, should the slow falling out of love with smartphones and the screens by Gen A be encouraged? Absolutely. No one is saying (yet!) to ban mobile phones completely, but it’s beyond doubt all of our relationship with the screen and smartphones in particular has veered into the unhealthy at best and the full-on addicted at worst, and its incumbent on all of us to encourage healthier and more manageable tech-habits in the youngest generations. So how do we do this?
Lots of kids are already voicing concerns about the addictive nature of technology and can see what it’s doing and done to their older siblings and friends – encourage and explore their concerns with them. Discuss with them the pros and cons of not getting a smartphone right away – they might well come to the conclusion themselves, there is more pro column.
Give them facts and data – an agreement not to have a smartphone, to hold of getting one or to limit access to one should never feel punitive but like they are making an empowered choice. Do they really want to lose 23 years – and everything they could do with that to a metal box.
We all know the big tech companies have commodified and made trillions of teenage and child rage and pain that comes from scrolling online – when you tell young people that, it annoys and upsets them – tell them it often.
The fact that non smart phones are called ‘dumb phones’ and look so rubbish is not accidental. Of course, Big Tech don’t want kids to be given, use, and get addicted to the sweet, sweet and very lucrative high of smartphones! Parents need to apply pressure and the best way to do this is not to buy them smartphones and demand cool-looking and acting alternatives that allow kids to be connected to their friends via WhatsApp and make calls, but doesn’t scroll online.
Model good behaviour, oldies. You might well be watching and reading this on your phone – which is allowed – but our children look to us and our behaviour and copy it. We cannot possibly ask our kids and the Gen A’ s we know to adapt better and more healthy tech habits, when we’re so damn unhealthy ourselves.
So, once you’ve subscribed to my Substack – put down your phone or your screen and go and play or chat to or go on an adventure with your kid or the little person in your life. Since the inception and immersion of the smartphone to the global general public back in 2010, we have all lost incalculable time, skills, concentration, relationships, hobbies, reading, joy, connections, beautiful sights and sounds and god knows what, to our phones. No one is saying to give up the habit entirely, but isn’t it time we took some of our power, autonomy and time back and handed our kids a better, less-addicted future and not just another screen?
This doesn’t really answer the question of what age is the right or indeed best age to get a smartphone, but hopefully it does challenge the perception that every kid must get a smartphone – and surprising numbers of Gen A are starting to ask this question independently – do I really need a smartphone, now? Let’s learn from the very real mistakes of the present and recent past and have that conversation with them – it just might result in Generation A being happier, healthier and less destined to a life addicted to the screen.