Some parents say a phone is a safety tool and banning it makes your kid an outcast. Others say we're running a giant experiment on children's brains and the results are already terrifying. What's the right call?
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Add your commentI got a phone at 9 in 2012 and I turned out completely fi— actually no, my attention span is destroyed and I've never read a full book since. Bad example. Don't do it.
I work in a middle school. The behavioural change in the last 10 years is not subtle, it's a cliff. Anxiety, attention, the inability to sit with a single boring moment. We are doing something we cannot undo.
The kids aren't the only addicts. Half the parents in this thread are typing replies while their toddler tugs their sleeve. We can't model what we don't practice.
Single mom, two jobs. My kid has a phone because it's how I know she got home safe. Spare me the lectures from people with a partner and a 9 to 5. Safety isn't a luxury opinion for some of us.
The fact that this is even a hard question tells you how far we've drifted. Asking 'should a 9 year old have unrestricted internet' and treating both sides as reasonable is itself the warning sign.
No phone before high school in our house and I will die on this hill. My kids are bored, creative, and they actually sleep. The 'they'll be left out' fear is just peer pressure aimed at parents.
as a teenager reading this: please just talk to your kids instead of surveilling us. the ones whose parents banned everything are the ones who went the wildest the second they got freedom. trust + conversation > locks
We are the last generation that remembers childhood without this. Our kids will never know what it was to be unreachable, to be bored, to daydream on a long car ride. I genuinely mourn that for them.
The 'they said it about TV' line needs to die. TV didn't have a team of PhDs optimizing it to keep your 8 year old's eyeballs glued for maximum profit. False equivalence and you know it.
give them a dumb phone. calls and texts, no internet, no apps. safety without the slot machine in their pocket. this is a solved problem and parents pretend its all or nothing
waited til 14 for my eldest, caved at 11 for my youngest because i was tired. guess which one reads for fun and which one doesnt. parenting humbles you fast
Whole countries are now banning phones in schools and seeing test scores AND playground laughter go back up. The natural experiment is running and the early results are damning.
easy to say until your kid is the only one not in the group chat and gets quietly frozen out of every birthday party and hangout. social exclusion is a real harm too, not just screens
Those limits work until they don't. Kids are smarter than your parental controls and there's a YouTube tutorial for every lock you set. Ask me how I know.
Everyone blames the phone. Nobody blames the parents who use it as a babysitter because they're exhausted and the world gave them no village. Judge the system before you judge the mom at the restaurant.
The problem was never the phone, it was the algorithmic apps. A phone is a tool. TikTok is engineered addiction. Make that distinction or this whole debate stays useless.
ok boomer energy but make it millennial. every generation thinks the new thing is ruining the kids. they said it about TV, radio, novels. relax
my 11 yo has a phone with everything locked down, screen time limits, no social media til 16. its called parenting. the device isnt the enemy, absent supervision is
Counterpoint to the teen above: 'just trust them' is how a lot of kids ended up in places no child should be online at 2am. Trust is earned and a developing brain isn't built to self-regulate a casino.
give them the phone but make them earn each app. it became a whole reward system in our house and weirdly they value their screen time more because it wasnt just handed over
Nobody mentions cost. A phone, the plan, the cracked screens. We're debating ethics while plenty of families simply can't afford to even have this argument. Perspective.
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