“She used to read books all the time. Now she never does.”

Friday, August 1, 2025

A couple of weeks ago I said the following to my 12 year-old daughter, after we found out that she is now the only one in her friend group without a smartphone: “Don’t answer this, but you know how you sometimes want to look something up on your school computer, but you know you shouldn’t because you might get in trouble… well, when you have a phone you will just look that thing up. And you will accidentally end up seeing things that you are far too young to see. And your friends are doing that right now, on their phones. And that’s changing them, and not for the better. And among the many other reasons we’ve explained, we are also trying to protect you from that.” Our daughter just finished sixth grade and has wanted a phone for a few years. We’ve made clear that we won’t be getting her one, so the pleas have ebbed and flowed over the years, with spikes each time a friend gets a phone. My wife and I have strong opinions about screens and kids, and phones especially. I’ve wanted to write publicly about our views – partly because I have some curse that makes me want to write publicly about my opinions – but also because I want people who feel similarly to know they aren’t alone. However, I’ve almost always pulled my punches. I’ve shared articles and links to Jonathon Haidt’s, Lenore Skenazy’s, and others’ work arguing that we overprotect kids in the real world and under protect them in the digital world. But I’ve not made my views clear. There is really only one reason for this – I don’t want my friends and family to feel like I’m judging them for making a choice contrary to my views. Almost everybody hates feeling like the choices they make, especially when it comes to their kids, are being judge by others. And there’s certainly plenty of justification for that, as many people are happy to judge our decisions and share their opinions, either directly or on social media. It can feel like every post or reel or TikTok is telling you to do something for your kids that you’re not doing or that something you’re doing for your kids actually hurting them. There’s plenty of noise and probably not a lot of signal, yet it comes with plenty of anxiety, self-doubt, and self-criticism nonetheless. Most parents just want to do what they think is best for their kids. However, I also believe that if you have something to say, that you believe is true, you do the world a disservice by not saying it – especially if it’s contrary to what many believe. So I’m going to say what I believe. And I will preface it with the following. I’m not passing judgment on your parenting decisions. We might be wrong and God knows that our decisions have not come without downsides, including anxiety about whether our decisions are correct (and, I’m sure, judgement from others). There is no perfect parenting approach, every kid is different, and every choice comes with trade-offs. If your choices differ from mine, it’s certainly possible that given all of the same information that you have I would make the same choice as you. ## “She used to read books all the time” Last summer I was talking with a colleague about her children and cell phones. Her kids are older than mine and she said they bought their youngest daughter a cell phone when she was in middle school and she stopped reading books. When she had free time to read, she would just get on her phone. For a long time I’d felt that putting off the cell phone purchase for my daughter was best, but this comment really struck me. Her daughter lost a love of reading almost solely because of a smartphone. She went on to encourage me to put off buying my kids a phone as long as possible. On that note, I’ve yet to talk to a parent who has said, “I wish we had gotten our kids smartphones sooner. It’s had such a positive impact on their lives and we really wasted years when they could’ve had a smartphone.” It’s almost always the opposite. Beyond parents, teachers see behavior changes in their classrooms. This year, in my school, we finally banned cell phones at all times of the day except for lunch. Like most policies, we started off the year stronger than we ended it, but for most of the year we noticed a big change. Kids talked to each other more. When they finished their work, they might play a game in class or do a puzzle. For some, they actually finished their classwork. Students seemed more positive. This culture shift came solely from limiting their phone use. Adults who pay attention see the changes in themselves. We sit in grocery store lines and pull out our phone. We lose hours each week (day?) to watching TikTok or Reels or Shorts. Sometimes we convince ourself that we check our phones to be productive - to check email or respond to messages. Of course, we sometimes accomplish things that need to be done. But if we are honest with ourselves I think we’d realize that our drive to avoid boredom at least matches our desire to be productive. Our smartphones have trained us to use them whenever we hear boredom’s footsteps coming from the back of our minds. I often think of this 5 minute clip of Louis CK’s interview with Conan O’Brien about cell phones. He explain the problems with children using them but also how they rewire adults’ minds. (On texting and driving: “People are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second.”) We recognize how smartphones rewire our brains against our will and yet we still choose to buy our children smartphones. And it’s not only parents and teachers who notice the negative impact - it’s gen Z themselves! I’ve talked to many students who have a love/hate relationship with their smartphones. They like being connected to friends, but are the first to acknowledge that they lead to bad habits, poor mental health, and sleep deprivation. The wisest among them recognize the just how profoundly those bad habits impact their lives. (Literally just last night a couple of former students who recently graduated told me “my kid isn’t getting a phone until they’re way older than I was when I got one.”) Kori Jane Spaulding, a 21-year-old poet and writer, wrote a poem called It Was The Damn Phones. It opens with the following lines: > I think our parents were right. > It was the damn phones. And later in the poem she writes: > I prided myself on sobriety, on being drunk with only propriety. I was above addiction. > A hypocritical notion. For am I not addicted to my own anxiety? > Brought on by a need for constant stimulation. A drug in our pockets. > But who can blame us? We were but children when they were given. > We didn’t know how to stop it. If I added up all the hours I spent on a screen, > existential dread and regret would creep in. So I ignore this fact by opening my phone. “But who can blame us? We were but children when they were given.” That line haunts me as a parent. Or rather, acts as a premonition of what may come if we give in to the pressure to conform and give our preteen a smartphone. (I encourage you to read the poem in its entirety or listen to her read it. ) Finally, we have experts in relevant fields developing a consensus around what was obvious to parents and teachers – among other downsides, smartphones and social media negatively impact mental health, especially for girls. ## Why do we do it? Most of the parents I know who bought their children smartphones weren’t enthusiastic about it, if only from the economics of it. You get the expense up front and now you get to pay monthly for them. Beyond that, they know that there are problems with them -it’s not a secret. Because of this they do things like swear they’re going to limit the screen time. They’re going to use parental controls. They’re going to check in and monitor their child. They’re not going to allow them in their bedrooms. And so on. They think that they can mitigate the harms while getting the benefits. It’s worth asking, what are the benefits? One that I hear all the time is that when their child needs a ride, the child can call or text them. If he or she is at a friends house or a sporting event and there is a change in plans, their child can relay that information to them. However, in our experience this presents a very minor upgrade in convenience. A child on a sports team or in a club will have an adult there who has a phone. The adult can help with communication and will almost certainly be happy to help. This argument doesn’t really hold water for me as the harms outweigh the slight increase in convenience. This is related to the most compelling argument I’m aware of, that parents will publicly acknowledge, which is that if they leave their kid(s) home alone then they can call if there is an emergency. This is a problem that my wife and I have struggled to solve. (Currently I have set up a Google Voice phone number that allows our kids to call us from an iPad. It’s not ideal because it leave them with a tablet and no supervision, which we don’t love. But it’s a decent bandage for the time being.) We will likely end up solving this problem with a pay-as-you go dumb phone. There is some cost with this, but it solves the problem and doesn’t give the child access to a smartphone. Without home phones, leaving children at home without a way to call in an emergency presents a real problem to be solved. Again, however, in our mind the harms of the smartphone outweigh the benefits. That’s sort of it. There are no doubt other conveniences like shared calendars, sending quick texts that dinner is ready when they’re locked in their bedroom, location tracking, etc. But if we’re being honest with ourselves then I think we’d admit that if none of our children’s friends had smartphones then we’d feel significantly less pressure to buy them one. Given the downsides, most of us just wouldn’t do it. But the pressure from their peers and our desire to make sure our kid isn’t left out – because of our failure to purchase them a phone – I believe drives us to put up the cash, bite the bullet, and put the internet in their pocket. We justify it with the reasons I laid out above and convince ourselves that we can manage it with the rules I laid out slightly further above. (At this point I might add that if we truly believe that we can stay ahead of efforts by the entire teenage population to avoid parental controls on smartphones then, as my twelve year-old-self would’ve told you, “gullible” is written on the ceiling.) ## You’re not alone I will drop a list of more harms caused by smartphones below, but if you’ve made it this far then you probably don’t need more convincing that we should proceed cautiously. I want to end by letting you know that if you are trying to hold of on buying your child a smartphone and keeping them off of social media, you’re not alone. It often feels like every parent we know is getting their kid a phone. Not only is that not the case, I think that most are reluctant to do it. And they’re especially reluctant to say so publicly. If everyone that was reluctant to buy their kid a phone talked to each other and agreed not to do it, then it would nerf the biggest driver of child smartphone purchases – peer pressure. If none of the kids in a child’s peer group owned a smartphone, putting it off would be much easier. I encourage you to talk to the parents of your children’s friends and let them know your views. See if they feel similarly. Maybe you can convince a few of them to hold off. We didn’t do this and it’s making it much tougher. Of course, maybe they would’ve made the purchase anyway. But I don’t think it would’ve hurt to at least try. I can’t stress this enough – there is ample anecdotal and scientific evidence of a causal relationship between smart phones and countless harms. As parents we are obligated to take that evidence seriously and make decisions accordingly. This is not simply just old people griping about “kids these days.” This isn’t “TV will rot your brain” or “video games make kids violent.” The kids are not alright but he can make decisions to help them. ## Further reading In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathon Haidt details the four foundational harms that smartphones and social media create; social deprivation, sleep deprivation, addiction, and attention fragmentation. You can read the articles he and his collaborators have written at the After Babel Substack. They go into other problems as well, like the disaster of early pornography exposure and the mass trauma it’s causing, the special place in hell for TikTok, and things you can do right now for you children, even if you already bought them a smartphone. You can get a window into his book here and listen to him make his case in this talk.

Education | Essays