Parents of younger children, are you thinking of delaying smartphone for your DC?

[CEOmum]

My child is in reception and we have signed the parent pact with Smartphone Free Childhood pledging not to introduce a smartphone to our child till age 14 or over. In recent times it seems Year 6 has been the normal year when parents buy kids a smartphone ready for secondary school.

Where we live (south London) a borough has banned smartphones from all schools and it looks like others will be following. My hope is that we can make it normalised to not provide smartphones so that those with smartphones are the outliers rather than the norm, and that the peer pressure / pressure on parents will be lessened if the majority of kids in a class / town area are all using brick phones as standard.

When I come on Mumsnet I read a lot of parents saying this is naive, that the genie is out the bottle, that you can’t control kids using the internet and we just need to reach them how to regulate and use smartphones sensibly. I think that a lot of these parents have older kids / teens already using smartphones and so they are having to justify this, and I can see it’s too difficult to take away once they’ve got used to it.

In our case (parents of younger children) I feel we’ve got a real opportunity here to change the culture and not introduce smartphones until the children (adults?) are better equipped to deal with it. I don’t think we should be asking children to manage this (the entire internet available to them anytime anywhere, social media). I understand the views that you want your child to be safe travelling to and from school etc, but brick phones can help. As can air tags - for parents who feel better tracking their child.

There are various new brick phones coming out which enable smart messaging / WhatsApp type stuff and Google maps but not unfettered access to internet browsers or social media.

I’m not naïve (am a secondary teacher) and I know the impact smartphones are having on children’s lives - among other devastating situations I’ve had to deal with a 13 yo girl in my form class being groomed by a boy into a sexual act which was filmed then shared round the whole school and online.

All the Jonathan Haidt research has convinced me that (contrary to our assumptions) our children are safer walking the street than they used to be in many ways but the real dangers are in their pockets (smartphones). He also emphasises the importance and value of a play-based childhood on appropriate risk-taking and development, which has been lost. As a starting point, we live in a cul de sac and have been encouraging our DC to play outside with other kids from the street and as they get older we will continue to do so with one or two parents taking turns to watch over allowing a bit more independence.

Anyway I was hoping to find out if there are other parents of younger children (reception aged or thereabouts) who are thinking of doing things differently? I have found a lot of naysayers on here among the parents of older children who would have you believe all hope is lost, and that 10 year olds getting smartphones are just an inevitability, but I’m not prepared to accept that.

My older DC each got smartphones for their 11th birthday in Year Six, and they were among the last kids in their class to get one. We gave them smartphones because we wanted them to be able to communicate with their friends via WhatsApp (we don't allow Snap, Insta, TikTok).

When our youngest DC turned 11, she got a smartphone too, because it seemed unfair not to, given that her siblings had them.

Despite all the restrictions we have, I hate that they have smartphones. I hate the amount of time they spend on their phones, the effect on their behaviour, the content that they are undoubtably being exposed to, via their friends' phones if not their own. I applaud you for signing up to Smartphone Free Childhood and if my eldest had been turning 11 now, I would certainly have gone for a WhatsApp-enabled dumbphone instead.

We’re aiming to hold out until our boys are 14 (aged 3 and 4 at the moment). The culture is definitely changing in our area - most parents we know with similar aged children are also saying they’ll aim for 14, and our catchment secondary school as just completely banned phone use both in and out of the classroom. They’re confiscated if they’re seen anywhere on the school grounds. Fingers crossed this is still the policy when it comes to ours moving up to secondary.

I’m really hopeful that this will be enough to safeguard them. DH and I are also not big on social media, we both only have Facebook and primarily use it for our local area’s group and for marketplace. So we’re not big phone users anyway.

We plan to hold off as long as possible, and to give them non-smart phones first (eg for walking home from school - I know we all did it without phones but in our day there were more phone boxes or if you were really stuck you could knock on someone’s door and ask to use their phone - nowadays I would be reluctant to let a random teenager into my house).

I have nieces who’ve had phones since they were 6, and now at 8 they’re on Snapchat etc, and it’s definitely not doing them any good at all.

This sounds very similar to us! Me and DH have never used Twitter, Insta, Too Tok etc. We use FB (for similar mundane reasons to you 🤣) and scroll on MN or Reddit sometimes.

But we're hoping to hold off on our son (currently 5, in reception) for as long as possible. I do worry about him being "othered" but like you say, the tide seems to be turning and there are lots of parents in our area who feel the same. I'm really hoping by the time he's heading to high school it might be more common to just have brick phones or whatever, like we did back in the day 🤣🤞

My two are 1 and 3. I don't want them to have phones until 14 or 15.

I'm hoping in another decade (or less), the attitude to kids and phones will have changed. I see nephews and nieces with phones, getting them aged 9-11, and it's awful. As is their screen time in general.

Perhaps hypocritical, as I was one of the very first in my school to have a phone, in year 8 I think, aged around 12, so in 1998 when phones were rare. And by then I didn't do much other than snake and text, I did use the home computer and Internet chat rooms an awful lot by 13.

100%. DD is 4 and in reception and as it currently stands, she won’t be getting a smartphone until she’s at secondary (and no social media for as long after that as I can manage). There are a lot of her classmates parents who are thinking along the same lines so hopefully she’ll not be the odd one out. Bullies will bully, if it’s not phone related, it’ll be something else. At least this way, she’s not in for a virtual beating 24/7.

There are a number of secondary age kids knocking round our town with a brick phone (your Nokia with snake) so they can keep in contact with parents but not be watching live beheadings or whatnot on the bus home.

My friend recently gave her 11 year old a smartphone, confidently locked it down, parental controls enabled etc. 2 weeks later, she’s coming across all sorts her DD has managed to download by circumventing the access controls. As my HV told me when DD was tiny, you don’t know what they can do until they suddenly pull the skill out of the bag.

Our eldest is 8 and he has accepted he wont be getting a smart phone until he is around 15, most of his close friends have been told the same by their parents. There is no need for them to be on any kind of social media any younger than that.

I think you are in a strong position as I really do feel by then the tide will have turned. Our son is 11 and we still feel in the minority (although the his soon to be secondary has a smartphonefree WhatsApp, it’s still quite small). Schools are slowly listening and I’m so pleased everyone is talking about Adolescence - it’s really helped.

My eldest is year 5 and the ONLY one of her friends not to have a smartphone! It's ridiculous. I do believe times will change and they won't be everywhere in years to come. The girls seem to be more into phones than the boys in her year.

Ours our 6 and 4 and I’m really hoping to hold off on smartphones for as long as possible (at least mid-way through secondary). I don’t mind them having basic brick phones at 10/11 for going to the park, walking to school etc.

Eldest is autistic and I do really worry about how vulnerable he will be to radicalisation and the more extreme stuff on the internet frankly. I grew up in the era where we all had completely unchecked access to the internet because no one had quite caught on to how fucked it could be and it definitely damaged me. I don’t want that for either of them.

Delaying it as long as possible

Mine are 6 and 2. We have CBeebies aplenty but no tablets and they’re not allowed on our phones. When they head off to secondary school they will be allowed a Nokia style dumb phone, and we will buy some kind of computer for homework and browsing which will be kept in a communal area. No screens in bedrooms.

I acknowledge this may seem very old fashioned to some but I would much rather be OTT with this than too lax.

Oh god OP, I’m so with you. My 3.5 year old said to me the other day when I was looking something up on my phone ‘oh I wish I had a phone’ and it horrified me. That, along with various things I’ve read and seen recently, has led me to decide I’m getting myself a dumb phone this payday and leaving the bloody iPhone at my mums, breaking my own fucking habits on the thing and showing him they are not necessary. I’m beginning to hate it (she says typing away on MN on her phone!)

I didn’t know there was a pledge and I will go looking for it now. I’m desperately hoping there will be a sea change by the time he is old enough for it to be a problem.

But I do also think it’s a problem for everyone. I was on the bus the other day and there was a baby on there - maybe a year - in her buggy and her dad was with her. Looked like he’d picked her up from nursery. She was babbling away to him loudly as babies do, looking up at him, and he was telling her to sshhhh whilst glued to his phone. It broke my heart.

I think smartphones might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to humanity. I really do.

My eldest (now 14) got a smartphone at 10 and I now consider that one of our biggest parenting regrets really. Although we're fairly strict with it, no tiktok ot snapchat, it turns off at 9pm.

My 11yo just has a basic nokia, and my 7yo nothing. We've explained to them we won't be getting them smartphones until at least 14.

Ours are 7, 9 and 10 and no phone yet.

Oldest will get a dumb phone at 11

I’m in an interesting position as I have a 24 year old DD and a 3 year old DD. When DD1 was at primary school, tablets and smartphones weren’t really invented. DD1 had a basic phone for walking to school and then her first iPhone was when she was about 16 I think. But social media wasn’t so much of a thing a decade ago and DD1 never spent that much time on her phone (still doesn’t). We have also never had a tablet in the house as I don’t see the point in them.

For DD2, there is no way that she will be having a smart phone until at least 16. She doesn’t have a tablet at home and again - I don’t want her to have one as my goddaughter is glued to hers and I think they’re awful. I have been looking to try and find primary schools that don’t use tablets or apps at all (and so far unfortunately, most seem to rely now on technology). I’d be happy to have a family PC with parental controls that DD2 could use for school in due course, but I absolutely don’t want anything beyond that. I’d love a school with no screens apart from IT lessons, but they don’t seem to exist.

Smartphones have no inherent benefits for 11 year olds. The only reason people really get them is because otherwise they'll be left out. It's like giving your kid cigarettes because all the other kids are smoking, but I think a lot of parents are naive to the harms unfortunately (as we were about the harms of smoking in the 1950s).

My son needs a bus app on his phone to get to school, when he's at school the tasks are set on the iPad, when he's at home all his homework is on an app, and when things like the boiler breaks they switch to online learning...

People get them for secondary school children as the schools really rely on apps.
My son has his timetable on an app, his dinner money on an app, about 4 different homework apps.
Realistically parents have to get a phone or an ipad. And a phone makes more sense as it tends to be cheaper, easier to carry around, can make calls.

Yes. Definitely no smartphone at primary school. We'll have to see what the situation is when she starts secondary (I wouldn't want to ruin her social life if all the other kids have smartphones and she doesn't) but my current plan is that she will get minimal apps, and the phone will be officially ours (i.e. her parents') so we'll have full access and she won't be allowed to use it in her room.

We've also delayed her reception start (she's summer born). It was for lots of reasons but the fact that she'll be older when she gets a smartphone is definitely a big bonus.

I have a just turned 10 year old and 2 years ago we bought her an old iPod touch. This was bought at the time for playing music primarily. It does have the ability to message people with an iPhone when it is connected to the internet.
DD currently has 4 friends she can message on there and that’s it. We consider this practice at the moment. We know the children’s parents well so any problems will be addressed easily.
I don’t plan on giving her a smartphone any time soon. Lots of her friends have them already. She hardly uses the iPod to message to be fair. Mainly for music when we leave the house and it’s not connected to the internet then so she can’t message anyway.
I am going to look in to the brick type phones for her. She is my eldest so I don’t want to get sucked it and then have to do the same for the others.

Many sentiments above echo my own. Got 4 and 2 yr old currently. Holding off as long as we can for any kind of devices (apart from normal TV which is sometimes on a lot!!) On a podcast recently and expert says about starting early eg from this age that screens aren't in their bedrooms so that's just the rule and they know it from day dot rather than when they have tablet aged X or a phone aged y.
Any other rules or pointers anyone heard to use with little ones to build norms ?

No smartphones at all.

.My children are all grown up.

Once they got a job and we're over 18 they got their own.

I certainly didn't want to encourage it.

I have 3 DCs aged 9, 13 and 15. None of them have a phone. Eldest is currently in her GCSE year and will be getting one once she finishes her exams - she is predicted top grades.

We made the conscious decision not to give them phones until they actually really needed them. I do all the school drop offs and pick ups and their schools are fairly local.

Eldest said there is only 1 other child in her year that doesn't have a phone. When elsedt DC first started high school she did ask for one a few times due to peer pressure but I explained my reasoning for not giving her one and she understood. Now she tells me she's glad she's not got one because her friends waste too much time on theirs.

Eldest does contact her friends via my phone when she needs to and does have access to a laptop so it's not like she's missed out completely. She's just not got access to any social media.

DS 13 doesn't really ask for one at all because he does online gaming with his friends and so chats to his friends online via that.

I did feel really awful at first for not getting them phones when most of their friends got one but I am so glad I've waited. I don't think it's done my DC any harm and they do spend a lot of their free time doing useful things like cooking, baking and crafts etc. We also spend a lot of time together as a family.

My eldest is 11. We have decided he can have a brick phone for secondary but no smartphone. I especially don’t what him having WhatsApp. It is not just the internet/socials. I don’t want him glued to a screen 24/7 like my nephew is.