Kids, Smartphones, & Social Media: May 2024 Guide
A roundup of resources for parents and caregivers—and an invitation to take collective action to protect our kids
As longtime readers of this Substack know, I’m the founder of a platform called Screen/Life Balance and the author of a book called How to Break Up With Your Phone. I have spent nearly a decade researching and writing about our relationships with technology — and how we can improve them.
In the years since How to Break Up With Your Phone was published, I’ve had the opportunity to share my work with outlets and audiences including The New York Times, NPR, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Guardian, The Independent, Jon Favreau, Sanjay Gupta, Oprah Winfrey, and the Surgeon General of the United States, among others. I’ve spoken to audiences from all sorts of industries, from tech to finance to education to government — and as many of my new readers know, I was the coach for The Guardian’s “Reclaim Your Brain” email series, which was designed to help people redesign their relationships with their phones (and which, with more than 140k sign-ups in its first two months, has become their fastest-growing email newsletter ever).
Most importantly, I’ve also had the privilege of hearing directly from thousands of readers about the negative effects that technology has had on them, and how “breaking up” with their phones—and creating new, healthier relationships with their devices—has positively affected their lives.
My point is that I have an unusual (and unusually personal) perspective both on the impact that technology has had on us, and on the positive changes that result when people create better boundaries with their devices.
How to Break Up With Your Phone was technically meant for adults (or, at least, teenagers on up). But as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve recently turned my attention to kids and technology—in large part because my own daughter is finishing up 3rd grade and is about to go into a combined class of 4th and 5th graders.
In hopes of igniting a cultural shift, I gave a presentation at my daughter’s school last week about why I think we need to join together as parents to rethink our approach to technology, and delay the age at which we give our children access to smartphones and social media.
This post is my attempt to share what I’ve learned.
It contains video and audio recordings of the event, a downloadable version of the slide deck, a link to suggested guidelines, some suggested frameworks for how to make decisions, and some resources that I personally have found helpful.
Please feel free to share this post or any of the resources with anyone you think might find them helpful (and/or bookmark it for your own reference later). This is a collective action problem, and if we’re going to solve it, we need to work together.
To scrolling less, living more, and being the change-makers that our children need,
Catherine Price, founder of Screen/Life Balance and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone
Note: so far, this is all entirely a labor of love and has taken nearly a month of full-time, unpaid work. I truly do want you to share this as widely as possible, but if you’re able to become a paid subscriber, I would greatly appreciate your financial support.
Video of the Talk
As you can see from the slide behind me in this still, I felt the need to provide an emotional roadmap to the audience. We started at a state of vague discomfort and feelings of powerlessness. Then I escorted everyone into a deep pit of existential despair, as I talked about some of the risks and threats our children face online. (Warning: this part is graphic and upsetting.)
But — I promise this is true! — we ended on a note of optimism and empowerment, with concrete suggestions and a proposed plan.
Slide Deck
If you’d prefer, you can also get a sense of the presentation by reading through the slide deck and notes (this contains a few bonus slides that I didn’t have time for in the talk itself).
It’s a large file (because I embedded the videos) — so you’ll need to download it!
I put a ton of links into the notes in the slide deck, so if you don’t see something that I talked about linked to from this page, it’s likely in the slides
Listen to the Talk:
If you’d prefer to listen to the talk podcast-style, you can do here. (It should also be available via the How to Feel Alive podcast feed, so that you can listen to it on your favorite podcast platform.)
Guidelines for Kids & Screens (Google Doc)
Here are some of my suggestions for how to handle kids and screens at home (whether we’re talking about smartphones or other devices, such as iPads, tablets, Kindles & eReaders, laptops, televisions, or any other devices you may have). These are designed to be useful regardless of whether or not your child has their own smartphone.
I will also paste these at the end of this post if you’d prefer to read them here.
FAQs, Resources, and Suggestions:
What age is right for social media and smartphones?
This is an active area of debate, but I know of literally no expert who would recommend giving a child a smartphone or social media account before high school, if not later—and I personally believe that we should delay both for as long as possible. (After all, as the US Surgeon General has pointed out, social media in particular has not been proven to be safe and, as he puts it, “there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health.”)
At the very least, I recommend following the guidelines from
, author of The Anxious Generation and the Substack, and delay social media until at least 16, and smartphones until at least high school.Note that if/when you do give your child a smartphone, you will likely want to subscribe to a 3rd party internet safety or parental control plan to block social media and prevent unfettered access to the internet, including porn — I’ve included some links below.
But for those of you who are interested in going further, here’s a radical idea: what if we didn’t buy our kids smartphones at all, but instead waited till they were able to pay for them (and their data plans) themselves? I know that may sound dramatic — but who says that we owe our kids thousand-dollar phones at any age? And also, imagine what other life lessons (and skills, and work experience, and opportunities to choose their own priorities) your child might gain if they had to earn their own device.
I’ll also point out that this approach might automatically raise the age to 18 because, as Melanie Hempe, the founder of ScreenStrong and author of the Be ScreenStrong Substack, points out, 18 is the minimum age at which you can legally sign a contract with a cell service provider.
Note that I’m not saying that you shouldn’t get your child a phone at all — I’m just talking about “smart”phones. There are plenty of smartphone alternatives that are much cheaper than iPhones and Androids, and provide many of the benefits of smartphones without many of the risks—keep reading to learn more.
Quick Decision-Making Tool:
Regardless of what you think of that idea, if you’re trying to decide whether to give your child a smartphone, my personal suggestion is to ask yourself:
Are you ready for your child to have access to the entire internet?
Are you ready for the entire internet to have access to your child?
If your answer to either question is “no,” then consider a smartphone alternative. (See below.)
The Challenges of Collective Action Problems
No one wants their kid to feel left out — that’s one of the main reasons (if not THE main reason) that so many parents give their kids smartphones or social media accounts at such young ages. This is because, as
, author of The Anxious Generation, points out, it’s a collective action problem:Individuals’ decisions affect the collective. If I want to get drunk, that’s my business and probably won’t affect other people. If I want to get drunk and drive a car, on the other hand, my individual decision will affect other people. That’s what’s happening with smartphones, social media and kids: if your child(ren) have smartphones or social media, then it does affect other people’s children. And if other people’s children have smartphones and social media, then it’s going to affect your kids.
It’s hard to be a first mover. Until enough people take action and agree to delay the age at which their kids get smartphones and social media, there may indeed be a social cost for you or your child (in the form of feeling left out). But the good news is that we’re nearing a tipping point (the black line in the graph below), where enough people have decided to be change-makers that the benefits of taking action outweigh the potential costs.
So I encourage you: do it! Be a change-maker! Not only will it help your individual child(ren), but it will make it easier for others to jump on board.
Sample Community Pledge
The solution to a collective action problem is to . . . take action collectively. One way to do so is to start a pledge at your child’s school (or amongst your friends) in which parents agree to delay the age at which they give their children smartphones or social media.
I’ve started one at my child’s school (which is K-8 — for British readers, 8th grade ends when kids are roughly 14) that simply says, “I/we pledge that we will not give our child(ren) smartphones or social media while they are enrolled at this school.” (I think they should be delayed further, but given that the school ends after 8th grade, this seemed like a good starting place/low-hanging fruit.)
You can easily create something similar (with your own proposed ages/grades) simply by creating a Google sheet or doc with a tab or section for each grade at the school. So far, at least a half dozen other families have signed on in my daughter’s grade alone — and it’s amazing what a sense of solidarity seeing their names gives me. Which brings me to the reasons it’s important to make this a public pledge. Doing so will:
Make you feel less alone
Signal to other parents that they have support
Signal to the school that parents want support
Encourage other parents who might be on the fence
Help us stick to our own intentions (i.e. you can say to your kid, “I know you want a smartphone, but I signed a pledge with other families and I can’t let the other parents down”)
Help us defend ourselves to our children (i.e. use it as proof that no, not everyone has a phone!)
An Argument for Common Sense
I’ve been very surprised to see some of the pushback against Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. A number of people seem to believe that he overstates the evidence about whether there is a causal relationship between the advent of smartphones and social media, and the decline in youth mental health. (With that said, it’s also a #1 bestseller — so apparently a lot of parents believe that these things have negative effects — and want help!)
Personally, I believe that by this point, we have more than enough evidence to take action (read this post from After Babel for more details — and also, Jon and Jean Twenge—author of
—have posted an open source Google doc with a collection of the studies, sorted and evaluated by type, so that people can make judgments for themselves).But I also think this obsession with the nuances of specific studies—many of which are deeply flawed—misses the forest for the trees. Now, mind you, I’m a health and science journalist by background, I host a medical podcast for NewYork Presbyterian Hospital. I have Type 1 diabetes, and prior to writing How to Break Up With Your Phone, I spent more than three years writing a book (Vitamania) about the history of vitamins and supplements, in which I came down hard on the supplement industry — and concluded that it is totally nuts for us to take dietary supplements unless there is evidence, ideally from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), that they are effective and safe (which in most cases, spoiler alert, there is not). In other words, I care a lot about scientific evidence and randomized, controlled trials!
But this is a different situation. As I point out in my talk, I think that instead of debating the details of specific studies (or waiting for THE definitive RCT to be done — which, as a side note, it never will be, because at this point, the fact that we even suspect that these things might be harmful would mean that randomizing people to a smartphone/social media group would be unethical), we should make our decisions based on our values and what we know for sure. This includes the following:
We’re in the midst of a youth mental health crisis (and it’s international)
Technology has changed dramatically since 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced
Smartphones and apps are truly different from any technology that has come before. For example, they fit in our pockets, their feeds are personalized, and, as Tristan Harris (founder of the Center for Humane Technology and a former Google engineer) has pointed out, the companies behind our most popular and time-sucking apps have literally thousands of engineers working full-time on figuring out how to get us to spend as much time on their products as possible — which was not true for our televisions or landline telephones.
Many adults don’t feel great about their own relationships with their smartphones and apps. (Think about your own relationship: are you killing it? Me, neither — and I literally wrote the book!) I have heard from thousands of people who are convinced that their relationships with their smartphones are having horrible effects on their attention spans, memories, sleep and human relationships—and yet feel unable to change their habits. In fact, 57% of Americans consider themselves “addicted” (their word) to their phones.
The opportunity costs are enormous. Time is zero sum, which means that when we spend our time on one thing, we by definition cannot spend it on something else. 62 percent of people ages 18-29 report being online “almost constantly,” and American teens report spending about 4.8 hours per day on social media alone. Even at just four hours per day, that adds up to 60 full days per year — a quarter of our waking lives.
The time we spend on our devices is changing our brains. But don’t take my word for it. Watch this short clip from Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook (his job was to get more users onto the platform), who puts it bluntly: we are being programmed. (Warning: he drops the f-bomb in this video.)
Technology changes all of our brains, but children’s brains are particularly vulnerable. This is true for anything we do repeatedly, for long periods of time. And the brains of early adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the effects of technology, because they’re in a period of such rapid change. As the American Psychiatric Association points out, ““Children and adolescents may be particularly vulnerable to technological addiction because their brains are still developing.”
We know what’s good for our kids’ mental and physical health — and smartphones and apps do not encourage it! Think, for example, of some of the things we know are important for our mental and physical health, such as time outside, physical activity, healthy relationships, adequate sleep, trusted role models, low stress levels, and kindness. How many of these things do you think are helped or encouraged by the things we do on our phones?
We know that smartphones are what Jonathan Haidt calls “experience blockers”: when we look down at our phones, we miss out on everything else going on around us. This means fewer experiences, fewer memories, fewer conversations, fewer skills, and fewer human interactions—for kids in particular, this means less practice navigating social dynamics and, if I’m being poignant about it (which I always am), less of a chance to experience childhood. (Did you know that childhood is fleeting? It’s fleeting.)
We know what the companies say about their own products. Why are we so fixated on academic studies when we have evidence from the companies themselves demonstrating that they know their products have negative effects? Once I started paying attention to what they were saying, it became very difficult for me to imagine ever giving my daughter access to their products.
See, for example, this series of investigative articles from the Wall Street Journal based on a trove of internal documents known as The Facebook Files, provided by whistleblower Frances Haugen, or this report on TikTok from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, or this account from Arturo Bejar, former Facebook employee, about the sexual harassment of teens on Instagram, or this longer video clip of Chamath Palihapitiya and Sean Parker (the former VP of user growth at Facebook and its former president, respectively), talking about the effects of the platforms that they helped to create.
As a teaser, here’s a short clip from Sean Parker’s part:You can see the full clip here.
We know that many tech execs don’t let their own children use the platforms and products that they create (that’s a link to an old article about Steve Jobs, but there are many more examples)
We know our own values — for example, I’m going to bet that you want your children to believe in and express (and experience) kindness, empathy, tolerance, honesty, compassion, and self-confidence, among other values. And I’m going to bet that if you stopped to think about it, you’d agree that these are not the values that most of our interactions on our phones and social media support.
Put this together, and I suggest that we reframe our questions.
Instead of obsessing over whether a causal negative relationship has been proven between smartphones, social media, and youth mental health, we should instead be asking:
What, if any, evidence is there that smartphones and social media have positive effects on youth mental health — especially when compared to other uses of their time (such as engaging in real-life hobbies and interests, or hanging out with friends in person)?
And
What’s the potential harm if we do decide to delay our children’s access to smartphones and social media — especially compared to the potential harm if we don’t?
In other words:
Instead of asking what our children will miss out on if we don’t get them smartphones and social media, we should be asking what they will miss out on if we do.
My personal conclusion is that there is no solid evidence that these platforms and products are safe, or that they have an overall positive effect on youth mental health compared to other uses of children’s time. The potential harm that can come from using them far outweighs the risk of not using them.
Therefore, just as I would never give my child a pharmaceutical drug that had not been tested for safety or efficacy — let alone one that was associated with so many potential negative side effects—I do not intend to give my daughter access to a smartphone or social media.
Resources and Solutions
Now that I, at least, am all worked up, here are some concrete resources to help you and your family.
What to do if your kid already has a phone
First of all, if you’re starting to feel like maybe this wasn’t the greatest parenting decision you’ve ever made, please do not beat yourself up. Of course you would never consciously make a decision that would negatively affect your kids! Parenting is hard under the best of circumstances, and when it comes to technology, we are in the middle of a giant, society-wide course correction. This is going to be awkward and uncomfortable, and it’s essential that you not beat yourself up.
Second, if you agree with the argument I’m making in this post, it’s okay to admit to your child(ren) that we adults have made a mistake. We didn’t realize the potential risks and harms of these platforms and products — and it’s our job to keep our children safe. That means that it’s okay to take your child’s smartphone back. (Did they pay for it?) I know that’s a radical suggestion, but it is a possibility — and I’ve heard from numerous parents who have told me that while it caused a lot of conflict at first, the results were ultimately positive (and their children were begrudgingly grateful). This will, of course, be a lot easier if you enlist other parents to do it with you.
If this seems too radical, at the very least invest in one of the family protection plans I mention below, and follow the guidelines I lay out in the google doc.
And no matter what you decide, TALK TO YOUR KIDS about these issues! Educate them, in whatever way is age-appropriate, about some of the risks, threats, and opportunity costs of spending time on social media and smartphones. My personal dream is that we’ll eventually reach a state where kids themselves don’t want smartphones or social media because they’ll recognize that the business models of these companies essentially boil down to stealing our lives from us, right under our noses.
Online Safety / Parental Control Plans:
These are plans, offered by independent companies and cell/internet service providers, that have much more robust safety features and parental controls than the native options on iPhones/Androids.
I recommend looking into these if your kids have any type of interaction with the internet, regardless of whether your child has a full-on smartphone. Among other things, they allow you to block particular sites (and categories of sites) across devices, and to set access schedules (so that, for example, you can protect your children’s homework time and prevent them from scrolling at night).
When Your Children Are Young, Get a “Family Loaner Phone”
When your kid is young and is mostly communicating with YOU (and has started doing things like going to playdates or sports practices on their own) you could get a basic family loaner phone that doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. You simply loan it out as needed (e.g. when your kid has sports practice and is going to need to be picked up), and then your kid returns it when they’re done. This could be a flip phone, or an old iPhone that’s been “bricked” (see the gadget that I link to later in this post).
Smartphone Alternatives:
When you decide your child is ready for a phone of their own, don’t jump directly to a full-on smartphone. Instead, consider one of these devices, which range from simple watches that basically only allow phone calls and short text messages, to Android phones with special operating systems that allow varying degrees of freedom and independence (none of them allow kids to download social media apps). You can think of these alternatives as being like “training wheels” for the internet.
For a detailed overview, please see my Choose Your Own Adventure Guide to Smartphone Alternatives, in which I describe each of these smartphone alternatives in detail.
If you just want the names, here’s a list of the ones I know of. (I’ve reached out directly to some of these companies to get discount codes and affiliate links when possible, as you’ll see, but please note that I’m personally agnostic about these options — they’re all better than smartphones!)
Gabb Wireless Watch (use code CATHERINEPRICE for a free month of service)
Gabb Wireless Phone (use code CATHERINEPRICE for a free month of service)
Gizmo Watch (Verizon)
Pinwheel Phone (use code SCREENLIFEBALANCE for 10% off a Pinwheel Pack)
Tello (service provider for Alcatel — they have a “pay as you go” plan that’s great for family “loaner” phones)
Troomi Phone (use code CATHERINEPRICE for $50 off)
Useful Gadget to Lock Down Your Child’s (Or Your Own) Phone
The Brick
(use code SCREENLIFEBALANCE10 for 10% off)
This is a cool gadget that allows you to block all apps on your phone except for the ones you choose to allow — which is great if, say, you want your kid to only be able to use a phone to listen to podcasts or audio books, or if you want to take a break from your own phone for a while!
Parental Control Guides:
If your child is going to have any internet access, then you need to take the time to adjust parental controls. It’s confusing and a total pain, but you simply must. End stop.
Watch the “risks and threats” part of my presentation if you want to know some of the reasons why this is essential — or you can start by watching this PSA from the FBI about sextortion and video games:
These are a few guides to parental controls that I found — if you know of more, please tell me about them in the comments. It takes a village!
Comcast Parental Control Guide for XFinity
Common Sense Media Guide to Parental Controls (a bit out-of-date but still useful)
Common Sense Media’s Parent Resource Page
Books, Articles & Sites:
Here are some additional resources I’ve found useful.
Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (website with information on his book, plus a ton of useful resources)
Jonathan Haidt’s “After Babel” Substack Newsletter
After Babel post looking into the evidence on social media and mental health of teen girls (with links to open source collection of research studies)
Atlantic article summarizing The Anxious Generation
ScreenStrong — an organization started by the mother of a former video game-addict that has very helpful, evidence-backed information about screentime and children’s brain development
Video of the former president and former VP of user growth at Facebook talking about the effects of the platforms that they helped to create
WSJ video expose on how TikTok’s algorithms lead users into rabbit holes
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s official advisory about social media and youth mental health
The American Academy of Pediatrics teamed up with AT&T to produce this surprisingly helpful questionnaire that can help you determine whether your kid is ready for a phone. (I say “surprisingly” because it was funded in part by a phone company — but it really does ask good questions.)
The American Academy of Pediatrics also has a tool that you can use to create a customized plan for your family.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also has a really useful Social Media and Youth Mental Health Q&A Portal
And, lastly, here is a pasted-in version of my
Recommended Screen and Device Guidelines for Families:
(Also available as a shareable/printable Google doc)
Note: these can apply to any device, not just smartphones
Keep screens in public places in your house (no bedrooms)
The bigger the screen, the better
It seems highly unlikely that you would find your child watching pornography on your living room television set.
Create a central charging station for devices (not in a bedroom)—consider doing this for everyone’s devices (grown-ups, too!)
Give devices a “bedtime” that is at least one hour before the humans’ bedtimes (to help everyone’s bodies wind down for sleep, and to avoid the stimulating effects of blue light before bed)
Create schedules for internet access – this is a great way to prevent kids from getting distracted during homework. You can do this by simply designating an area for devices that’s not near where homework is happening — or you can use a family control plan (see below) to actually set schedules for when certain websites and apps are (and are not) accessible.
Create “No-Phone Zones” (kind of like the Quiet Car on Amtrak). In addition to bedrooms, I recommend the dining room table.
For eReaders, the more basic, the better
The paperwhite kids’ Kindle is a great option
Communicate your family policies to other families
For example, let them know ahead of time that you don’t allow phones on playdates at your house, or screens in bedrooms. (The more often we have these conversations, the less awkward they will feel!)
Catherine, this presentation (the YouTube watch and this written rundown) is one of the most insightful, comprehensive, and thoughtful presentations of info on this I've seen all year and I've been researching this a lot since spring 2023. THANK YOU!!!!! I've sent it to anyone who might listen/watch.
Hi Catherine, I am so grateful for all of these resources and the time and energy you've poured into it. I am currently working with a small but growing group of parents to turn our small school district phone free and we're wanting to engage the community in the conversation to increase buy in and support, so your presentation could be the perfect addition to engage folks in the conversation! We've just begun engaging with YONDR and they seem to provide ample resources as well. Thank you for all you are doing to create a more sane and safe world!