Is it a smart move to ditch the ‘smart’ phone?
“What’s in a name?”, asked Juliet, despairing of the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. A lot, actually. Charlie Brooker renamed the smartphone the ‘black mirror’ in his Netflix series of the same name, referring to the ominous reflection one sees once the device is turned off, forcing an individual to confront the reality of how long they’ve been staring at a screen.
If the name seems a little bleak, consider this question: if societal pressures were absent and you were given other options for keeping in touch with your child, do you think it is a smart move to give an 11-year-old a smartphone? Given that 97% of 12-year-olds in Britain owning a smartphone, no one would blame you if your immediate answer wasn’t no.
It may feel like an impossible task to go against the tide, but the tide is well and truly turning. In 2024, 77% of parents of primary age children back a ban on smartphones for under-16s, 83% of parents say that smartphones are harmful to children, and 96% of people think the minimum age for social media should be 16 rather than 14. And the tide is turning for good reason.
In 2010, the public didn’t know smartphones and social media had so many harmful effects, but the tech leaders clearly had an inkling that smart tech wasn’t conducive to producing smart kids. As early as 2012, Steve Jobs admitted: “we don’t allow the iPad in the home, we think it is too dangerous.” Founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, only allowed his seven-year-old 1.5 hours of screen time a week. Bill Gates didn’t allow his four children to have smartphones until they were 14 and the founder of The Waldorf, the most sought-after school in Silicon Valley, stated, “tech leaders send their children to the school because keeping them away from tech cultivates the attributes they like to see among their staff – creative thinking, resourcefulness and perseverance.”
When you stop to consider what a smartphone actually is, is it really surprising that those in the know restricted its use by their own children? Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention, reminds us that smartphones are not really smart tools, but devices designed to “hack and invade our attention”. In the ‘attention economy’, the longer Instagram or TikTok can keep you on their site, the more data they can gather and the more targeted adverts they can put in front of you.
With the average 8–12-year-old spending up to 5 hours per day on devices, a plethora of new words have arisen to expose our smartphone obsessions. In 2015, the Youth Word of The Year in Germany was Smombie, a reference to smartphone users who stagger around like zombies, oblivious to the risks around them. Parents understandably worry about children making their own way home from school but I, personally, would be less worried about my child if they didn’t have a smartphone zapping their attention at road crossings.
In contrast to 2010, by 2024, the evidence against smartphones for children has become overwhelming. In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt points to a litany of shocking statistics: between 2010 and 2024, major depression among teens went up by 145% among girls and 161% among boys, self-harm incidents in 13–16-year-olds increased by 78% for girls and 134% for boys, and suicides among 10–14-year-olds increased by 134% for girls and 109% for boys.
Haidt urges us to take that last statistic on female suicides and cross-reference it with tech developments in case you think the link isn’t there: the oldest members of Gen Z began puberty around 2009 which coincided with the spread of high-speed broadband, the arrival of the iPhone, and the ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ buttons. The trend of increasingly posting images of oneself after smartphones got front-facing cameras (2010) and Facebook acquired Instagram (2012) greatly expanded the number of adolescents posting carefully curated photos for peers and strangers to judge. It’s not just the toxic conditions of social media that are contributing to this mental health crisis amongst teenagers; Haidt aptly names smartphones ‘experience blockers’. Since the daily average time spent with friends down by 65%, an experience blocker, rather than a smartphone, feels a much more genuine name.
Black mirrors, smombies, experience blockers. Smartphones no longer seem so smart to me. But what can parents do in a world in which the government is not doing enough, and tech companies are trying to keep children hooked? Haidt has four suggestions: no smartphones before 14, no social media before 16, phone free schools, and more outdoor play and age-appropriate risk-taking. Luckily for us parents raising children in the UK, a movement dedicated to these norms already exists – Smartphone Free Childhood – and the government is fully behind phone-free schools, having recently issued guidance to help schools that don’t already ban phones during the school day.
Smartphone Free Childhood is a national movement to empower parent communities to establish new norms around smartphones in their area, a movement in which I am actively involved. I joined my region’s WhatsApp group then, having had a few conversations in the playground, set up a WhatsApp group for my children’s primary school. (Disclaimer: the irony of a WhatsApp group to encourage smartphone-free childhoods is not lost on me but I needed to share the research, share alternatives to smartphones and share next steps!) I’ve also begun to practise a bit of what I preach by going smartphone-free every Sunday (it is absolutely my favourite day of the week) but I’m well aware there is a difficult journey ahead and that the matter is complicated. Children with diabetes who use continuous glucose monitoring, for example, need access to a smartphone within 10 metres of them for their parents to be able to check on their blood glucose remotely. Until a different solution is arrived at, parents of these children may understandably feel differently about no smartphones for under 14s.
Furthermore, talking to other parents about smartphones can be tricky. Everyone wants to do the best for their children, and no one wants their child to feel left out. Societal pressure is real. Some parents will tell you that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we have challenged norms and protected our children in the past: after 100 years of driving, doing so without a seatbelt was banned in 1991; after centuries of smoking indoors, it was banned in 2007. We can change the norms and we can see smartphones for what they really are. Now, who fancies a game of snake on a so-called dumb phone?
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation
Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention
Smartphone Alternatives
Smartphone Free Childhood
Playing Out
