What To Say When Your Child Asks for a Smartphone

A conversation to inspire you

Introduction from Melanie Hempe:

We are so happy to share behind-the-scenes stories from ScreenStrong families to inspire you on your journey. Emily Harrison is the mom of two boys and one of our ScreenStrong Ambassadors. She and her husband have chosen a ScreenStrong lifestyle, and she will be sharing her insights on raising kids ScreenStrong as part of our monthly series: Living the ScreenStrong Life: A Day-to-Day Journey. Please share this with your friends so we can all be ScreenStrong together. If you have a ScreenStrong story, we’d love to hear it!

By Emily Harrison

We were en route to another Saturday morning sporting activity when my 9-year-old son asked, “Mom when I get a phone, will it have, like, Amazon Music and stuff?” Hmph. Here we go again, I thought as my 13-year-old son and husband listened in.

“No, buddy. Probably not. The thing is, having a phone with internet access just isn’t good for kids. Lots of studies show that. In fact, a book that came out earlier this month, The Anxious Generation, talks about how anxious, depressed, and lonely kids and teens are these days. Most phones come with internet access, but that isn’t good for you. With the internet comes games, videos, social media, lots of distracting apps, and pornography.”

“What’s pornography?” asked my son from the backseat. The driver, my husband, bristled and quickly opened and closed his mouth as I swiftly responded, “Pictures of people without their clothes on. It’s not good for anyone to see that, especially not kids. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that on the internet.”

I hate that my 9-year-old just found out what pornography is. My husband and I probably would have preferred to cherish his innocence a bit longer, but the facts are that by his age, many kids have already seen internet pornography. 

Now, back to the original question about music. “So, no. The first phone that mom and dad buy you probably won’t have music. You can use a basic phone like the original Gabb phone or a flip phone to make phone calls or send text messages. Others have a few apps, like a calendar or calculator.”

“That’s what I want,” my 13-year-old said.

Please, God, let him continue to feel that way; I silently prayed. I’m thankful that all of the conversations and limits my husband and I have enforced to date haven’t been met with total resistance; our boys are starting to understand that kids and adolescents just aren’t ready for all of the distractions and temptations of a smartphone. 

“When you are older, like in high school, and it’s time to get a cell phone, we will get you one that can only make phone calls and send text messages.”

“How old will I be when I get a phone?” piped up my middle-school-aged son.

“Well, the research shows that the longer you wait, the better. I was 16 or 17 when I got my first phone. All I could do was call people. Texting hadn’t really been invented yet. That didn’t come for a few more years when something called the Blackberry was invented.”

I quickly remembered having a Blackberry for work as a 24-year-old and that it was jokingly called a “crack-berry” in reference to the street drug crack cocaine. Oh, if only we knew then what the next two decades would bring to the palm of our hands.

“Anyway, you’ll get a talk/text phone when you’re older, probably when you’re 16 or so and can drive on your own.”

“Sixteen?” I heard the tone of exasperation in my 13-year-old’s voice. 

“What age do you think you should get a phone?”

“I don’t know, but what if I need one? Like if it started raining during lacrosse practice and you needed to pick me up early.”

My husband knew the answer to this one. “You can ask your coach if you can borrow his phone to call us. Or, you can go into the school and use the phone in the office. That’s what I did when I was your age, and it worked great.”

“Until then, you can continue to use our house phone if you need to call somebody when you’re at home,” I added. We have an old-school landline. Some of our friends have a talk/text family phone that the kids can use to call their friends or even take on a short outing. But it is not their personal phone. No child really needs a phone 24/7.

The 9-year-old had another question now. “What about emojis? If I want to text something to somebody and I don’t know the word, I need a phone that has emojis.”

I’ll spare you, the reader, the details about the unimportance of emojis in our lives and our conversation about how learning to spell correctly and communicate clearly takes priority.

Myths & Solutions

I’ve been doing work in this field since 2018, so there aren’t many objections or rebuttals from kids, teens, or parents I haven’t heard. The most common statement I hear is, “We held out as long as we could getting our daughter a phone. She was basically the last one in her class to get one.” This is always said as a badge of honor. No parent ever brags about being the first one to give their child a phone. Why is this? Because deep down parents instinctively know smartphones aren’t healthy for teenagers; otherwise, we would all be rushing to give our kids phones sooner.

Parents don’t rush to get smartphones because of how great they are for child development; we do it because we are caught up in a culture that’s doing it. It’s like we are fish swimming with the current and don’t know we have the option to jump out of the current and ride a different wave. 

The second most common myth I hear is related to extracurricular schedules. My husband and I got together with an old college friend recently and there it was, “She needs it for sports. Like if practice gets canceled or something.”

I literally cannot figure out who all of these kids are who have practices canceled, and the coach, school, rec league, or travel team isn’t sending out emails, texts, and app updates to parents. My two boys are in one sport each season, including summer. That amounts to almost 50 different teams over my parenting years, and I’ve yet to have a practice canceled that I didn’t know about, and my child was left stranded, even for a minute.

Going back to our college friend, I replied that I had told our boys we’d get them a non-internet talk/text phone one day. His eyes lit up. It was like telling him that eating ice cream with a spoon instead of a fork works better. Of course! The simple answer was there all along, but like most parents, it just hadn’t occurred to him.

This, my friends, is the problem. The simple solutions are clear. We’ve just forgotten they exist. I went into a cellular phone company store a few weeks ago to see what non-smartphone options even exist. At first glance, it didn’t look good. But, undeterred, I asked the sales guy for help. I explained that I was doing some research as a mom to learn my options for non-internet phones for my sons. “Oh, sure. We have that. It’s in the back. It’s $96, and the service plan is $4 a month.” Saving money by giving your teen a safer option than the latest $600 iPhone? Sure. Sign me up! A fellow customer, a woman a few decades my senior who had raised a few teens herself, looked at me and exclaimed, “That is such a great idea! Kids don’t need all of that distraction. You are so smart! I’m going to tell my son he should do that for his kids.” 

And there it starts. I’m spreading the word and, hopefully, changing the culture. 

Collective Action 

One family at a time, we can debunk the myths. I’m spreading the word to my friends and the parents of my kids’ friends. I’m asking them if they’ll join me in having our kids skip social media and smartphones through high school. Of the more than 30 families I have talked to, 75% of them said, “Absolutely!” In fact, the word is spreading, and now parents are coming to me and asking to be included as well. We, the parents, are making a declaration: Be ScreenStrong! Skip social media and smartphones through adolescence.

Does your teen already have a phone? If so, ScreenStrong has a wonderful new book to educate your kids and a community to support you on your journey. It’s never too late to jump out of the cultural current and do what’s best for your kids.

As for that Saturday morning conversation en route to a soccer game, it’s not the first nor will it be the last conversation my husband and I will have with our boys about smartphones. And that’s okay. Every conversation we have gets easier. We will keep being the parents and letting our kids be the kids. We will make decisions that our sons don’t always like. It’s part of the parenting job description. Instead of bragging about being the last in the class to get our kids smartphones, let’s be the first to give our kids the freedom and joy of a smartphone-free childhood. My friends are joining me on this front. Will you and your friends join us as well?

Visit ScreenStrong for more information about how to delay the age teens get phones. Listen to our Podcast for weekly inspiration and support. Need help explaining the reasons to skip video games and social media to your kids? Get our student course.

Melanie Hempe, BSN, is the founder of ScreenStrong, a nonprofit organization, and the author of the Kid’s Brains and Screens course series for students and parents. She is dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood screen addictions by providing scientific evidence and community for families around the globe. Her educational material is filled with everything she wished she had known before her oldest child suffered from a screen addiction. ScreenStrong has created what every family needs—education and the community—to skip toxic screens through adolescence so that teens can reach their full potential. Visit ScreenStrongSolutions.com for educational material and ScreenStrong.org to learn more and join the community saving childhood.

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