Smartphones weren’t designed with kids in mind - but they’ve reshaped childhood almost overnight.
When we all started using smartphones, we had little understanding of the impact they have on children and teenagers. Now we do. The evidence they are doing more harm than good has become impossible to ignore.
- Parents who have given their kids smartphones wish they’d waited
- Teachers say smartphones are affecting learning, friendships, and focus
- Doctors link smartphones to the teen mental health crisis
- Young people wish tech didn’t have such a hold on their lives
Tech-savvy parents, including Silicon Valley executives, don’t allow their own children access to smartphones and advocate delaying smartphone access until high school or later.
Instead of growing up slowly, children are being pulled into a digital world built to keep them hooked. The impact on their development, mental health, and relationships runs deep - and we can’t afford to look away any longer.
Parents face an impossible choice: say yes to a smartphone and risk your child’s wellbeing, or say no, and risk cutting them off from their friends. It’s a lose-lose. One which no family should be left to face alone.
Faced with this impossible choice, the solution is to work together. By collectively agreeing to delay smartphones in communities across the country, we can turn the tide and reclaim childhood.
Here are some of the biggest reasons to wait:
Missed experiences
Compared to any other generation in history, children growing up in the smartphone era spend less time outdoors, less time playing, less time reading, less time moving, and more time scrolling alone.
Harmful content
Unsupervised access to the internet is a gateway to pornography, explicit, violent, and extreme content, often served up by algorithms when kids aren’t looking for it. Once children see these things, they can never be unseen.
Mental health
Teenage anxiety, depression, and self-harm rates have skyrocketed since 2010, when kids started getting smartphones. Evidence shows a direct link between early smartphone use and declining mental health.
Addiction
The tech giants’ business model is simple: the longer kids stay on their platforms, the more money they make. That’s why apps are packed with addictive features - and why kids find it so hard to put them down. Recent studies suggest smartphone dependence triggers addictive brain responses akin to alcohol and drug addictions.
Attention
The average teen now receives over 200 notifications a day - fragmenting their focus and making it harder to concentrate on schoolwork, hobbies, or real-life friendships. Constant distraction is the new normal.
Family life
Smartphones’ addictive design means they can quietly start to take center stage in family life - causing arguments, battles over screen time, and making it harder to share real, uninterrupted time together.
Cyberbullying
Arguments and fallouts used to end at the school gate. Now they follow kids home, lingering on their screens day and night - with no safe space to switch off, process, or recover. Recent data show that among primary and secondary school students in Slovenia, 65% of girls and 55% of boys reported experiencing at least one form of online bullying.
Sleep
The blue light from screens disrupts melatonin, making it harder to fall asleep, while endless scrolling and late-night notifications keep kids wired when they should be resting. Some children even wake up during the night to check texts or social media, exacerbating sleep disruptions.
Grooming
TikTok, Snapchat, and Roblox aren’t just playgrounds for kids - they’re hunting grounds for predators. They’re often used by sexual predators to target children with their first smartphones.