If you’re looking for confirmation that smartphones and social media are good for your kids, this is not one of those posts.
The “best age” question is a trick question. Here’s why. We don’t stress about the “best age” for things that are inherently good for our kids. Are there hundreds of opinions on the best and safest age to give your kids a book, a Rubik’s Cube, or a baseball? What about a vacuum cleaner? Do we have to seek medical guidance from counselors when our teens are spending too much time doing the dishes, playing outside, or cleaning the garage? Is there such a thing as teens becoming depressed because they are spending too much time riding bikes? No, because those activities aren’t harmful to your child’s brain and emotional development. The “best age for a smartphone” question is flawed. Perhaps a better question would be: Do teens even need smartphones?
Science Versus Culture
Our child, like a well-prepared prosecutor, pleads her case to us that she “will literally die without a phone.” And we are dying to make her happy. So we go against our parental instincts that tell us that our children are too young for smartphones. We then seek to confirm our biases by searching for blog posts filled with like-minded strangers’ opinions. In order to make smartphones kid-friendly, society says all you have to do is the following:- Make the phone less powerful and dangerous by purchasing layers of complicated parental controls.
- Make your child more mature by having ongoing conversations, signing a phone-behavior contract or family pledge, and letting them practice with social media.
