03/11/2024
Parents, Here’s How We Can Protect Kids from the Dangers of Smartphones
What is the appropriate age to give my kid a smartphone and access to social media? Once I let the genie out of the bottle, as my teenagers turn into screenagers, how do I protect them from online harms? These are questions that vex every parent in America.
America's 15-year experiment with social media and smartphones has been, on balance, a catastrophe for our kids. The scientific evidence is so overwhelming that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has issued a formal warning, saying we "must urgently address" the youth mental health crisis brought on by social media. Every parent, every teacher, every teenager knows it. Everyone knows, except—apparently—the CEOs of the tech corporations making billions by hooking America's children on their toxic, addictive apps.
A recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing clarified—for lawmakers and the American people alike—a chilling fact: Big Tech CEOs know social media is poisoning our kids, and they don't care.
Parents cannot count on politicians to solve the problem either. Legal technicalities—and billions in Big Tech lobbying—make any legislative solution unrealistic.
So what's a parent to do?
1. When your kids are young, collaborate with other parents in your child's friend group. Collectively opt out of smartphones and social media. Organize a parental "conspiracy for the good," so your child is not "the only one." Keep your adolescents off social media altogether, at least during the key years of psychological, social, and brain development. "Colluding" parents might give younger teens alternate "dumb" phones instead, like the Pinwheel, Gabb Wireless, or LightPhone so they can text and call, but not scroll the internet.
That advice has certainly worked for me as I've been raising my teenagers.
2. The key is helping kids form REAL-not virtual-social lives.
Invest in a ping pong table. Explore hiking trails where your kids and their friends can foster a love of nature. Hit the local park/s. The possibilities are endless.
3. Shoot straight with your kids how Silicon Valley (Big Tech) manipulate users and gnaw at their mental health.
Help them understand the business model of these apps is to hook them, steal their time, and take away from in-person interaction with real friends.
4. Of course, eventually older teens need to learn how to use a smartphone, with proper guardrails. Some experts recommend waiting until age 16 or even older. When you discern your child has the self-mastery to handle a pocket-sized supercomputer, pre-empt the entitled assumption that the phone is their “personal device”. Rather, make it a “family phone” you allow them to use. To support this policy, set the same family password on all devices. This approach greatly reduces the temptation to explore dangerous internet rabbit holes.
5. Keep a “freedom basket” in the kitchen where they can leave their phones when they enter the house and where they stay anchored overnight to charge. Let your kids know they are not cyborgs and need not be attached to a computer at all times. Parents need to model this behavior with their own smartphones!
Your kids might resist for awhile. But they will thank you later for protecting them from cyberbullying, body image distortion/s, the short-circuiting of attention spans, the mind control, the glamorization of dysfunction, & the lack of healthy social interactions.
They will thank you later for not drowning online!
Maureen Ferguson, Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association is the main contributor of this content. Newsweek, 2024.
The article has been edited for length.
