Our 3-year-old daughter snatched my cellphone the other day and knew exactly what to do.
Like some teenager, she opened my camera app and shot some sick selfies with her 10-month-old brother.
It was a breeze for her. The photos are great. I’m so impressed.
But I don’t like it. As a father of five and a former high school English teacher, my view of cellphones for kids is more … rotary dial than 5G, you might say.
Devices like cellphones were a daily battle in my classroom. Most of my students stashed them away when asked, but the temptation and learning distraction was always there.
Just ask other teachers.
Educators across Idaho and the nation have amplified efforts to limit or nix cellphone use in their schools. Several Idaho schools implemented new restrictions this year. At least 11 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict their use, Education Week recently reported.
Data bolsters the concern — and my cynicism toward the ubiquitous little things. According to the Pew Research Center, 54% of teens say it would be hard to give up social media. A 2024 study revealed that children’s smartphone use has been linked to lower test scores, the Men’s Journal reports.
Concerns extend well beyond learning. The phone-based environment in which kids grow up in today is “hostile to human development,” a recent Atlantic article points out, citing skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety among adolescents since 2010. For girls ages 10 to 14, the suicide rate rose 131% over that period (my emphasis).
That’s a hideous stat for this father of four daughters.
Still, despite a growing mountain of concerns and research, cellphones carry benefits for kids and families.
Just ask other parents.
Moms and dads in the Gem State have fought back on banning cellphones in schools, citing concerns that they won’t be able to reach their kids in an emergency.
It’s understandable, with school shootings gaining prevalence in recent years. Carnage at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school had my wife and I even questioning sending our kids to school for a while in 2022.
I was a reporter on the ground a year earlier after a student fired multiple rounds at Rigby Middle School, not far from our home in East Idaho. No one died, but two students and a janitor were injured.
The heavy details of the scene struck me: the long row of cars outside the school; bewildered parents rushing to pick up their children; children embracing their parents; distraught families gathering in the parking lot; a dad who had to be restrained after bursting through a yellow police line looking for his daughter.
I can see how a direct line to one’s child in such a situation would be invaluable.
But even the simple conveniences of cellphones carry value.
The other day, my wife and I watched other kids file out of our daughter’s middle school on demand after volleyball practice, cellphones in hands, responding to texts that their parents had arrived to pick them up out front.
We had to wait for our 12-year-old, who doesn’t have a cellphone, to spot us through a window after rounding up her things.
It’s not a big deal for me and my wife, but it is for our daughter, who starts middle school this year.
All of her friends, it seems, have smartphones. Approaching her teenage years, she sees her classmates with them, her teachers with them, her coaches and youth leaders with them and her parents with them.
“Where are all the studies about how these things affect adults?” I’m just waiting for her to ask me.
And one day, I’m sure, she’ll be as tied to a cellphone as I am.
Which brings up a tough question for me and my wife: Is it better to get her one now, and set some limits, or to continue waiting until we somehow feel she’s “ready”?
I don’t have an answer. Maybe you do.
How do you approach cellphones for your kids? What works and what doesn’t? Is there a preferred age or maturity level we should be watching for? Send your answers to [email protected].
