Your tween wants a smartphone very badly. So badly that it physically hurts. And they’re giving you soooo many reasons why.
They’re going to middle school … they need it to collaborate with peers on school projects … they need it to tell you where they are … when they’ll be home … when the school bus is late. It’ll help you, dear parent, they vow. Plus, all their friends have one, and they feel left out. Come on! Pleeeeeeze.
Before you click “place order” on that smartphone, pause and consider a few insights from a person who makes a living helping parents and tweens navigate the murky waters of smartphones and social media.
Emily Cherkin spent more than a decade as a middle school teacher during the early aughts. She watched first-hand as the presence of smartphones transformed life for middle schoolers. For the past four years, she’s been working as a screen-time consultant, coaching parents about digital technology.
Her first piece of advice about when to give a child a smartphone and allow them to access social media was reiterated by other experts over and over again: Delay, delay, delay.
‘I wish I knew then what I know now’
“I have talked to hundreds of parents,” Cherkin explains, “and no one has ever said to me, ‘I wish I gave my kid a phone earlier’ or ‘I wish I’d given them social media access sooner.’ Never.”
In fact, parents tell her the opposite. “I always hear, ‘I wish I had waited. I wish I knew then what I know now,’ ” she says, “because boy, once you give a child one of these devices or technologies, it is so much harder to take it back.”
Smartphones, social media, and video games create large…
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