15 Days of Haidt #4: Parents Should....

...delay kid phones until age 14, he says

Haidt’s 2 main recs to parents: Wait until kid is age 14 to permit a smartphone, and 16 for social media access.

Here’s how it went down in our house.

Our plan - my wife and me - was to delay phone until 13. This was before Anxious Generation - just our arbitrary “That sounds reasonable.”

Kiddo #1 at Age 12:

• You want me to be more social, but the banter - and sometimes in-person meet up logistics - is all via text.

• Much of that text messaging is technically on Snapchat.

• I can’t get Snap from flip phone. I know you use one, Dad, but it can’t work in this case.

• Also I’d rather have nothing than flip phone - the incessant teasing would not be something I’d want to deal with at my age.

• The in-person stuff you want me to do is organized on Snap. It’s not like boys at Friday school lunch are figuring out what they’ll do Saturday afternoon.

We found Kiddo’s rationale persuasive. So: We wrote 5 page contract. And off we went.

Turned out: this guy does not need much phone enforcement. Self-starter, gets his work done, solid good sleeper, not huge with video games. He did stop pleasure reading around that time, a bummer, that seemed like main cost of phone.

Kiddo #2 at Age 11:

• All my friends have phones. Can I just give out Mom’s number so they can stay in touch with me, as a hack for now? (Us: “Sure.”)

So for a year, Pru saw all the texts. Pretty interesting stuff! Nothing too alarming. Kiddo #2 got her own at age 12, like her bro. Again, she’s been good-ish about it, mostly following contract as best I can tell. A little more use than expected, but also self-starter, does sports and clubs, etc.

Is Haidt correct that there’s a collective action problem when it comes to delaying the age at which kids get phones?

Yes!

The proposed remedy? Wait Until 8th (Grade) campaigns.

This Mom writes:

At some point along the way, while she was still in elementary school, I learned about the "Wait Until 8th" pledge and how it encourages parents to wait to get their kids a smartphone until the end of eighth grade.

Initially, this sounded like an amazing idea to both my husband and me. By following this pledge, we would preserve our daughter's childhood through middle school and would delay the inevitable issues that will come with her having access to much-older content via a smartphone. We pledged to each other that this was our plan. Little did we know that we'd be some of the only parents in our social group doing this.

Things started to change in middle school

When middle school started, we asked around to see which kids had phones and which didn't. It seemed that nearly three out of four kids did. Our decision really wasn't influenced by those results; rather, we made our decision based on personal values and research we had done around children and access to phones and social media. Sixth and seventh grade went by, and we found it was manageable to communicate with our daughter when we needed to, she'd often ask another parent to text us or call from a phone in her school's office.

What I wasn't prepared for, however, was how I was stuck coordinating all her social plans, and often with her own friends!

The majority of her friends' parents stopped being as involved with social planning because they had gotten their kids phones, and they were now managing it on their own. My daughter not only felt left out of the planning, she was sometimes left out all together when she wasn't invited to group gatherings because her friends didn't have direct access to her.

I also often felt irritated and annoyed trying to get a hold of parents who used to do the planning with me. They had cut out the middleman and moved on to a different social landscape without us. Eventually, the frustration seemed to outweigh the negatives of having a phone in our eyes, so we thought long and hard and decided to reevaluate our stance.

For 8th grade, we reevaluated our needs.

Fast-forward to the summer before eighth grade, and we realized that our daughter really did need a phone. Not for social media, mindless scrolling, or binge-watching shows, but just to be able to take her own photos and communicate with us and with her friends on her own terms (with parental guidance in place).

We surprised her with a phone this past fall and she has been extremely grateful, responsible, and mindful about its usage.

This Mom, Laurie Syphard, is right. Haidt wants more in-person hang out time for teens these days, we all do.

The phone delay, ironically, sometimes causes less in-person hang out time. Kid is off her phone; nobody else is playing outside. Wait, a few girls are going to hang out in person; your kid doesn’t find out and misses it.

There’s friction here between competing goods, when you want to minimize phone time but maximize positive in person play time!

Best captured, imo, by “Mutton Dressed as Mutton.” A Haidt guest columnist wrote “Parents, It’s OK To Do Less.” This was most-liked comment, from Mutton:

This was my plan for parenting going in, and I stuck to it. And I'm still sticking to it now that my daughter is a fifth grader, so I can say from experience that this is nonsense:

> Unscheduled time gives kids a chance to venture outside, find playmates...

No, it doesn't, because there are no playmates to find.

My daughter has plenty of downtime, I'm not afraid of boredom, I decline plenty of requests to play, and I encourage independence.

Result: my only child spends tons of time alone, bored, because other families don't do any of these things. If I limit her screen time (which I do), she is further isolated, because all of her friends communicate via Facetime.

To make sure she sees friends, I have to arrange "play dates," which is itself an endless undertaking. And yes, now that she's old enough to text with her friends (via computer, she doesn't have a phone), I have encouraged her to make plans herself. She tries. It doesn't work.

Please don't tell me to set up a "playborhood," because, guess what, that's a massive project and also is not going to work.

Sorry to sound so sour, but I'm tired of chirpy parenting advice that implies there's some simple fix to modern childhood.

To be clear, I think the advice in this column is sound -- parents should do less, because the alternative is worse. But don't expect magic to result. Expect frustration because you're the one parent in your kids' school who seems willing to let their kid have a vaguely normal childhood.

So to recap:

1. It’s hard to delay phones without your kid incurring an in-person social penalty, because of the collective action problem.

2. The response of Phone Delay advocates is to “Organize Other Parents” - on two fronts.

   a. Organize playborhood so kids play together outside, independently-ish

   b. Organize Wait Until 8th so lots of kids don’t get phones

3. I’m reading Moms who endorse the values but just don’t see many parents joining in. I.e., Collective Action Problem still “winning,” like 137 to 8. Calipari style full court press evidently.

The most active Wait Until 8th I can find in Massachusetts (Arlington) doesn’t seem to have much traction, despite some wonderful parents plugging away.

As an education reform guy, I can remember ~2010 Los Angeles, when reformers were urging inner-city parents to “Take Over” their kids’ horrible schools. It was interesting for a minute but never got traction. Though the idea did turn into a movie starring Maggie Gyllenhaal! (Nobody watched that , either).

It’s possible that Haidt is having some success here, where parents anchor to 14, kid asks at 9, compromise is 12. That would buy a kid 3 more years of healthy phone-free development.

As of 2024, 92% of kids age “13 to 14” had smartphones. I can’t find 2025 data - maybe we’ll see a sharp drop, maybe not.

*

RECAP:

Okay, back to my Two Big Questions for the 15 Days of Jonathan Haidt, this time limited little blog.

The first was “I admire Haidt. How is Haidt’s agenda going? Are his ideas being implemented?”

Day 1. Reduce smartphone use 8am to 3pm in schools. Progress! **

Day 2. Reduce edtech in schools. No progress.

Day 3. KOSA. Create law that holds Facebook and Tiktok et al to account. Stalled.

Day 4. Wait Until 8th Grade / Age 14. Unclear.

Day 5 (forthcoming). Haidt’s fight with other psychologists about research.

That’s a coming attraction. I think Sean Geraghty has pristine thinking on this - he’s actually read all the studies that Haidt cites in Anxious Generation - and many of the rebuttals.

And then to….

My Second Big Question:

Once the cat is out of the bag, whether kid gets phone age 12, 13, 14….or in many (sad) cases, age 6, 7, 8…

What parent “moves” work to help teens, once they get a phone, still leave joyful, productive teenage lives, and not fall prey to the harms that Haidt correctly (pending Day 5 blog) warns against?

**Kiddo #1 is skeptical that schools with phone bans are having the degree of real-life success they claim. He’d be curious to see “Minutes Data” too from providers like Verizon.

For example, he said literally every girl in class today was using their Apple laptop to access their iphone - which is in a Yonder pouch near the classroom door. I.e., if you walk in, no phones are in students hands; yet all the girls (why girls?) were on their phones remotely.