I’m a child of the internet: I was 11 years old when the iPhone was released, 14 when Instagram came out. I had my first kid two years ago, and my second is on the way. And lately I’ve been wondering: how does the first generation to grow up completely online raise kids who have a healthier relationship with the internet than we do?
Part of the answer, I know, is to delay the introduction of screens and social media. This is a big part of my plan. But what happens after that? I don’t just want to protect a real world childhood. I also want my kids to learn how to protect their attention when I can no longer do it for them.
Since becoming a dad, I’ve been obsessed with this question. I spent the past year interviewing parents across the US about how they’ve navigated screens with their kids. Some heavily restricted screens far longer than their peers; some built elaborate parental control setups to manage access; others leaned toward trust and dialogue, refusing to rely on controls at all. Overall, I had over 100 hours of conversation with parents of kids aged 6 – 16. And the biggest thing I learned is that the parents who really have this dialed in aren’t thinking about it in terms of delaying as long as possible (although delay may well be part of their approach). They’re thinking about proactively teaching their kids a new life skill—work that starts way before they get their kid a phone.
How do you teach kids to own their attention as a life skill? Here are the four lessons I heard from parents again and again:
Lesson 1: Get used to not doing what other families do
The only parents I spoke with who haven’t struggled with their kids’ phone use are the ones who conveyed from an early age that they don’t care what other parents do. “You’ve got to rip that Band-Aid off early,” one mom told me. You can start laying the groundwork here as soon as your kid is socially aware enough to comment on what other families are doing. When other parents are following their kids around the playground with snacks, you can say, “we’ll pass, dinner is in an hour and I want you hungry.”
It’s not about saying no to stuff all the time just to make a point, it’s about showing that you don’t change your mind just because someone else is doing it. That way, the day they tell you that their best friend got a phone, they won’t be surprised to see that you’re entirely unmoved. The great thing about this strategy is that it doesn’t just prepare your kid for the disappointment they might feel when you don’t get them a phone right away, it also helps you practice sticking to your own ideals in lower stakes situations. You’re proving to your kid and yourself that you can resist peer pressure.
Lesson 2: Being ready for a phone isn’t about age
How do you respond the first time your kid asks if they can have a phone? Most of the parents I interviewed used age as their primary sign of phone readiness, with many specifically referencing Wait Until 8th. But I spoke to multiple parents who, with the benefit of hindsight, came to regret this approach. One mom got her daughter a phone the summer before 8th grade—the last among her friends—but three years later, she feels it was too young. A dad who got his now 18 year-old daughter a phone when she was 13 said that he was naive and wished he’d waited longer. The purpose of age limit norms is to set a higher floor across society for smartphone adoption, so that parents don’t feel pressured into getting phones for their kids when they’re too young. But I spoke to parents who felt it was a mistake to use these norms as justification for getting their kids phones as soon as they hit certain ages.
The parents who were most confident in their approach combined a minimum age threshold with signs of readiness. The specific signs varied from family to family, but the point is that these parents decided that age wasn’t enough—they determined the threshold based on their kid’s temperament and their own values. These parents defined what “ready” meant, and they weren’t afraid to set the bar high: one dad insisted that his daughter save enough money to pay for the phone herself (which she did, at age 14).
Other criteria you might consider: does your kid consistently tell you if they see something inappropriate on an iPad? Do they help with household chores without being reminded, like setting and clearing the table each night? Have they shown they can handle real world responsibility, like biking to a friend’s house on their own, babysitting, or picking something up for you at the store?
Lesson 3: The first day your kid gets a phone should not be the first day they have unfettered access to the internet
The parents I interviewed had very diverse approaches to screen time, but everyone I spoke to agreed on one thing: the first day your kid gets a device should not be the first day they have unfettered access to the internet. I heard from so many parents who learned the hard way not to give too much freedom too soon: like the mom whose 12 year old son immediately started searching for inappropriate content on his new phone. Or the mom whose 7th grade daughter started receiving graphic images on Snapchat soon after getting her phone.
The parents who were most successful took a “permit before license” approach. Giving your kid an iPhone does not have to mean giving them the full iPhone experience. I spoke with one family who locked down their 14-year-old’s iPhone so that it functioned almost like an Apple Watch: Safari was disabled, no social media was allowed, and the parents approved all contacts. Other parents I interviewed didn’t only place limits on what but also when and where their kid could access the phone, including “no phones in the bedroom” rules, cutting off Wifi at set times, and prohibiting all devices from dinner time until the next morning.
The key takeaway here: new apps and websites are evolving faster than you can track. So instead of blocking certain apps and features, consider only allowing certain apps and features, with everything else blocked by default. You can unlock new features one at a time based on your child’s readiness.
A giant caveat to this approach is that, by definition, it relies on some form of parental controls. If you don’t want to physically supervise your kid’s phone use, that usually means configuring Apple’s Screen Time controls, which parents almost universally told me they did not trust. The controls are a huge pain to set up and often do not work as intended: kids share tricks for circumventing restrictions, the settings can unexpectedly revert without notifying parents, and they aren’t nuanced enough to allow for desired uses while also blocking undesired ones.
All of which is to say, until something better exists (I’m working on it!), do not blindly rely on parental controls. For now, you are the parental control. Currently available parental controls aren’t “set it and forget it”, but something that you need to monitor regularly.
Lesson 4: Kids should understand the business model of the internet before using any social media
As the parent of a toddler, the idea of letting a kid access social media feels a bit like throwing them into shark-infested waters. We know that social media companies employ some of the smartest people in the world to figure out how to make their sites as addicting as possible. Most adults struggle to resist these attention traps, so how can we possibly teach our kids to handle them? This is the topic I was most eager to hear about during my parent interviews.
The parents who have this figured out told me that at this stage, the focus needs to shift from external limits imposed by parents to internal limits adopted by kids. This is true for pretty much everything about parenting. You can force your toddler to brush her teeth, but the whole point of parenting is to get her to internalize the value of dental care enough that she does it herself. But how do you actually get kids to do this when it comes to social media? That’s a brand new problem for humanity, and we’re only just beginning to answer it.
One common theme I heard across interviews: kids need to understand the business model of the internet. Explain to them that social media companies are using incredibly sophisticated tools to hijack our attention for their own profit (one mom I talked to had her three kids read Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism” and create a presentation demonstrating their understanding). Understanding this ugly truth is the basis for cultivating strong internal limits. You want your kid to bristle at the idea of some random company controlling their attention. If they’re not old enough to connect those dots, they’re probably not be old enough to use social media.
And when you’re teaching your kids about this, it will be all the more powerful if you connect it to your own struggles. One mom told me that she was candid with her kids about feeling addicted to Instagram, and agreed to log out of the app during family time. These kinds of disclosures help shift the conversation from parents against teens to social media as the common enemy.
One of my favorite parts about these conversations was hearing about how parents’ strategies actually paid off. Like the college student who tried Instagram as a teen, didn’t like it, and never returned to social media. Or the 14 year-old girl who self-imposed a 15-minute daily Snapchat limit, posted a contract for herself on the fridge, and has successfully stayed accountable. These two success stories look very different, but that’s exactly what I love about them. The point isn’t to impose a top down restriction on the way our kids use technology. Those are just a means to an end. The real goal is raising kids who know how to live according to their own values despite the attention economy’s best efforts to lead them astray.
Figuring out a healthier way to engage with the digital world is one of the most important problems of our time. I believe parents are going to be the biggest lever for change, because we’re so motivated to get this right for the sake of our kids. So if you have a story about something that went really right (or really wrong!) around your approach to screen time, please share it with me by replying or leaving a comment. We need to develop new generational wisdom about this, and I’m hoping this Substack can be a place to share it.
On lesson 4, I remember a family asking their children to research then 'show and tell' the company's business model whenever they wanted to download a new app on their phone or iPad. Something along the lines of : who are the founders, what is their mission, have they raised money, so what is expected from them now, what is the product delivering, how do they make money, what do they need the user to perform in that matter,... ;)
Very insightful. While my kid is only a toddler like yours for now, we have been thinking of setting up network controls in the house for when the day comes. Apple iPhones also have this neat accessibility feature that turns the phone into a dumb phone.
But like you mention, besides the top-down approach, I'm reminded of what Gary Vee said to a mother worried about her daughter growing up and falling victim to predators, which went along the lines of, "raise them to develop their self-esteem and confidence so that when they're older, they're better equipped to use their best judgement in tricky situations."