I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but it bears repeating: that's the whole point of this program.
Parents are playing the prisoners' dilemma here. Many (most) feel like cell phones (social media in particular) are a net negative for younger kids. But they don't want their kids to be left out / socially isolated. So it's really easy to get into a situation where we all defect because "I don't really like this but everyone else is doing it". This "wait until 8th" thing provides a framework for parent to agree to cooperate on this issue.
TBD if it actually works. I certainly like the idea that we have some control over our culture/community and don't just need to passively accept a "tragedy of the commons" on an issue like this.
Assuming that's true*, it honestly isn't good reason to give your kids a smartphone. Your job description as a parent is pretty much to stop your kids from doing things they don't understand will hurt them. There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life. Like, if all the other kids were shooting up heroin it would be considered insane to say "you have to let them do it because all their friends are junkies", and I don't see it as being different for phones.
*It's also not clear that your premise is even true. Plenty of parents in the past have reported how their kids' friends adjusted just fine to not being able to use a smartphone to contact them, and that they still had healthy social lives.
> There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life.
From personal experience, being isolated as a kid can also be profoundly psychologically damaging and stunt development of normal life skills. Sure, see if the kid can get by without a smartphone for as long as possible, but if they do wind up completely excluded it's time to reevaluate the cost-benefit analysis and potential ways to mitigate smartphone overuse, not just think that the isolation is "okay" cause you're protecting them from phones.
And everything I've ever delved deep into how the studies were conducted, what were the real conclusions drawn, the type of content being shown, etc. never leads to what the news would have you conclude. It's basically a terrible game of telephone where parents just end up getting fear mongered into limiting device time to 2 hours a day because someone said so. Utter nonsense.
There's a lot of people making claims based on paid research with agendas to sell fear. If you think you have some real empirical evidence that will standup to scrutiny, by all means share.
You may be confusing what happens with a phone with what is required.
Certainly kids can have a social life without a phone. It’s not required. I just had a kid who didn’t get instagram until 14. They claimed that their life was ruined, but they had a healthy social life without it (and without a phone).
I think people generalize what will happen without things they think are common incorrectly. Just because phones are used for many things, it doesn’t mean those things are impossible without phones.
I do think it works better if more parents did it and it was so nice to find other parents (super rare) who felt similarly.
The point of the pledge is that you take it and you encourage other parents in your school/neighbourhood to take it. So this helps solve the coordination problem:
"By signing the online pledge, you promise not to give your child a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade as long as at least 10 families total from your child’s grade and school pledge. Once 10 families have pledged to delay the smartphone, you will be notified that the pledge is active! You will receive a list of families who are delaying from your child’s grade and emails for the parents."
I’d say cell phone penetration is sitting at about 25% with my 6th graders friend cohort and that seems to hold up when I talk to my friends with kids.
I don’t know if that will hold until 8th grade but for now my kids social life seems to revolve around the neighborhood, school and his activities.
I was under the impression phones/social networks were becoming unpopular. My kid certainly has a dim view of the latter.
Because if you deny a kid a Nintendo, even though "everyone has one", it doesn't kill their social life, because they can still go over to a friend's house to play (arguably, this is better for their social life).
If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.
I grew up before smartphones and if somebody took away my very normal corded phone I would have definitely been had a much time communicating with my friends. I wouldn't have been happy about that at all. I did spend hours talking to friends perhaps even to the detriment of my studies.
What are we really trying to stop here? Are we really just trying to stop all the addicting apps? if so.. maybe we should be focusing on that at a higher level.
At least below age 12 or so, our kid's social life consists entirely of classmates that she sees 7 hours a day at school during weekdays, after school and in weekends playdates with classmates that she likes, sports, music and swimming lessons,and some time with parents in somewhere between. Where does the phone come on?
In our class we were the first to give our kid's a phone. She doesn't find it very interesting and barely spent any time on it, since she the only ones that she know with a phone number are her parents.
Pretty much secondary school in the UK (12+). I'm guessing middle schools / high schools in the US are the same? Yes, literally every kid in secondary school has a cell phone. Kids have whatsapp groups and communicate all the time with their friend circles.
According to an Ofcom survey in 2023, 9 in 10 kids aged 11 have a smartphone in the UK.
Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.