Strive to avoid giving children smartphones until they are 16 years old, as phones act as “experience blockers” that reduce engagement in reading, hobbies, sleep, and social interaction, hindering their growth.
Team up with other parents in your child’s social circle to collectively agree on delaying smartphone adoption, making it easier for children not to feel left out and fostering a healthier childhood environment.
Shift your focus from simply removing phones to actively giving children back a “human childhood” filled with a lot of unsupervised time with other kids, which is crucial for their development.
Provide children, especially those aged eight to ten, with significant freedom to hang out at friends’ houses and move between them without constant supervision, as this is incredibly healthy for their development.
Ensure children engage in face-to-face interactions that involve their bodies and nonverbal communication, as these synchronous experiences are essential for wiring their brains properly and developing crucial social skills.
Foster environments where children can engage in genuine play and joking around with peers, rather than performative interactions like large group texts, which are prone to misunderstanding and stress.
Resist the urge to make everything easy for your children by giving them a phone as a solution to difficulties, as kids need to strive and struggle thousands of times to learn and grow.
Prevent children from taking devices into their bedrooms at night where they are unmonitored, as this is when “really bad stuff happens,” including interactions with strangers.
Establish a routine where children place their smartphones on a public surface, like a kitchen counter, upon returning home, to set clear expectations and a framework for limited device use.
Position shared desktop computers with large screens in public areas of the home, such as the living room or kitchen, to allow for monitoring and prevent unlimited, unmonitored internet immersion.
Be aware that multiplayer video games and porn are significantly blocking boys’ development by displacing real-world social interaction and time spent together.
Work with schools to implement policies that delay smartphone use, as school-wide involvement can instantly break the collective action problem and promote a healthier community standard.
When examining mental health data for children, always separate the data by sex (girls and boys) because their experiences and the impacts on them are very different, and merging data can obscure crucial patterns.