How to resist the pressure to buy young children a smartphone

The holidays are upon us–the season of giving gifts, a time when it’s especially difficult for parents to resist the clamor of children begging for a smartphone.

Research into cellphone use among young children suggests that this technology is doing real damage. Smartphone use by the young has been linked to increasing depression, sense of isolation, anxiety and suicide. Yet more and more kids own smartphones, even children as young as two. Many parents face a real dilemma: On one hand, they are terrified by this research; on the other, they worry about their child being at a social disadvantage if everyone else has a phone.

Fortunately, help has arrived in the form of a new initiative, started by parents. It’s called Wait Until 8th and offers a community-wide or school-wide strategy for reducing the pressure to buy smartphones for children.

Read about the Wait Until 8th pledge:

The Wait Until 8th pledge empowers parents to rally together to delay giving children a smartphone until at least 8th grade.  Banding together will decrease the pressure felt by kids and parents alike over the kids having a smartphone.

Smartphones are distracting and potentially dangerous for children yet are widespread in elementary and middle school because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.

These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family are happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap-chatting, instagramming, and catching up on YouTube.

Parents feel powerless in this uphill battle and need community support to help delay the ever-evolving presence of the smartphone in the classroom, social arena and family dinner table. Let’s band together to wait until at least eighth grade before children are allowed to have a smartphone.

If you believe your child will need to have some sort of phone before 8th grade, every major carrier makes a basic phone that just calls and texts without a data plan. The Wait Until 8th pledge encourages parents to delay only the smartphone. If you would like your child to have a basic phone that just calls and texts or a two-way calling watch, you still can sign the pledge! The basic phone and two-way calling watch avoid many of the distractions and dangers of the smartphone.

Childhood is too short to waste on a smartphone. Take the pledge today and enlist other parents of your children’s friends to join you. Visit the Wait Until 8th website and “take the pledge”–or just read more about it.

Like most of the pictures on ParentsAssociation.com, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.