My teenaged son still doesn’t have a smartphone. Here’s why

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When my oldest son starts Grade 10 in September, he will be the only kid that we know of in his high school without a smartphone. He is not thrilled about this, but he and his two younger brothers are familiar with my many reasons why. I’m trying to preserve their experience of growing up, which is a fleeting time to play actively, engage with family and friends, and develop hobbies. Phones makes that harder, as do other screens such as gaming consoles, tablets and TV, which is why we don’t have those, either.

My son knows I am committed to following U.S. psychologist Jean Twenge’s rules for her own teenage daughters: no smartphones until 16 and no social media before 18. My son doesn’t like it – no teen wants to be the odd one out – but he is resigned to it.

Other parents express shock or horror, sometimes mixed with a twinge of envy, when they learn of my predilection for Luddism. (I use that term jokingly. I am not anti-tech, just opposed to digital media distracting my kids from things I consider to be of greater value.) These stunned parents predictably ask me three questions.

Firstly, “Isn’t he missing out?” The implication is that he should be allowed to do what other teenagers do, which is spending a daily average of eight hours and 40 minutes on screens for entertainment purposes alone, including social media. I do not consider missing out on this to be a loss.

By avoiding social media, my son is spared exposure to content that is notorious for making people feel bad about themselves. He is less likely to post things he’ll regret some day. Most importantly, his mental energy is preserved for real-life relationships and activities.

His days are spent working out, studying, playing musical instruments, biking around town with friends, hanging out with his brothers, practising flips on the trampoline, working a part-time job, and cooking great food. He communicates with his friends using a desktop computer, swapping his fair share of messages and silly memes. But then he logs off, rejoins the family, goes outside. There is no device tempting him from his pocket every minute of the day.

Next, parents ask, “What about safety? What if he needs to reach you in an emergency?” The answer to that depends on your definition of safety and emergency. One benefit of everyone having a phone is that my son can always borrow one if he needs to call or text me (or go to the school office).

But being able to reach me at the touch of a button seems less important than my son knowing how to problem-solve on his own and navigate our town independently. I want him to develop a sense of confidence and capability; and clinging to “the world’s longest umbilical cord,” as smartphones have been aptly called, tends to impede that natural process of individuation.

Phones create an illusion of safety. One mother in Vancouver told me that her teenage daughters, who do not have smartphones, use public transit every day. They are hyperaware of who’s around them at all times. But they see other kids with headphones on, eyes down, who are totally oblivious to their surroundings. In that all-too-common situation, which kid is safer?

Furthermore, smartphones are portals into the worst examples of human behaviour, from hardcore porn to videos of torture, starvation and war. Handing that to a child or a teen whose brain is still developing strikes me as uniquely unsafe. If you think there are creepy humans lurking in the real world, whose presence might require your child to call you on their smartphone, believe me, there are far more lurking on your child’s smartphone, in their DMs.

Lastly, I hear, “Aren’t you ruining his future professional opportunities?” No, I do not believe that children must be exposed to the latest technology to “keep up.” It is designed to be intuitive, and it is evolving so rapidly that it will look totally different by the time our children enter the professional world.

What matters more is teaching kids skills that will set them apart from machines. These are things like learning how to be a human in the real world – having conversations, making eye contact, meeting new friends, focusing on tasks when required, losing themselves in thought, sleeping deeply, living energetically, being comfortable with boredom and recognizing it as fertile ground for creative pursuits. These are things that I prioritize in my own life, as I strive to model the behaviours I want to see in my three children.

I will never know if my answers inspire those other parents to crack down on their own adolescents’ screen use, but I do sense a shift in their awareness of what is possible. Parents want to hear that it is never too late to revisit the rules surrounding screen time, that creating strict limits for use will help kids of all ages, and that other parents are doing this, too, even if it feels like a lonely road at times. You can pull your child back from the precipice of a phone-based life. It is not easy, but it is doable and worthwhile and, one might even say, a parent’s responsibility.

Katherine Johnson Martinko is a Canadian writer and the author of the 2023 book Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance. She writes about digital minimalism, parenting and technology in her e-mail newsletter, The Analog Family.