I thought I would be the parent who signed up for the “Wait Until 8th” campaign [*meaning: No smartphones until eighth grade] and hold out on getting my son a phone. I dreaded my middle schooler having access to the internet and social media. We got my son his first Apple watch in sixth grade after most friends received their brand-new iPhones as fourth grade graduation gifts.
The Apple watch didn’t have great service in our already not-great-serviced town. The battery ran low, and sometimes, we often missed messages.
Unfortunately, the reality ultimately hit once all the kids had phones, and the parents stopped making social plans for them. Children were only included in plans if they owned their own phones.
For our son’s twelfth birthday, we bought him an iPhone SE. However, he was mortified at the prospect of going to school with a phone that still had a home button (even though my husband and I both still have home buttons), so he used his own money to upgrade to an iPhone 12.
Trying to be very responsible adults, our whole family read First Phone by Catherine Pearlman (which I highly recommend). He took a quiz on phone etiquette and safety, signed a contract, and agreed to weekly phone checks.
Multiple scenarios were talked through, running the gambit of appropriate and inappropriate conversations, interactions of a sexual nature – especially with strangers/predators, cyberbullying, and more. Once we felt comfortable, he got a TikTok account, and a few months before he turned 13, we allowed him to get Snapchat.
One scenario we didn’t think of was being hacked or scammed. The day came when someone on Snapchat who he “didn’t know” had gotten hacked and reached out to him to log out of his account and asked for his password because they were in trouble. Without thinking, my son did it and was immediately hacked. All of my son’s contacts were messaged in an attempt to collect money and keep this pyramid scheme of a scam going. The hacker got my son’s phone number and sent constant threatening messages. The entire week was a total mess.
This got me remembering the early times in my early adult life when I’d been vulnerable to a scam; thinking of a 13-year-old going through that seems so unfair for them to have to navigate, yet this is the world we live in.
Given all of the above, you’d think I’d hold out until my daughter was married and maybe get her a smartphone as a wedding gift. I will try to marry the best of both worlds regarding my daughter getting a phone.
While I now believe more strongly than ever against social media influencing my child’s life earlier than necessary, with my daughter going into fourth grade, I am doing a 360 and now want to be one of the first ones to get her a phone.
