Ultimately, the decision to delay a smartphone until 8th grade is rooted in promoting a child's holistic development and ensuring they have the tools and maturity to navigate the digital world responsibly. As parents, it's crucial to prioritize our children's long-term wellbeing over short-term convenience, and initiatives like the Wait Until 8th Pledge provide valuable support in making informed and mindful choices for our families.

As a general rule, no more than two hours per day is recommended for screen-based recreational activities.

Maintain the boundary, bur remember you are doing so because your child doesn’t yet have this impulse-control skill. (They are not bad kids!) This might require putting the controller somewhere your child can’t reach or find.

GOOD NEWS! There is no better time to get people to agree to what you want, than when you're handing them a shiny new toy. Remember, even though you’re starting with a contract spelling out how things should go, your job isn’t done.

When your child comes to you asking to join one of these photo- and video-driven social media platforms, take the opportunity to talk with them about what research and real-life experience brings to light with a pros and cons list.

Algorithms show you content that the apps and companies think you will be interested in. This can mean that you are also more likely to see content that matches your own opinions about the world, rather than videos or posts that show a balanced range of views and different perspectives.

Will you unfollow, mute, unsubscribe, or otherwise limit or avoid consuming this type of content?

All experts recommend talking about porn with a child as soon as they have a device with access to the internet.

If you’re noticing your child is on a screen more than you’d like, you should initiate a conversation to understand what’s going on. You could say this:

The later the age at which these young adults first got a phone or tablet that they could carry with them in childhood, the better their mental wellbeing as adults.

Unplugging for a full day each week is a punk-rock reaction to our always-on, 24/7 world. It makes the world wait while we do what we want. It’s totally freeing, and totally free.

As digital use has increased, time spent face-to-face has decreased. With heads bowed over devices, our kids are missing out on what makes us human, our connection to each other.

Two theories explaining the drastic decline of teen mental health since 2012 are 1) the reduction in face-to-face time with peers and 2) their lack of independence.

Perhaps most important of all, set limits- with everything. This is what their overexuberant brains can’t do for themselves.

I’m not doing as good of a job at being ‘unplugged’ as I’d like, especially in the afternoon and evening hours when I’m with the kids.