If you’ve typed “when should kids get a phone” into a search engine recently, you’ve probably come back with a lot of confident answers. Age 10. Age 13. Never before secondary school. Wait until they can drive. The range is wide, the certainty is consistent, and the actual research underneath most of these recommendations is more complicated than the headlines suggest.
This piece isn’t going to tell you what to do. What it will do is lay out what we actually know, the questions that matter more than age, the options many parents don’t realise exist, and what to put in place if you decide the time is right.
What the research says — and what it doesn’t
The most prominent voice in the phone-age debate right now is Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist whose 2024 book The Anxious Generation argues that smartphones and social media have fundamentally harmed adolescent mental health. His case is arresting: teen mental health deteriorated sharply from around 2012 onwards — the same years smartphones became near-universal among teenagers. The pattern holds across multiple countries. For girls in particular, the timing and the scale of the decline are hard to dismiss as coincidence.
On the other side of this debate, researchers including Andrew Przybylski at Oxford and Candice Odgers have spent years scrutinising the same data and come to more cautious conclusions. Their argument isn’t that phones are harmless. It’s that the measured effects are smaller than Haidt suggests, that correlation isn’t causation, and that other pressures — academic, economic, social — could equally explain rising rates of anxiety and depression in young people.
So what does a parent do with a live scientific argument? The honest answer is: hold both sides. Something shifted in adolescent wellbeing in the early 2010s. The research community doesn’t fully agree on what caused it or how much phones contributed. What most researchers do agree on is that younger teenagers are more vulnerable than older ones, and that girls tend to be more affected than boys. A 2023 study by Sapien Labs found that mental health outcomes improved the older a child was when they received their first smartphone — the relationship held even when controlling for adverse childhood experiences.
That’s not a magic number. But it is a direction of travel.
The school phone ban context
If you’re a parent in England, this debate just became more concrete. In April 2026, the government gave statutory force to what had previously been guidance: schools are now legally required to be phone-free environments throughout the school day, including break times. The “not seen, not heard” option — where phones were permitted as long as they stayed switched off in a bag — has been removed.
What it does clarify is the expectation. From a practical standpoint, if your child’s phone will be stored or confiscated every school day anyway, the question of when to get a phone becomes somewhat decoupled from the question of keeping in touch during the day. Those are two separate things, and it’s worth treating them as such. England is also part of a broader international trend — France, Australia, and several US states have moved in similar directions, and more countries are expected to follow.
The readiness questions that matter more than age
Age is a proxy for maturity, not a measure of it. A more useful set of questions: does your child understand that what they send online can be shared? Can they handle exclusion, unkind comments, or social pressure without spiralling? Do they have a solid sense of who they are outside of what others think of them? Are they already managing their existing screen time — tablets, games consoles — reasonably well, or is that a constant source of conflict?
And then there’s the one that doesn’t appear in any research paper but comes up in almost every conversation parents actually have with each other: is your child responsible enough to carry an expensive piece of tech in their school bag every day without losing it? It sounds trivial next to the mental health questions, but it’s a real and reasonable thing to factor in. A phone that’s lost in the first month — or replaced twice in a year — is its own kind of problem.
None of these questions has a clean yes or no. But they’re more diagnostic than asking whether your child has turned a particular age.
→ This is exactly the kind of conversation The Download was built for. Our free 20-page guide covers eight technology conversations parents will have with their children — including the first phone conversation, what to say, and how to revisit it as things change. [Download it free here.]
There’s also the social context. “Everyone else has one” is simultaneously the least evidence-based argument and one of the most real pressures on a child’s day-to-day life. It’s worth separating “does my child need a smartphone” from “does my child need some way to communicate and feel connected with their peers.” Those are different problems that don’t necessarily require the same solution.
The options most parents don’t know about
The smartphone or nothing framing is false. There’s a growing range of devices that give children the ability to communicate — and parents the ability to reach them — without handing over the full internet.
Basic feature phones (often called dumb phones) do calls and texts and very little else. No app stores, no social media, no browser worth using. They’re widely available, inexpensive, and their batteries last for days. For many families, this is the whole solution for several years — and children adapt to them faster than most parents expect.
For older children who need a bit more — maps, music, messaging with friends — there are deliberately minimalist smartphones designed to exclude the addictive elements: no social media, no algorithmically driven feeds, no infinite scroll. Some let parents control exactly which apps are available and expand access gradually as trust develops.
Children’s smartwatches are sometimes floated as an option for younger children — GPS tracking, calls to approved contacts, no social media. Worth knowing, though, that many schools don’t allow them during the day for the same reason they ban phones: a watch buzzing with notifications on a child’s wrist is still a distraction, and some schools treat them exactly like phones. Check your school’s policy before going down that route.
One thing worth understanding whichever device you choose: a phone that has no mobile data plan can still access the full internet if it connects to Wi-Fi. So a “basic” device with Wi-Fi capability isn’t necessarily as restricted as it looks — it can pick up a network at home, at a friend’s house, or at any coffee shop. If you want genuine restrictions, look for devices that are specifically designed for children, where the limitations are built into the software rather than just relying on the absence of a data SIM.
If the answer is yes: what to put in place
If you decide your child is ready for a smartphone, the device should come with clear expectations from day one. A few things worth establishing before the phone arrives rather than after:
The phone is yours. Many families find it easier to maintain oversight — and to take the phone back if needed — when the child understands it’s on loan rather than a gift. It can be confiscated at any point. That’s not a threat; it’s just the arrangement.
No bedroom overnight. The evidence on sleep disruption from phones in bedrooms is about as solid as the research on smartphones gets. This boundary is worth holding.
You will check it. Not secretly — openly. The child knows you look at the phone periodically. This isn’t surveillance; it’s part of the agreement. A phone left charging in a communal area each night makes the check-in natural rather than confrontational.
Social media is a separate conversation. A smartphone at 13 is one decision. Instagram at 13 is a different one. You don’t have to grant both at the same time. Keeping them separate gives you more flexibility as things develop.
The Download has a full section on how to structure this conversation — including what to cover in a family phone agreement and how to revisit the rules as your child gets older. [Get your free copy here.]
There’s no single right answer
When should kids get a phone? The research points toward later being better than earlier, particularly for girls. The alternatives are better than most parents realise. The school context is shifting in ways that change the practical calculation. And the readiness questions — including the unglamorous one about whether your child will still have the thing in a month — matter more than the birthday.
Whatever you decide, the clearest thing the evidence supports is this: the decision itself is worth making deliberately, with a plan for what comes next, rather than defaulting to whatever age happens to feel normal in your family’s particular social circle.
Sources: Sapien Labs — 2023 Global Mind Project report on age of first smartphone and mental health Jonathan Haidt — The Anxious Generation (2024) Andrew Przybylski — research profile, Oxford Internet Institute House of Commons Library — Mobile phones in schools (England), updated April 2026 DfE — Mobile phones in schools guidance, January 2026
