Parents want clear age guidelines for kids and smartphones

Parents in the Netherlands would like clear age standards for when to let their kids have smartphones and use social media, according to a survey by research platform Pointer. Many parents who have already given their children their own smartphones later regretted that decision.

PanelClix surveyed a representative group of over 1,200 parents with kids between the ages of 8 and 18. Over 1,000 of the parents have already given their children their own smartphones, typically around the age of 11. In retrospect, about a third would have waited longer.

Parents’ biggest concerns are social media’s influence on their child’s mental health and social skills. Excessive screen time also often leads to arguments in the family. Almost half of respondents worry that their child is addicted. A third of parents who have given their child a smartphone worry about their child seeing content that they are too young for. An equally large group worries about what their child does online or who they interact with.

83 percent of children are active on social media. Only 20 parents said that their children rarely or never spend too much time on social media. Over half of children spend between 1 and 3 hours a day on their phones, excluding for school and homework use. Two-thirds of kids sometimes, often, or always have trouble putting their phones away.

Two months ago, the Dutch parent movement Smartphonevrij Opgroeien (Growing Up Smartphone Free) launched. It has since gathered thousands of parents in 180 school WhatsApp groups where they discuss how they want to deal with smartphones for their children. “If you work together to remove peer pressure for your children and continue to support each other in this, it will help enormously to prevent screen hassle,” initiator Thekla Reuten told Pointer.

The researchers found that parents with young children would be very interested in such initiatives. A large majority of those whose kids do not yet have a smartphone would prefer to postpone the moment and are open to negotiating with other parents about this. 72 percent of this group favor a legal age limit of 15 for social media. A majority of parents whose kids already have smartphones also support a 15 years age limit for social media.