A new Pew Research Center survey reveals what many parents already know: the question of when kids should get their first smartphone involves navigating safety concerns, social pressures, and structural realities. In the same way that menarche, the first period, is a key milestone for kids with uteruses, I think we need a term like smartphonearche for the Acquisition of a Kid’s First Smartphone: an increasingly fraught milestone that marks a child's entry into independent digital life.
When do parents think kids should get their first phones?
In a 2025 Pew survey, most parents (68%) say children should be at least 12 before having a smartphone. But opinions vary significantly by race and household income. The parents most likely to say it’s acceptable before age 12 are Black (44%), lower-income (36%), Hispanic (28%), or some combination.
In contrast, fewer than one in four parents say smartphone ownership is acceptable before age 12 if they’re white (22%), middle-income (21%), upper-income (18%), Asian (17%), or some combination. Movements like Wait Until Eighth, which ask parents to pledge to avoid smartphones until eighth grade, have built traction in these communities. There are several parallels between Wait Until Eighth, on one hand, and True Love Waits, purity rings, and other 90s-era celibacy pledges for teens, on the other: both frame access and experience as corrupting, neither attends to developmental readiness, scaffolding, and structural factors, and both place responsibility on individual restraint.
Do these groups of parents have different values or just face different structural realities?
Why these differences between families? I suspect the answer lies in structural realities, not different parenting values.
As this figure from the Pew survey illustrates, 92% of parents whose children have smartphones cite the ability to contact their child as a reason—81% call it a major reason. Children in lower-income households are statistically less likely to be driven to school, more likely to navigate public transportation, and more likely to have parents working multiple jobs with variable schedules. When a child is taking the bus home and letting themselves into an empty home, a smartphone isn't a luxury—it's a safety tool.
The data on other reasons—entertainment (85%), learning (69%), calming (43%), and social inclusion (30%)—show parents across demographics trying to meet their kids’ needs within real constraints. Alternatives to smartphones that offer communication without social media have similar downsides (costing hundreds of dollars, requiring monthly fees for cell connections) and may be less likely than smartphones to grow with the child into high school.
This brings us to a painful reality the survey highlights: perceived judgment about screen time falls unevenly.
Who feels judged—and why it matters
Asian and Hispanic parents are more likely than Black and White parents to report feeling judged for how they manage screen time—48% of Asian parents and 41% of Hispanic parents say this, compared to 30% of Black parents and 29% of White parents. Mothers are more likely than fathers to report feeling judged (38% versus 27%).
Why? When dominant cultural narratives about "good parenting" assume resources many families don't have—parents without workforce responsibilities, reliable transportation, neighborhoods where kids can safely be unreachable—parents navigating different realities face both practical challenges and social judgment. This is what happens when we frame a systemic challenge as an individual parenting failure. However, I’m awaiting more research to understand why Black parents report perceiving judgements at similar rates as white parents.
When I read about parents feeling judged for their kids’ early smartphonarche or ill-defined “too much screen time”, I have to ask: why is this all on parents? What’s the role of school policies in kids’ digital environments?
A missing puzzle piece: Schools
My kids can't access YouTube without adult supervision at home, but they can watch YouTube Kids on school-owned Chromebooks and iPads during “homework time” at their afterschool program several days a week. I can’t change any settings on those devices; the school or the district controls them.
Rita Moreno raises her opera glasses to better view the porn playing on her character’s grandson’s laptop
I don't feel guilty about it because it's outside my control, but it reveals a critical gap in our conversations about smartphonearche. When schools provide device access without consistent oversight, when afterschool programs rely on screens for supervision, and when cafeterias become spaces where kids encounter content their parents have restricted, this is no longer up to individual families.
When we focus on the parents who opt into early smartphonearche and ignore kids’ digital environments outside their homes, are we missing the forest for the trees?
Remember playing Snake on your TI-83?
If we're going to have meaningful conversations about kids’ technology use, we need, among other things:
transparency about what kids access on school-provided devices and a voice in those decisions
to examine what kids are using their smartphones for—and how they’re using school-issued devices intended for educational purposes
to understand whether and how smartphones, tablets, and laptops have similar and different effects on kids’ health
to understand how peer smartphonearche influences kids’ digital environments, even for kids who have no phones of their own (yet?)
Beyond “bad parents” choosing early smartphonearche
Delaying smartphonearche is likely insufficient—and may be unnecessary—for supporting kids’ health, while the benefits of earlier smartphonarche (for communication, entertainment, learning, calming, and yes, even social inclusion) may be worth the cost, particularly in some family and neighborhood contexts.
The age of smartphonearche will continue to vary because families' needs vary. That's not a problem to solve through judgment—it's a reality to support through better infrastructure and more honest conversations about where responsibility actually lies.