Middle School Cell Phones: What's the real story?
During the pandemic many of our kids developed a pretty significant dependency on social media to maintain connection with their friends. AS they have returned to school, it has not been easy to ween them off these devices. In fact, the very idea of being separated from their devices sends them into tailspins.
There's a lot of FOMO, it seems there's a belief that there is a notification or message that is paramount to their social standing every second of the day. This is such an issue that my kid is trying to convince me that he is the only 8th grader on the planet who has to turn his phone in at night and that my restrictions are criminal. He believes that ALL of his friends have access to social media throughout the night and that he is being left out. Moreover, he is embarrassed because he thinks he looks like a little kid to his friends. I simply do not believe there's an all-hours party line. Even if it is true, he'll never be one of those kids. But it does make me curious.
WHAT do other parents do? Maybe the information would help us make informed decisions about how we manage social media. I am not interested in casting judgment, and I'm not interested in consensus parenting, but I would have more resolve if I knew 60% of the 8th-grade parents imposed similar restrictions. I make my kids turn in their phones at 10. It's more relaxed on the weekend. Maybe 40% of kids had no weekday access at all? Do you limit certain types of apps? contacts? hours? Do you use screentime? Are you tempted to drop your kid's phone in a bucket of water and then claim ignorance of why it's not working? What's the real story?
Parent Replies
I have an 8th grade boy and 6th grade girl. The 6th grader does NOT have a phone. She has access at home to a shared i-device that she uses on home wifi to text her friends. She knows perfectly that we don't allow its use after dinner or before breakfast (!). Her friends have been known to text very late at night. The 8th grade boy has a phone that he uses strictly for communication purposes (doesn't have Safari) with parents, grandma, and one or two friends. No problem not texting at night; we don't need to take it away because usually it never came out of his backpack. But we'd have no problem holding him to the same common standard (no phones between dinner and breakfast).
For all of us interested in those questions and more ~ this is why we put together this event: a screen of "Screenagers" + community conversation. Hoping kids & their grownups will watch together as a springboard for discussion.
Kids & Parents/Guardians who are trying to talk with each other about
Cell phones/Internet access/games/TikTok/screen time/Aaaahhh!
Please join our “Screenagers” screening & discussion group
Friday, March 25, 2022, 6:45-9:00 PM, on Zoom
How do we know when our kids are ready for a cell phone? With data? How do we keep our kids safe in the wildlands of the Internet? Why don’t my parents understand that I need this? That I’m missing out?
We don’t have the answers! But we have each other! All Berkeley middle schoolers and their families, are invited to watch “Screenagers” and join a community conversation about social media, phones, gaming, screen time and navigating our complicated digital lives.
6:45 zoom room opens
6:50-8 showing of Screenagers
8:05-9 community conversation
This is an online event on zoom. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/ScreenagersBPL
Families can join us to watch the movie together before the community conversation, OR watch on your own at home during the week leading up to the event, OR come for the conversation and then watch the movie afterwards. All families that register will receive a link from which they can watch on-demand any time between March 18 and April 1.
We encourage middle schoolers to watch the movie and attend the discussion with their grown-ups. This will be a peer-moderated event and middle schoolers will be placed into breakout rooms with their family. Thank you to The Friends of the Berkeley Public Library for sponsoring this event!
My 8th grader doesn't have a cell phone. She had a light phone (just does text and phone basically) from around 6-7th grade. She never really charged or used it. So when the credit card it was linked to was cancelled we just never renewed the plan. She did complain that it wasn't a "real phone" and has been saying she thinks she will need a "real phone" (i.e. smart phone) for high school. The past month or so she does some gchat texting with her friends after school.
Your phone rules sound super permissive to me. But as context, I took my kids out of BUSD to avoid "remote schooling" and the Waldorf school they are at now discourages this type of tech use. One of the things I hadn't previously appreciated about this approach is that there is far less FOMO pressure from the friend cohort around the phone. So we are probably one end of the spectrum here. My daughter has described other kids (not from that school) as being unable to carry on a conversation that doesn't relate to memes or youtube videos, and also categorized some of the kids on her soccer team as the kind of kids who are always on their phones. So I can definitely see that your kid may feel left out of conversations if they haven't been on the device watching whatever the rest of them are talking about. My daughter hasn't said so directly but I infer this may be why she wants a "real phone" for high school, along with the general sense that it's a sign of maturity. And so she can play dumb phone games.
Anyway, it is absolutely not the case that all 8th grade kids have phones at all hours although certainly many of them do. I read an article recently about a parent who offered their kid $1000 or something for staying off social media until they were 18. And that worked for them. Also, FWIW if I had this issue (and maybe I will next year) I would show my kid some research on screen time negatively correlated with x, y and z. And explain to them that I'm going to be guided by this data and not by what other kids/parents are doing. Also maybe get a phone with poor battery life and keep a limited supply of charger (or yes, drop it in a bucket of water). And if you know the parents of the other kids I would reach out and try to get a consensus to keep the kids off the phones after a certain time. They may not realize their kids on the phones at all hours.
You can tell your kid he's lucky I'm not his mother or he wouldn't have a phone at all :) It is way easier to not have one than to try to limit usage. Good luck!
Fellow 8th grade parent, here.
Our child received their first phone the summer before 8th grade. We insist on knowing what their password is to unlock the phone and will check it at random.
The phone is to be turned in (placed in the kitchen) at 8:30 each night. Thankfully they are not at all interested in social media, so have no accounts (which I realize puts them in a very tiny percentage of teens, but I’m extremely grateful for it).
Good luck. This is NOT easy.
I never had any rules with phones or screens for my child. I felt it was important that she learn to self regulate, and I was ready to step in with rules if needed, rather than start off with rules and restrictions that may not be necessary. She had several nights when she didn't get enough sleep due to staying up late on her phone, as well as having stayed up too late doing homework because she was distracted by her phone. She quickly learned from these instances and now, as a successful senior in college, she has long known when to put her phone in a different room or turn off notifications.
When my son was in 8th grade (three years ago) he said exactly what your son said: EVERY kid has a phone, he will be left out, I’m destroying his chance to make friends, etc.
So at the open house in the Fall, when all the parents in my kid’s class were sitting together, I raised my hand, told them that my kid said all of their kids have phones in their rooms all night, and asked if this was true. All the parents simultaneously burst into laughter. It turned out no parents let their kid have a phone overnight and 50% of their kids didn’t even have a phone at all and weren’t going to be allowed one until high school.
My kid, now a sophomore in high school, is still required to hand in his phone by 10:00. It may actually be true by now that he’s missing out on some things but we have learned by trial and error that he is simply not capable of turning the phone off and going to sleep. Every time we give him a chance he emerges in the morning with dark circles under his eyes, so exhausted he is barely able to get himself dressed and out the door.
Your mileage may vary; some kids can handle a phone and some can’t. But I would guess it’s extremely unlikely that your kid’s story about what everyone else gets to do is accurate.
My 9th grader at Oakland Tech has to plug her phone overnight in our dining room. Bedroom is for sleeping, and she's ok with that.
I'm having problems similar to yours. My daughter, who is also in 8th grade insists that she is the only person she knows who has any phone restrictions at all. I use Screen Time and our iphones are set up so I'm the parent and she's the child. I also use Find My Iphone to check her location. Although her use of apps is cut off at 10 each night, she can still text. Even with these controls, she tantrums every morning when I wake her up to go to school and she constantly begs me to give her more screen time. She doesn't always turn in her school assignments and I'm worried because she starts high school in the fall.
We made a rule when our kid got her phone: no cell phones in the bedroom. That includes our phones -- if you're on social media or texting late at night, it's harder to tell your kid not to. Our daughter is now 16, and we all still more-or-less follow this rule. Some acquaintances with kids her age put all the phones on the charger at night, so no access. One uses this as an opportunity to rummage through her kid's phone because she doesn't trust her kid -- maybe not a great idea, if you think kids need respect of their privacy, but then I don't have her kid.
Berkeley High's cell phone policy reflects a study showing that an accessible cell phone, even when turned off, is a powerful distraction. I believe that even having the phone in the room could interfere with sleep. We've never restricted apps or websites, because we trust our kid, plus all that monitoring would be a lot of work. Her computer lives in the dining room (no TVs or computers in the bedroom, either), so we at least have that degree of oversight.
Hi there,
I have a seventh grade daughter and have the same rule. No electronics (phone, iwatch, or computer) in her room after 9pm. All items are charged on our dinner table overnight. She has also told me that this is completely insane and she's the only person in the world who can't use her phone overnight, but I know that's not the case. We also limit her social apps. She does have a tiktok, but no other social media. I have access to all her accounts and her phone password as well. Navigating all this new territory is hard and I feel more comfortable limiting her use and access and being able to log in as her and see what she sees.
I have a 7th grade girl. She got her first phone the summer before 7th grade - an old iphone that used to belong to me.
Our rules are: zero social media at least until high school. She does not have accounts on anything, other than iMessage and an email address. (Friends do share things like tiktok posts and youtube videos with her via text/imessage. But sometimes she can't see those because of the screen time restrictions we impose. More on that below.)
We have lots and lots of screen time restrictions in place on her phone. It has almost zero apps, and she cannot download any apps without our approval. She doesn't even have safari, so no web browser on her phone. Basically, we set it up so that she can use it for communication via phone call, text and facetime. She also uses it to listen to podcasts. We genuinely are OK with her connecting "live" with her friends on facetime/phone as much as she wants. But the texting app has time limits. I think right now it's 45 mins a day. Occasionally (especially on weekends), she has to ask for extra time. But mostly 45 mins is enough.
We also have downtime restrictions enabled, so her phone is basically a brick between 8 pm and 8 am. So we don't take it away, but it doesn't function at night. Very occasionally, she asks us to make an exception, usually to text a friend to coordinate some logistics for something happening the following day. But generally no phone use after 8 pm.
Hope this info is helpful!
You are not unreasonable or alone in your restrictions. I have a 10th grader. I limit his Instagram access to 30 minutes per day (this was after finding some inappropriate direct messages on it--may increase this with time if he uses it appropriately). He doesn't have accounts on other social media platforms, and if I could turn back time, I would probably not allow Instagram.
I turn off other games and internet searches at 6:30pm every night--this is when we eat dinner. These things all stay off all night. He does have access to a photo editing app in the evening and to text messages (but he's not terribly social, so messaging was never a problem--if it were, I would limit this off too). The phone stays in the living room at night. I'm sure this is stricter than many of his friends, but if we didn't do this, he would be on the phone 24/7. I actually think he's happier with these restrictions, even though he would say that he's not. It helps avoid power struggles as well--he gets the warning from the phone that the apps are about to close, and then they close. It's not me nagging him to tell him to put the phone down and come to dinner.
My experience with this is a little outdated as my youngest is about to graduate from high school. We were of the mindset that our kids had no reason for cell phones until high school and, once they did have phones, they had to be turned in to us about an hour before they went to bed. I heard all the arguments about needing the phone as an alarm, no one else’s parents were so strict, they wouldn’t be using it but wanted it nearby, etc. I knew that their friend’s parents had a variety of ways to deal (or not deal) with the social media obsession but we stood firm that our kids had no reason for phones while they were supposed to be sleeping. As they got older, rules were relaxed. I’m not sure they would thank us now for setting this boundary but I still contend it’s what was best for our family.
Our teens got phones in 8th grade. We did not allow ANY SM accounts. Now DD is almost 18 and we let her get TIkTok and Insta - but she cannot post on them. DS doesn't care about any SM at all. Phones go to bed when they do - phones get charged in another room. After school and on the weekends they are pretty much on them if they are home, watching Netflix, Hulu and stuff on YouTube. We made them sign and stick to house rules which include no photos to friends of any kind, no swearing in any texts, and we can look at them anytime, which we sometimes do. It's never a struggle, and they put them away when we ask for meals or to talk. Not allowed out when we go out together for a hike, etc. -we model this for them and keep ours away too. It's about good communication with them as they grow. I think the biggest thing we did to help was block SM - our daughter's friends post all kinds of crazy stuff and there's so much SM drama - our kid is happy and mentally healthy not having to worry about likes, shares and other SM crap. Good luck!
I am really happy to see that from reading all these replies, most families have restrictions on screen time, with positive results! We have similar rules: phones and laptops plugged in overnight at the family charging station. Our high school senior has a 11:30 cutoff at night, and high school freshman has a 10:00 cutoff. And yes, they say all their friends have more freedom than they do, so I'm happy to see here that many other parents enforce similar rules.