I have a 13 year old son and an 11 year old daughter. They don’t own any electronic devices, but they have tablets at school. We made a parent pact at school and we are committed to delay smartphones until 16, as Spanish pediatricians recommend. This has worked very well until now, but we perceive next year our son may be the only one not owning a smartphone. Nevertheless, we are happy because the parent pact helped us a lot during these 2 years of secondary school, and we are certain that when our youngest reaches that grade, many more children will be free of smartphones, as the pact is now more widely accepted.

At home we have a family tablet and a video games device that my children use when allowed. Normally they don’t use any of those during weekdays, except for a quick consultation of information. We watch a family movie on Wednesdays and during the weekend they are allowed to watch or play on their own for a certain time.

I would be happier if they spent less time during the weekends, as they spend 1.5 to 2 hours after lunch and another 2 hours after dinner on Saturdays and Sundays, as we fight to stop when the established time comes. All the supervision this requires, keeping an eye on times and content, causes us a lot of stress.

It also causes us a lot of frustration when our oldest brings the tablet home from school for homework. With our youngest, we’ve managed to avoid having her bring it home, for now, after we parents promoted a survey of families and discussed it with the administration.

We truly believe we made these decisions in a timely manner, since we’ve been discussing these issues with them since they were young and have given them the information they need to understand the risks, but they struggle to put down their devices when it’s time to stop, and, in fact, it’s practically the only thing we fight about at home.

Our children understand why we don’t let them use it anymore and why we don’t give them their own smartphone and they don’t persistently ask for one, since we talk a lot about these issues, but the environment around us doesn’t make it easy for us.

I have a son of 18 and a daughter of 15. My husband is very low tech (WhatsApp was until recently the pinnacle of his social media experience!) but prone to getting addicted to games on his phone! Before the Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) movement, we had already chosen to delay smartphones until high school. They got Instagram in Grade 8 (the start of South African high school) and Snapchat in Grade 10 when they turned 16. No TikTok, for which both of them are glad, having seen how it has captured the time and attention of their peers. From the start we had a no phones in bedrooms at night rule, they are charged in a family charging station in our bathroom. During exam time, they delete their social media apps. I have to remind the whole family that phones are not invited to family TV time!

I had a gut feel that getting access to smartphones and social media too early was not just detrimental to their development, but was downright dangerous. My son was exposed to online pornography at a friend’s house, aged 9. We treated it like a silver lining, and it was. It opened up all sorts of conversations and embedded our resolve to manage tech rather than it managing us. Having said that, my son was the victim of an attempted sextortion in Grade 9, aged 15, despite all the talking and checking in. Again, the silver lining was that the first person he phoned was me, and we worked through it together and learnt a lot from it. I have worked hard to test options available for South African families, routers, third-party parental controls, built-in apps, and have applied all possible layers of protection as a back up. The reality is that none of these are foolproof. I have come to the conclusion that the devices themselves should have a minimum age restriction, whether 16, 18, or 25 when the prefrontal cortex has matured, I am not sure!

I was a lone voice back in the 2010s and felt like a strict, Victorian parent whose views were not shared by many others! I wish the SFC and related movements had been around then.

Apart from my husband’s phone, kept on for safety reasons, all phones stay in the kitchen when we sleep. Our 17-year-old twin boys do not take their phones to their bedrooms when studying, and their phones are unusable during school hours. They got Snapchat at 16 and have no other social media except for WhatsApp. We do have a weekly shared viewing as a family, something we watch together.

The hardest challenge is the amount of laptop schoolwork they have. It’s exceptionally hard to control internet surfing instead of homework. That said, our children are mature enough to know that if they have an exam they will not pass it by surfing the net. We have to trust them, and they are doing well.

What we wish we’d known earlier is to ask what level of technology a school uses. How much edtech, what devices children bring, how integrated phones and laptops become as they get older.

My husband and I come from entirely different worlds. I work in healthcare, raised with open spaces and freedom. He is an academic in AI and STEM education, raised in highly competitive, urban Hong Kong. Bridging these distinct backgrounds makes for vibrant dinner “conversation.” Yet, his research and our lived experience have helped us find agreement that a childhood grounded in pen-to-paper learning, real-world experience, and boredom is the best preparation for a digital future. Devices don’t teach essential skills like resilience, teamwork, and creativity. They crowd them out.

Our absolute non-negotiable is sleep. Everything gets easier when that’s protected. Our son doesn’t have a smartphone, just a flip phone and a school computer used strictly for homework or occasional video calls. We believe that building a healthy relationship with tech is a challenge for us all and we face it as a family. We all keep devices out of bedrooms and enforce a screen-free hour before bed. We also try to model the balance we believe is appropriate. We try to show the value of connection and family time over screens by reading side by side, playing board games, or taking evening dog walks without our phones.

We talk with our son often about the digital world, treating it as an ongoing conversation rather than a lecture. Honestly, we wish we’d started even earlier than age six or seven, when we finally woke up to this after COVID.

The hardest part now isn’t him; it’s the mismatch around us. It can be awkward explaining to friends why our house runs differently. With secondary school ahead, the pressure is mounting. For him, the pull isn’t really about the device itself; it’s about not wanting to be the one who can’t coordinate plans with everyone else.

Before considering a smartphone, we want to see that he can balance his basic needs (sleep, exercise, and real connection), treating the phone as a tool rather than the point. He’s happy for now, so we’re in no rush.

We aren’t immune to rough weeks, like any family in a saturated digital society. What’s changed is that we’re navigating it together, out loud, instead of pretending it isn’t happening.

Our children are 11, 10, and 6 years old. We have one TV in the living room that the whole family shares, and one PC for the kids. The PC is password-protected, and only the adults know the password. Whenever the kids want to use it, they ask us first and explain what they plan to do. We don’t have strict screen time rules, but in practice our 11- and 10-year-olds use the computer once or twice a week for about 20 minutes each, usually to work on Canva or play a game. Our 6-year-old doesn’t use the computer yet.

The kids usually watch TV together for about 30 minutes a day before dinner, always in the living room. I supervise what they watch. YouTube is not allowed unless they ask for permission to watch a specific video. On weekends, they usually watch about an hour of TV together in the morning. Once a month, we have a family movie night on Friday. On the other Fridays, the three kids watch a movie together.

We decided not to have iPads or video game consoles because we knew the daily negotiations around screen time would be difficult for us to manage. None of our kids has a smartphone. They each have a smartwatch that can only make and receive calls with their parents, which they use when commuting home on the public bus. Overall, this setup has worked well for our family. Because there are so few devices, there are fewer discussions about screen time, and technology doesn’t play such a central role in our daily routine. Our oldest does love to play Brawl Stars on my cellphone, though, so sometimes he asks and I let him play for 15 minutes (no strict rules for that).

Keep it simple. The fewer screens you have to manage, the easier family life becomes. One challenge we still face is YouTube. Occasionally the kids find ways to watch it without our permission, and that’s something I find difficult because I’m strongly against unrestricted YouTube access for children. My 10 year old daughter asked to be part of some group chats on my phone, and I regret letting her join. I think they’re still too young to manage group conversations responsibly.

When our first daughter was born, we had a TV screen, a desktop, a laptop, and two smartphones. We bought her a tablet for her first birthday. This sounded wise, until she could not calm down without a video in the background. With time, she could not sleep, play, or interact without some form of video in the background. All along we used these gadgets for entertainment, communication, and work or study. Screens became the main thing in the house. With six gadgets it was good, till it wasn’t anymore.

Unwittingly, we handed over the gadget but took the attention away. She could not eat or play with other children. All she needed was her mother and the gadget held in her hands. This became problematic. As her peers got more independent, she got more dependent on the screens.

We learnt the hard way. When our second daughter came, we had moved and had no TV, and personal gadgets, from experience, became a no go zone for both girls. Most importantly, we bought skates and board games. We see them wanting to play with our gadgets, but the rules have since changed, and they only hold them to hand them over when there are calls. We also agreed never to use screens to replace our attention and affection. We take time out, go to the field, and skate.

We thought it was love when we first had our child and handed her the screens. We think this was a mistake and would not advise it. Social media and modern parenting is a big challenge, for people seem to be in an echo chamber, copy pasting parenting without considering each child’s and parent’s abilities and uniqueness. It is a struggle, but based on experience, we now know better. Our daughters do not need the screens. No screens, we take time out to enjoy nature, skate, and play games together.

Our weekdays, Monday through Thursday, are screen-free, dedicated instead to chores, reading, and creativity, with screens reserved only for homework or a quick round of GeoGuessr. Because our kids carry basic Nokia phones instead of smartphones, they travel independently across Switzerland. Instead of sitting with poor posture staring at a screen, they are actively reading train schedules, catching connections, chatting on the bus, and watching the world go by. Like most parents, we initially assumed a smartphone was just the inevitable next step. Discovering that basic phones were still a viable option, and finding a community to back us up, is what gave us the confidence to say “not yet.”

What we wish we’d known earlier is that there is no single “right” way to do this. Every family has their own boundaries, whether they are navigating smartphones, social media, or AI. There are so many different levels to these topics, and that’s why having a community like this is so vital. It’s a space to exchange perspectives without judgment, and the updates are a quick way to keep our family educated.