Smartphone
Our daughter, who will turn twelve in September, recently received her first smartphone. According to her, she was the last in her class to get a phone at all. If I’m honest, I would have preferred to postpone this moment a little longer. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned and pathetic, I think it’s a big deal. By giving our daughter a smartphone, I have, in a way, put my own preferences aside in favor of hers. At her age, staying connected with her peers is of utmost importance, and a smartphone can serve as a tool to facilitate that.
Chilling
Of course, we have made clear agreements about smartphone use. For now, she does not take it to school—unless she has plans with friends afterward. Last week, she arranged to “chill” with some classmates on the schoolyard after school. She was supposed to message me when she headed home. However, shortly after school, she called to ask if she could go to another nearby schoolyard instead. Naturally, I had no problem with that. In fact, I really appreciated that she checked in with me first.
Social Media Apps
Aside from WhatsApp and Signal, our daughter does not have any social media apps like Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram on her phone—and she won’t be getting them either. My wife and I are very firm on that. It helps that we don’t use social media ourselves, aside from the aforementioned messaging apps. That makes it much easier to protect her from the negative effects of such platforms. Another agreement we have is that I occasionally check her messaging apps with her. The main goal is to help her navigate any questions she may have about how her friends communicate. It is not intended as a way to pry into every detail of her online social life.
A Hand-Me-Down
Naturally, our daughter would have loved to receive the latest iPhone. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t an option. She got my wife’s five-year-old iPhone 11, while my wife replaced it with a refurbished iPhone 14. These days, you can get very cheap mobile plans, but we still opted for a prepaid SIM card—and one without a data bundle. She can make and receive calls and send text messages, but that’s it. At least, unless she has access to Wi-Fi, in which case she can use apps that require data. So far, she is perfectly fine with the conditions we’ve set for her smartphone use. Whether that will still be the case when she starts secondary school next year remains to be seen.
A Gray Area
When I asked her at bedtime what she had enjoyed most about that day when she met up with her friends, she didn’t have to think twice: the freedom to “chill” with her friends after school. Just after four, she called to say she was on her way home—well before the agreed time of five o’clock. She may be entering her teenage years, but she is well aware that she needs to stick to agreements. However, when it comes to screen time, things have become one big gray area since she got her smartphone. Every spare moment, I see her fiddling with that thing. I hope that once the novelty wears off, her usage will naturally decrease.
My First Smartphone… Also a Hand-Me-Down
I bought my first prepaid mobile phone in 1997 when I moved out of my parents’ house to study in Maastricht. I had found a nice little apartment just across the border in Belgium and didn’t want to be tied to the monthly costs of a landline. My first smartphone, much like my daughter’s, was a hand-me-down from my wife. My current smartphone is an iPhone XR, which I bought new in December 2018 for €432. At the time, I thought that was a lot of money for a phone. Now, the latest iPhone model costs over €1,000 more. If you want extra storage, you’re looking at nearly €2,000—for a phone. Ridiculous!
A New Phase in Life
Giving our daughter a smartphone feels like the start of a new phase in her life. I hope she enjoys the convenience and benefits of having one but that it doesn’t end up controlling her life, as it does for so many people. As a stay-at-home dad, I still have a lot of oversight, but that grip will inevitably loosen over time. Hopefully, by the time I have to let go completely, I will have taught her the basics of healthy and responsible smartphone use.