Parents who banned smartphone for their tweens offered this old-school option instead
Parents in Illinois are getting widespread attention for buying their third graders a thoroughly old-school present over the holidays: landline telephones. Remember those?
“For us, it’s about delaying that step as long as we can and letting [our children] enjoy real conversations before introducing all the distractions that come with screens,” Meg Kate McAlarney, mom of Maddie, 8, told People.
A TikTok post about the gifts, with a video showing Maddie happily chatting on her pink phone, has amassed over 3.3 million views on TikTok.
“I never imagined that such a simple moment would go viral, but the response showed how much people are craving nostalgia and connection,” said the mom.
McAlarney was one of several parents in Maddie’s class who had signed a “Wait Until 8th” pledge back when their kids were in first grade—promising to not get their children smartphones until they were entering high school.
It’s a pledge that’s been signed by over 140,000 parents (including Bill Gates) in the U.S. so far, says Brooke Shannon, who founded the national Wait Until 8th campaign in 2017. The guideline—which applies to smartphones only and not to basic phones like flip phones, basic tracking watches, and simple operating systems like Pinwheel—is based on advice from psychologists and internet safety leaders.
“We think this story is resonating,” says Shannon, “because it captures something many parents are quietly wrestling with: how to give kids independence and connection without handing them the full pressures of smartphones too early. The landline moment stands out because it feels both nostalgic and surprisingly practical. It shows parents looking for alternatives rather than simply saying no to technology.”
The pledge, as done through the official campaign, is anonymous until a total of 10 parents sign. Then everyone on the list will be connected, allowing them to support each other when sticking to the oath becomes challenging—which it will, considering that the average American kid gets a smartphone at the age of 10 and nearly 40% of tweens (ages 8 to 12) report using social media, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The guidance aligns with the strong beliefs of kids-and-smartphones guru Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and father of two whose best-seller The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, has become a bible of sorts among parents (including Meghan Markle and Prince Harry) distressed by the lure of smartphone technology.
“Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14),” wrote Haidt, whose latest book is The Amazing Generation, for kids and tweens.
“Millennials went through puberty with flip phones, and flip phones aren’t particularly bad. You use them just to communicate,” he once told ABC News. “It was when we gave kids smartphones, and then right around that time they also got … social media accounts. When kids move their social lives onto social media like that, it’s not human. It doesn’t help them develop. And right away, mental health collapses.”
While speaking in 2024 at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival, he added: “You do not give a child the internet in their pocket, where strangers can reach them and they can watch beheading videos.”
Haidt is known for having four basic, science-informed rules for parents to follow around smartphones:
- No smartphones before high school (the same as Wait Until 8th, which urges delaying until at least the end of eighth)
- No social media before 16 (something also encouraged by Wait Until 8th.). “Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comp and algorithmically chosen influencers,” Haidt stresses in The Anxious Generation.
- Phone-free schools—now a reality in more and more districts and states, including New York, California, and Colorado.
- Way more unsupervised play and childhood independence (in lieu of zoning out with devices).
It’s all easier to stick to, says Shannon, if parents look to others for support. “By linking arms with other parents with the Wait Until 8th pledge, families are giving their children several more years free of the distractions and dangers that come with a smartphone,” she says.
Looks like Maddie and her friends in Illinois are off to a great start.