Parents and Teens Regret Early Smartphone Use, New Study Finds
Every parent of tweens or teens will likely hear these words at some point: “When can I have a phone? All my friends have them!” Countless parents have given in to this line, putting internet-connected devices into their child’s hands—often devices with no meaningful parental controls—all because of social pressure. They think that if they don’t, their child will be an outcast or just left behind the techno curve.
If that’s you, and you’re thinking of giving in, there are some facts you should know. First and foremost, many parents say they regret giving their kids smartphones and tablets, while almost none say they regret not giving them these devices.
Writing recently in The New York Times, psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, together with Will Johnson and Zach Rausch, described their findings in a national survey of parents and teens. Almost a third of parents whose children have access to social media, and nearly a quarter whose children have smartphones, say that with the benefit of hindsight, they gave them these things too young. By contrast, just 1% of parents said they wish they’d given their kids social media and smartphones earlier. In other words: “Parents regret the technologies they gave, not the technologies they withheld.”
Incredibly, kids who grew up with smart devices feel the same regret about technology, if anything more strongly than their parents. In their previous survey conducted by Harris Poll, Haidt and colleagues found that 30% of Gen Z adults agreed with the statement, “I had access to smartphones too early in life.” Over a third said the same about social media. 45% of Gen Z respondents said they would not allow their own children to have smartphones before high school. And half of Gen Z wished platforms like TikTok and X didn’t exist.
Consider these numbers and marvel at how many parents still fall prey to the “all my friends have a phone” argument. The “widespread feelings of entrapment and regret” Haidt and colleagues discovered among parents and children show that this line is effective, however false and misguided. Instead of giving in to such pressure, parents need to take findings like these seriously and learn to parent according to what’s ultimately good for our children, not just what will make them happy or shut them up.
As comedian Jimmy Carr pointed out, giving your kids everything they ask for right away isn’t being kind. If you give them McDonald’s, ice cream, TV, and video games every time they ask, you’ll end up with (in his words) “fat, stupid kids.” In my experience, if you don’t give your kids boundaries, they’ll run out into traffic, and then you’ll have no kids.
The alternative, Carr said, is to be kind to your children’s potential—to the people they can and will become, and to encourage exercise and a good diet and plenty of sleep and good grades. And, we can now add, to say “not yet” when they come asking for a smartphone.
One of the most important steps in taking and maintaining this countercultural stand is to build a counterculture—in other words, to find other families who will hold off on smartphones with you. It’s not an easy task. Haidt and his co-authors found that 55% of parents say their children were the primary users of a smartphone by age 12. And almost 40% of parents who had given their kids phones and 54% who had let them open social media accounts “would have preferred to wait but felt they had to give in because so many of their children’s friends already had one.”
A solution? Make friends who don’t have one. Share this information with other parents. Encourage those at church, your coworkers, and your extended family to take seriously the research on smartphone regret. Building peer groups committed to what Haidt calls a “play-based childhood,” insisting your school or co-op enforce a phone ban, and surrounding your kids with peers who aren’t hunched over digital devices are sure ways of turning peer pressure to your advantage.
And maybe most importantly, understand where that regret, which pollsters are discovering, comes from. It comes from the early and devastating exposure to pornography, the crippling body image issues, the online bullying, the compulsive scrolling and dopamine addiction, and the resulting neglect of real-life experiences. It’s social contagions like transgenderism. It’s manipulative AI girlfriends and boyfriends.
All of these dark influences are literally a tap away from your child’s mind and heart, the moment you hand them a smartphone. So...don’t! The solution is that straightforward. They’ll have plenty of years in adulthood to scroll. The research, even from secular sources, is becoming clearer on this by the day. And as those invested not only in the earthly health of our kids, but in their eternal and spiritual wellbeing, it’s up to us parents to love them in the long term and not merely give in to the demands of the moment. If polls are any guide, they’ll probably thank you later.
Photo Courtesy: © Getty Images/dragana991
Published Date: July 21, 2025
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
