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13 May Be Too Late To Learn Good Online Habits
There’s no right age to introduce technology. So, start early.
Every time people ask me what’s the right age to give a child a smartphone, I struggle to answer without being obnoxious. I’ve been writing and talking about kids and screens for a very long time. At this point, some questions just irk me.
Recently, I gave an interview to the Spanish newspaper El País, whose editors decided to run it with the clickbait headline: Hay que darle un móvil a un niño antes de los 13 años (You have to give a child a mobile phone before the age of 13). Most of the time, screen time-related clickbait goes in the other direction — stoking moral panic about teen girls and body image, online predators, brain damage, addiction, or suicidal responses to cyber bullying — so, I took guilty pleasure in both the headline and the media spectacle it provoked. But to be clear, I never said anything about anyone being required to do anything before the age of 13.
I did, however, explain that the onset of puberty — a time when reckless and rebellious attitudes are developmentally appropriate — seems to me like a counterintuitive time to hand a kid a smartphone, particularly if you’re worried about social media, conformity, and self-confidence. Status seeking behaviors, body image concerns, and…
