Wait Until 8th empowers parents to say yes to waiting for the smartphone
“The Wait Until 8th pledge empowers parents to rally together to delay giving children a smartphone until at least 8th grade. Banding together helps decrease the pressure to have a phone at an early age. Ten years old is the average age children get their first smartphone. You can change this!
More than 50,000 parents have said yes to waiting on the smartphone for their families. This is making a tremendous difference in communities across the country!
Smartphones are distracting and potentially dangerous for children yet are widespread in elementary and middle school because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.
These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on YouTube.
Parents feel powerless in this uphill battle and need community support to help delay the ever-evolving presence of the smartphone in the classroom, social arena and family dinner table. Link arms with other parents to wait until at least eighth grade for a smartphone!
The Wait Until 8th pledge encourages parents to delay the smartphone. If you need to get in touch before 8th grade, we have some great basic phones and watches featured here. If you would like your child to have a basic phone or watch to call and text only, you still can sign the pledge! Theses basic options avoid many of the distractions and dangers of the smartphone. “
“My love, we are going to wait on smartphone for you because of so many reasons.
We want your time to be well spent
If we’re not intentional with how we use technology, then technology will quickly use us. Our lives will not be well spent. Instead of our days being filled with laughter, adventure, rich friendships, and precious family moments, it will be a blur of endless scrolls, auto plays, notifications, and likes. This will not fill us. Dad and I want more for you. This is a time in your life to treasure exploration, play, creativity and even boredom sometimes.
We are worried about how addictive smartphones can be
Research shows dependence on a smartphone may produce some of the same addictive brain responses similar to alcohol, drug and gambling addictions. People, especially children, really struggle with how much time they spend on their smartphones. We are worried if you have a phone too early, it will be harder to resist the urge to constantly be on it.
We don’t want a smartphone to get in the way of learning
This is the time in your life to master how to learn. A smartphone gets in the way of that. The early results of a landmark NIH study show children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests. Research from the University of Texas suggests the mere presence of your smartphone reduces cognitive capacity and test-taking brainpower.
We want to protect your brilliant mind!
We love you so much and want to protect your mind. What we know from initial results from a groundbreaking study by the National Institute of Health is that MRI’s found significant differences in the brains of children who use smartphones and other devices more than seven hours a day. Children who spent an excessive amount of time on screens were found to have a premature thinning of the cortex. That’s the outermost layer of the brain that processes information from the five senses. We don’t want to mess with that!
We don’t think you are ready for this responsibility yet. A time will come when you are but you are not there yet.
