Regardless of where you are on your journey, it’s never too late to help them. No parent has ever looked back and wished their child spent more time in the virtual world. Your children need the gift of your leadership now so they can be leaders tomorrow. Stand up for them to help them stand out from the crowd. 

The most effective solutions to significant problems are sometimes surprisingly simple and yet strongly resisted. Take, for instance, the case of handwashing in 1847—a doctor’s groundbreaking discovery that handwashing could effectively prevent the spread of germs was initially met with skepticism and rejected by prevailing cultural beliefs. In fact, handwashing remained controversial for four decades before finally gaining universal acceptance as a cornerstone of medical practice. Today, the adolescent screen crisis is our newest problem with a surprisingly simple and effective solution. That solution is to delay smartphones until the end of adolescence—period. Like handwashing, this solution sounds simple in concept and will one day seem like common sense, but right now, it is considered countercultural.
Many of us following the After Babel Substack can agree that smartphones and social media negatively impact adolescent mental health and classroom learning and that spending more in-person time with friends and family is a healthier choice. Moods and grades generally climb when teens trade their phone-based childhoods for free play in nature, physical activities, creative hobbies, and smartphone-free study time. Teens are likely to be more content and less anxious when days are spent on something other than digital media platforms that are designed to be addictive. Best of all, family relationships tend to become calmer and more enjoyable when screen conflicts aren’t present in the home. Kids and parents long for the stress-free days when they aren’t constantly arguing over screen time. It’s not that we aren’t motivated to fix the problem; we sense there is a solution but don’t know how to break free from our biases, fears, and habits and go against the cultural wave. We don’t know how to practically delay the age kids get smartphones.
In this post, I will share valuable insights from my experience working with thousands of families over the past decade, utilizing the educational programs at the nonprofit organization ScreenStrong. While Jon and Zach emphasize the crucial step of collective action, my focus will provide specific actions for families to implement the simple yet powerful solution to skip smartphones and social media through adolescence. Drawing from principles of child development, we can be empowered to confidently take a new approach to what seems to be an unsolvable problem. Let’s look at how we can create a smartphone-free childhood to give our teens the most advantages without losing the benefits of technology.
Tip 1: We seek knowledge.
The first step is to set emotions aside and learn the basic science around teen brain development, mental health, and addiction. The “why” reinforces the “will” to delay smartphones. When we embrace the fascinating potential as well as the limitations of the teen brain, we see clear evidence for why skipping addictive screens through adolescence is the best solution.
Data shows that access is the underlying risk factor for every addiction, so removing access will decrease risk. Since the pull of some screen activities is stronger than others, we must focus on screen platforms that use powerful, persuasive design elements—video games, social media, and pornography. We don’t need to worry as much about delaying digital technology platforms that are genuinely educational. We don’t have data supporting an epidemic of kids visiting counselors because they can’t stop using spreadsheets and typing essays.
It may take some effort, but learning about kids’ brains and screens is necessary to stand strong under societal pressure. It is also essential to educate our children. Please don’t skip this step; staying on course and delaying smartphones without the necessary foundational knowledge is difficult.
Tip 2: We strengthen our parental role.
When we treat our teens like equals and try to be their best friends, we lose our ability to coach them. In fact, teens in this relationship structure often end up telling their parents what to do! Some take begging to a new level and create elaborate presentations to convince us they are mature enough for a smartphone. We often give in, despite our own better judgment. When we lose our ability to coach our kids, we easily fall into a trap where we begin parenting out of fear. We fear our children will be upset with us and also fear that our friends will judge us for being too strict. The fear of being labeled “overprotective” paralyzes us from protecting our teens at all. This defensive parenting approach, rooted in fear of external judgment, leads to unnecessary pain and ultimately to a dead end: disconnection from our teenagers as they shift their home base from family and attach to the virtual world instead.
Here is the key point: Social media was not created with the best interest of teenagers in mind. Instinctively, we know our kids shouldn’t invest time engaging with social media platforms because we, as adults, can see the dangers—the social comparison, constant judgments, and endless drama. Many of us are so thankful we didn’t have social media when we were their age because we know that having social media during our teen years would have been a nightmare filled with anxiety. We reminisce about everything we did as teenagers—including the negative things we thought or said about our friends and parents—and are exceedingly grateful that permanent highlight reels of our stupidity do not exist. (Suggestion: get your kids a journal to write their private thoughts in instead of giving them social media for them to broadcast those thoughts to the entire world.) If we think back for just a minute about our dopamine-craving brains from high school or the pain of rejection we suffered in middle school, we would stop reading this and retrieve our teen’s smartphone right now.
Embracing our role as a loving coach—instead of the role of best friend—allows us to protect our teens and, like a good coach, not overreact if they disagree with us or even say they don’t like us for not giving them a smartphone. Remember, this coaching role will be filled by someone, either you or their peers. Have the confidence to fill this role in your children’s lives and lead them well.
Your kids need you as a firm but loving life coach right now. Make the necessary decision to replace smartphones (and social media) with basic talk/text devices throughout adolescence.
Tip 3: We look past our biases.
We gain clarity when we look past our own biases and blind spots and stop believing that our kids are immune to the screen “infection.” They are not. No one is. One common blind spot is that parents often confuse intelligence with maturity. While our kids may be brilliant, they are not mature enough to handle the persuasive design elements of smartphones. Maturity is a slow process. Science shows that the development of neural pathways in the judgment center of the brain is not complete until around 25 years of age. Nothing you can do can speed up this physical process. Teens are not adults, and the journey of gaining experience, wisdom, and maturity is a gradual process that unfolds over time.
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As the next Lord’s Day approaches, get yourself ready. Through faith, eagerly accept the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb. Attend gratefully the rehearsal for it as your church worships. Clothe yourself in the holiness that your Bridegroom has provided. For He is coming for us, and it will not be long!

Have you ever thought of how every Lord’s Day is like a wedding rehearsal?
For the church knows where our faith as the bride of Christ is leading us. We are headed toward the great wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). As such, we are to “make ourselves ready” (Rev. 19:7) and be “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).  As we worship as His bride on the Lord’s Day, we should view this as readying ourselves for the wondrous wedding that will take place on that glorious day.
As we come to worship our God, the Spirit of God is using the means of grace to prepare us for that experience. Thus, an actual duty of the pastor is to get his people heaven-ready to spend eternity with the Triune God. In the words of the church father Gregory of Nazianzus, the minister of the gospel is to “to provide the soul with wings” to fly in a sense toward heaven. He said that the pastor should seek to “bestow heavenly bliss upon the one who belongs to the heavenly host.” Each Lord’s Day is preparation for the coming Day of the Lord, the consummation of our relationship with Him.
I attended two weddings this past summer. One was the marriage of my son, Spencer, and the other wedding was that of a good friend and RPTS student, Martin.
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A child who loves God will progressively grow in true obedience to parents—generally quick to obey (without the persistent eyeroll, sigh, or stomp) because he or she desires to please the Lord. This child (though certainly not perfectly) will show honor for his or her parents through facial and vocal responses, as well as actions, in an increasingly God-pleasing manner.

Christian parents have the responsibility and privilege to bring their children up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:1–4). One of the challenges—perhaps the most difficult—is teaching our children not only to obey, but also to love God.
Children who grow up in Christian homes and churches are somewhat similar to children who grew up in the covenant community of Israel. Jewish parents were to circumcise their sons at eight days old as a sign of the covenant between God and Israel. They were to love God themselves and teach God’s word to their children.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut 6:4-9; cf. Deut 11:18-21)
God also required that each Israelite born into the covenant “circumcise” his heart through personal faith evidenced by love for God and obedience to his word.
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. (Deut 10:12-16)
As New Testament believers, with the law having been put aside (cf. Gal 3:23–29), we are not required to circumcise our sons. The New Testament does not require any rite that places our unbelieving children in the “church community.” Only a believer with a credible profession of faith and repentance is baptized and added to the church in the New Testament.
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. . . . So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:38, 41-42)
The difference between the Old Testament covenant community and the New Testament church is clear. But the similarities in bringing up children in both of these contexts are notable. In both, parents love God, and they teach their children about God and their responsibility to love and obey him as well.
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