When Should You Let Your Kids Have a Smartphone?

Summary: The age you let your kids have a smartphone depends on factors unique to them and your family. Things parents should consider include maturity, responsibility, past behavior, peer group norms, and any special circumstances such as the presence of a mental health disorder.

Key Points:

• The most common age to let kids have a smartphone is around 12 years old.
• Many kids have tablets or laptops as early as age 5.
• Almost half of parents who give kids a smartphone before age 12 regret it.
• Most parents – and most mental health providers agree – that age 14 is a safe age to let you kids have a smartphone.

Smartphones and Kids: Is There a Best Age to Let You Kids Have a Smartphone?

The best age to let your kids have a smartphone is the age at which they:

1. Need It For Safety/Communication:

In some cases, younger kids – under age 12 – busy with lots of after school activities may need to communicate times/pickup specifics to parents or caregivers via call, text, or smartphone app.

2. Can Use It Appropriately:

When parents are sure teens can limit their smartphone use to acceptable times, places, and types of content.

Any parent, caregiver, or adult who’s spent time around kids knows that different kids will meet those criteria at different ages. Some will be ready before middle school, while some won’t be ready until high school.

It’s also important to recognize that younger kids and/or teens with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may not have the impulse control required for safe and responsible smartphone use until they develop robust skills to manage symptoms of ADHD.

In an article published in 2025 by Techopedia called “What Age Should a Kid Get a Phone? What Parents Say in 2025” reports the following general data about youth and smartphones:

• 81% of kids have a smartphone by age 12
• 15% of kids had/were the main users of a smartphone by age 5
  • 42% of kids had a tablet by age 5
• 39% of parents regret giving their kid a smartphone too soon
• 66% of parents want to wait until high school

After interviewing parents, psychologists, and child development experts, the authors identified this consensus opinion:

“Many parents believe the safest age is around 14, once their child starts high school. That’s when a first smartphone feels more manageable, and kids have better judgment. It’s also an age where they’re more aware of boundaries, especially around apps and screen time.”

Next, we’ll take a deep dive into the latest facts and figures on smartphone use among teens, including data from a report every parent should read called “Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person’s Smartphone Use.”

Young People and Smartphones: Who Has Them, and How and When do They Use Them?

Before we look at data from that article, we’ll share the latest data on smartphone ownership among adolescents. This data is available from the Pew Research Center in the report “Internet, Digital Device Access Among US Teens, by Demographic Traits.”

Here’s what they report:

Smartphone Ownership, by Adolescent Demographic Group

(% of 13–17-year-olds who own and use a smartphone)

Total: 98%

• Gender:
  • Boys: 93%
  • Girls: 97%
• Race/Ethnicity:
  • White: 95%
  • Black: 98%
  • Hispanic: 95%
• By Age:
  • 13-14: 90%
  • 15-17: 98%
• Family income:
  • <30k/year: 89%
  • 30K-75k/year: 94%
  • 75k+/year: 96%

That information tells us that smartphone ownership is near universal, and highly prevalent among lower income families as well as higher income families, almost equal among boy and girls, and almost equal among white, black, and Hispanic adolescents.

In other words, this issue is important to almost all parents in the U.S. regardless of gender, race, or family income.

With that information in mind, we’ll now take a look at the “Week in the Life” study we introduce above.

To conduct this study, Common Sense researchers recruited a diverse sample of 200 young people aged 11-17 and used specialized software to collect smartphone usage data over a two-week period in 2022. The research team then convened a group of 11–17-year-olds to act as an advisory council, in order to help understand and interpret “…the nuanced relationships that young people develop with their smartphones.”

Here are the questions the team addressed:

1. How much time do youth spend on their smartphones?
2. Which types of apps do they use most and for the longest periods of time?
3. Do they use apps intended for adults?
4. How many notifications do they receive per day?
5. Do they use their smartphones during school hours, and if so, how often?
6. Do they use their smartphones at night, and why?
7. How much stress do smartphones cause youth?
8. Are there new insights that could lead to better smartphone design to improve young people’s well-being?

In this article, we’ll share the answers to some, but not all, of these questions. We’ll focus on frequency and timing of use and the apps used. To learn more about the safety data, and how often kids access content designed for adults, we encourage parents to read all the source material we provide links to. They’re reliable sources with valuable information that can help parents make an informed decision on when to let kids have a smartphone.

Here’s the top-line data from the study, starting with duration of daily use.

Average Daily Smartphone Use

Over three (3) hours per day is considered heavy use.

• >10 hours: 9%
• 9-10 hours: 4%
• 8-9 hours: 4%
• 7-8 hours: 7%
• 6-7 hours: 8%
• 5-6 hours: 9%
• 4-5 hours: 15%
• 3-4 hours: 16%
• 2-3 hours: 12%
• 1-2 hours: 9%
• 30-60 min: 5%
• 0-30 min: 2

56% of teens meet criteria for heavy use.

Now let’s look at something we can all related to: picking up the phone to glance at the screen just to check.

How Many Times a Day Do Youth Check Their Phones: Average # Pickups Per Day By Age

0-25 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 28%
• 13-15: 25%
• 16-17: 16%

26-50 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 36%
• 13-15: 15%
• 16-17: 12%

51-100 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 29%
• 13-15: 27%
• 16-17: 28%

101-150 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 5%
• 13-15: 16%
• 16-17: 28%

151-200 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 0%
• 13-15: 8%
• 16-17: 20%

151-200 Times Per day:

• 11-12: 2%
• 13-15: 8%
• 16-17: 0%

For parents who think checking your phone 50-150 times a day seems excessive – which is the amount the majority of 11–17-year-olds check their phones – then we have a question: how many times a day do you check your phone?

We’ll let that question marinate while we review the rest of the data. Next up are the results on smartphone use during school hours and on school nights.

Median Smartphone Use During School Hours and School Nights, By Use Type

(Median = Half Above/Half Below)

Social Media:

• During school hours: 15 minutes
• On school nights: 8 minutes

Reading:

• During school hours: 3 minutes
• On school nights: 14 minutes

YouTube:

• During school hours: 12 minutes
• On school nights: 5 minutes

Gaming:

• During school hours: 8 minutes
• On school nights: 9 minutes

We have one more set of data to share, which includes the average number of notifications youth receive on their smartphones on an average day.

Average Daily Notifications: How Often Do Smartphones Chime?

(% reporting # notifications)

• <100: 20%
• 101-200: 20%
• 201-300: 23%
• 301-400: 9%
• 401-500: 9%
• >500: 20%

We’re asking ourselves the same thing. Who gets over 500 notifications a day? The answer: Around 20 percent of youth between the ages of 11 and 17. Parents should understand that if/when they get their kid a smartphone, the first thing to do is find Settings and turn off all but the most necessary notifications.

Now that we’ve provided all the relevant data about smartphone use among teens, it’s time to help parents use this data to help them decide what’s best for their family and their kids, with the guidance of important questions we share below.

Parents: Questions to Ask When Considering When to Let Your Kids Have a Smartphone

The article “When Should I Give My Child a Smartphone?” provides and excellent overview of how to decide when to let your kids have a smartphone. This article was published by Children and Screens, a non-profit organization with the following goal:

“[To] address today’s most compelling questions about media’s impact on child development through interdisciplinary dialogue, objective, scientific research, and information-sharing.”

When considering getting your child a smartphone, ask yourself the following questions.

Should I Let My Kids Have a Smartphone? Seven Things to Consider

1. Does your child show responsibility and maturity in other areas of their life that may predict how they’ll use a smartphone?
2. Does your child have social challenges, conduct problems, or issues with risk-taking or self-regulations that a smartphone might exacerbate?
3. Do they have history of safe and healthy digital media use?
4. Has your child had a problem in the past regulating screen time with TV of tablets?
5. Do they have any developmental disorders or menta health diagnoses that might increase likelihood of misuse/inappropriate smartphone use?
6. Do they need a smartphone to communicate with you?
7. Do you already have a technology use policy in your home?

Those are the most important things to ask yourself and to think about before you let your kids have a smartphone. With regards to #7 on the list: if you don’t have a family screentime/tech us policy – approach, since policy seems cold and corporate – then we encourage you to create one before you let your kids have a smartphone.

Next, we’ll consider overall smartphone safety. There are five core components of promoting safe, healthy and responsible smartphone use.

Parents: How to Promote Smartphone Safety

1. Limit access. Establish when, why, and for how long your child is allowed access to their smartphone. There are phones available that allow you to control youth smartphone use from your smartphone, including:

• • • GABB Phones. This company sells smartphones designed for specific uses and specific ages.
    • BARK Phones. This company also sells smartphones designed for specific uses and specific ages.
    • Both GABB and BARK allow parents to monitor/control:
      • Content youth view
      • Websites youth visit
      • Apps youth use
      • Time allowed on phone
      • Content of texts/vids/messages: parents can get notifications for profanity, inappropriate images, and more.
    • GABB and BARK both also include location tracking as a safety feature

2. No-phone zones and no-phone times. Establish times and places where smartphones aren’t allowed, such as family dinner, family game nights, and other predetermined times/places.
3. Write a smartphone use contract. Consider creating a smartphone use contract that clearly outlines your expectations for smartphone use, and clearly defined outcomes for non-adherence to the contract.
4. Reiterate safe practices around strangers. Remind your children – not matter how old they are – that it’s never safe to share personal information online/over a smartphone.
5. Reinforce safe practices around intimacy. Remind your children that the most personal conversations should be conducted in private – SMARTPHONES ARE NOT PRIVATE – and that they should never, ever share intimate pictures online or through any media on their smartphone.

We’ll end this section with this reminder:

Phones and online content can be a point of connection, not contention.

Wrapping it All Up: When Should You Let Your Kid Have a Smartphone?

What we mean by that last sentence is that if you know everything about how your children use their smartphone, you’ll learn what they’re interested in right now. And whether or not you like what they’re interested in, here’s what you can do:

You can use that knowledge to connect with your kid on what they’re into.

That’s as true for 18-year-olds as it is for 10-year-olds, and it’s just as effective. When you show an interest in their interests, they’re more likely to share more about them. And that way, you can learn mor about how they use their phones.

We’ll close this article with brief advice for parents of younger kids. We recommend an article called “Is My Child Ready for a Smartphone?,” published by the Cleveland Clinic.

Here’s how child development expert Dr. David Hornick encourages parents to think about smartphones and kids:

“Phones are fun, but they’re a tool we use for certain activities and certain amounts of information and communication. If your child is spending a lot of time outside of the home — like if they’re on a team for school or they have regular after-school lessons — and they’re becoming more independent, a smartphone might be a good idea.”

He explains on way maturity and phone-related behaviors are related:

“The frontal part of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, acts as a filter and helps us rationalize decisions. When the impulsive part of our brain says, ‘You should send Johnny a nasty message,’ the prefrontal cortex says, ‘No, that’s not a nice thing to do.’ The younger you are, the less effective that part of the brain is.”

We’ll remind parents that in humans, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t stop developing until the early 20s. That’s why it’s important to help your kids manage behavior from an early age: in some cases, they simply lack the neurons to make what adults would consider safe and responsible decisions – and this applies to smartphones perhaps more than anything else in their lives.