What's the right age to give kids a smartphone? & how can we keep them safe online? What parents need to know

I type ‘what is the right age to get your child a smartphone?’ into the tiny search bar on my smartphone as I begin researching this story. Anything between 10-13 seems to be the average from the top handful of results. “Mum, get off your phone, you’re missing the movie.” An all-too-familiar beration from Jack, my 9-year-old, from next to me on the sofa. I close down my phone and place it on the coffee table. I still have time, I think, to make this choice. But with his last primary school days drawing ever closer and what feels like an avalanche of headlines relating to online safety and young people in the news right now, it does feel like it’s running out.

Late last year, a new campaign group advocating for parents to hold off buying their children smartphones until the age of at least 14, started making headlines. There had long been talk about whether smartphones and social media are really safe for children, with more reports linking smartphone use to a rise in youth mental health issues, and this group, Smartphone Free Childhood, was speaking out on behalf of parents. I heard rumblings of the action, links were shared in school Whatsapp groups, it all felt very sensible to me and I put a pin in the conversation for when my son started asking for his first smartphone (according to a 2022 report, 91 per cent of 11-year-olds own one).