For years, we had refused to buy our young son a phone. Everything changed with a short, astute observation from my stepdaughter.

“But he has no way of chatting with his friends at home,” she said. “When I was young, we had a landline.”

Ben* is a laatlammetjie, way younger than his stepsisters, and grew up in a device-permeated age. He uses an iPad at school as a textbook and for research. Even before he got his phone, he was way more adept at solving digital problems than I am, despite my extra decades of experience.

And his close friends live far away. In South Africa, where it is not safe for him to roam the streets on foot or by bicycle, he has no social contact in the afternoons and for much of the weekend, aside from the occasional playdate. 

We cannot allow him to use our phones, as they contain too much private information. Almost all his friends have had phones for the four or five years during which we – rightly I still think – refused him one.

But after my stepdaughter’s comment in Ben’s favour, we relented. Our boy had to save up for it over many months, using all his birthday and Christmas-present contributions and frequently washing the car to earn a little extra money, but after years of asking, at age 11, he eventually he owned his own phone.

Denial

We had denied it to him previously for all the right reasons: screens are addictive (even for us adults, as we so often experience); he could be exposed to the worst humanity has to offer, at a time of life when his brain was still developing; he was too young to self-regulate; he would play outside less, and be less creative; it would affect our relationship, because we’d have to set hard limits against his every instinct, and he would hate that.

All of those things turned out to be true. And more. Ben’s relationship with his phone has been more complex and demanding than I could have imagined. We have made a few major mistakes as parents – happily, not the ones I fear the most, which include exposure to wanton violence and pornography.

Yet I think that even with foresight of all this, I might have given him that device. This story explores why.

The vigilant nanny

Before we agreed to the phone, I did a lot of research, finding ways to protect Ben online. I downloaded Google Family Link which, when linked to children’s phone, allows parents to set limits on screen time, block a host of apps and websites, from adult YouTube to explicit content, and even limit what, or even whether, children can download apps and files.

Family Link is not watertight – apparently some nasty stuff can creep through the cracks – so I researched extra measures and opted to buy the monitoring app Bark, which turned out to be a very vigilant nanny indeed. Bark does not block websites and apps (we still rely on Google Family Link for most of that), but I receive an alert when anything even moderately concerning appears on Ben’s screen: from swearing to potential bullying, and even “medically concerning” content as innocuous as a friend announcing a sore throat.

A parent can tell Bark when it’s being too careful or lax, and it will adjust.

And so, allowing just one hour of screentime daily (television and phone time together; Ben had to choose), and that only after doing his homework and chores, we felt that Ben was relatively safe.

Building relationship

The idea behind Bark and other apps like it is that parents should talk to our children whenever they have concerning experiences online, to gradually equip them with more wisdom and discretion in navigating their own digital lives. This is because in the long run, they are bound to have to deal with countless digital threats and negative influences. Naivety could be their worst enemy.

It’s an approach – along with the hard blocks on all harmful and inappropriate content – that is recommended by the digital experts whose talks we’ve attended at school and church, and whose books we’ve combed through (one of whom pointed out that most children have seen pornography at school on their friends’ phones by the age of 10, to my horror).

Online bullying

It was just one day after Ben got the phone that he and I needed to have a Bark-prompted conversation. He sent a dismissive message to another child, alienating him from a group that he had formed, and Bark alerted me that this was a form of bullying. I talked to Ben, explaining that the boy’s feelings were hurt and that his message could reach anyone – other parents, his teachers and principal (we had discussed this before the phone arrived; now it was real). I said, as before, that he and others should only say online what they’d be happy to say on a stage in front of all these people, adults, and children, and to have recorded forever.

After tears and some resistance, Ben understood. He apologised to the other boy on the group and included him. We have not had such incidents again.

It was a major learning curve and, upon reflection, is one I realise I could have benefited from myself as a child.

Stranger danger

Another limit was that his phone was not private; his parents could look at its content any time. After just a few more days, Bark alerted me that an unknown man was contacting Ben on WhatsApp. I look at his messages and saw that Ben had asked the man who he was but had blocked him without waiting for a reply. I was proud of him.

Nonetheless, this came with another lesson for me: I realised we needed to make an adjustment to WhatsApp, to stop people outside his contact list from messaging him. We did this.

A few days later, there was another such conversation, this time when Ben used mild swearwords. I had warned him this was unacceptable and had to implement the consequence I’d explained.For a few days, he had no phone.

Of course, my strong-willed boy took his phone into his bedroom. I had to take it away several times, confiscating it for increasing periods.

Another limit was not using his phone in his bedroom. At one talk by a parent who has written books on children’s digital lives, we heard how the previous generation had been “digital guinea pigs”: their parents did not realise the impact of permanent and unmonitored online access, and the result was the “anxious generation” that books have been written about.

Children who became suicidal or violent due to digital influences typically had unfettered access to their phones in their bedrooms, day, and night.

Of course, my strong-willed boy took his phone into his bedroom. I had to take it away several times, each time confiscating it for increasing periods, starting with three days, and inching up to a week. 

Then he started bringing it to me at night, to save us both stress. It was a wonderful moment, one that I celebrate.

There have been other such wonderful moments. Once, he confessed to saying something online that he should not have. He expected punishment, but I was delighted, telling him that he was instantly forgiven and while he needed to put things right, this was exactly the kind of discussion I wanted, to build our relationship. I thanked him.

He was nonplussed but relieved.

There have been other such wonderful moments. Once, he confessed to saying something online that he should not have. He expected punishment, but I was delighted.

(We have a rule at home that if he confesses to doing something inappropriate before being found out, he’s forgiven instantly – even if he does have to take measures to fix the mistake – but that if he hides things from us, there will be consequences).

How it all fell apart

But then things fell apart.

It all began when I started working much harder than in previous years. I was unable to monitor how long Ben spent on his phone in the afternoons. It was during this period that Google Family Link’s time limits simply stopped working.

Not the blocks on harmful or inappropriate content, which for me are the most important control, but its time limits. I would look at Google Link’s reports each night and see that the limits were off, and Ben had been on his phone for hours.

I spent ages trying to sort it out, to no avail. Enlisting AI’s help, I ascertained that Ben himself had not installed some app to block Family Link. I uninstalled it from my own phone and installed it again, among a host of other measures. But I could not get those limits back, and I did not have the headspace to set a different kind of limit.

He would spend hours on his phone. With my own deadlines clamouring, I did not take enough notice. I simply let it all slip.

Intending to do even more research but not finding the time, I simply let it all slip.

This, unfortunately, happened during Ben’s first term of Grade 7. He would come back from school insisting he’d done both his homework and studying at school, as his previous teachers had said was possible, Then he would spend hours on his phone. With my own deadlines clamouring, I did not take enough notice.

Ben failed the first term of Grade 7 dismally. On every account. He failed English, Maths, and three content subjects, due to simply not studying hard enough.

We were aghast.

After a meeting with his teacher, we sprang into action. First, we had a serious discussion with him about his marks and how he might have to repeat this year unless things changed considerably. He burst into tears.

All his privileges – pocket money and both phone and television time – were removed until further notice. He had to begin studying for at least two hours daily, including during the holidays. We told him that he might earn back some of his privileges, gradually, through working hard and improving his grades.

We felt terrible, telling the teacher during the meeting that we had slipped up. “Not at all,” the teacher said. “This is Ben’s responsibility. We have stressed, over and over, that every child must take responsibility for their own studying, and that Grade 7 is far, far more work than Grade 6. This one is on Ben.”

A relief for us but more importantly, a huge learning curve for Ben about taking responsibility. Nonetheless, we knew some of it was “on us”.

The two hours of enforced studying remained. After two weeks of it, we allowed him half an hour of time on his phone after studying each day.

The latest hurdle

And so on we go, having to set careful limits daily. It’s not easy. Ben has ADHD and studies with any degree of concentration only when his Ritalin is still working. It’s not always possible to cram in the two hours before the meds have worn off, especially on days when he has sport after school.

We try other tricks, like getting him to teach us, to make the interaction generate more interest. Sometimes it works.

But it’s a long-term commitment.

The wrangling continues

The wrangling continues. Some children – and Ben is one of them – like some of us, are hard-wired to test limits. Ben has asked to study while listening to music on his phone. I know that this helps him, like others with ADHD, to study. But it’s all too easy for him to shift from studying into phone messaging. What do we do?

Yesterday, we said no to the music. There are other options for music, and we’ll have to look at them. The bottom line is that this situation must stay manageable for us.

This is where we’re at right now.

The upshot

The upshot of this story is that giving our children phones brings another huge job with it (unless they are by nature compliant and unusually self-disciplined) if we are serious about protecting them.

It is a job requiring constant vigilance and nimble responses to the ever-shifting challenges our children will provide us with.

Would I have given Ben a phone if I had known all of this in retrospect? Possibly yes, if I had known how much we would learn and grow through the process, especially given that his friends have phones and he would be the outlier without one.

Also, use of the phone is a handy reward for self-discipline.

However, even writing this piece is making me wonder if I am wrong. Would it not be better to use other rewards – fun outings, even family TV shows? I suspect it would, if only I could find a way of enabling him to chat with his friends. A family phone with WhatsApp and nothing else on it, perhaps? I shall hold that option in mind. 

Am I dreaming of going to live on a farm where my child can roam freely and interact with animals instead of devices? Yes.

Do I regret that our culture is so digitally immersed, and that it is now routine for children at a public school like Ben’s to have cell phones? Absolutely. Although, without them, these children might be less digitally savvy and more vulnerable to anything from digital predators to inappropriate content in the future. I have seen Ben built up some discernment “muscle”.

Am I dreaming of going to live on a farm where my child can roam freely and interact with animals instead of devices? Yes, I confess. Ben did once tell me that on holiday, where he can safely roam around by foot and on a bicycle with friends, he has no need for television (it was before he had a cell phone). I found it an extremely perceptive observation.

But I don’t see the way to relocating to a farm anytime soon, so here I sit, a mother wrestling with the challenges of parenting exacerbated by cell phone culture. And perhaps this is my job: to keep wrestling with the nuances, gaining increasing awareness, and responding as the need arises.

My hope is that my child will grow up wiser, stronger, and with more discretion, having learnt many digital lessons during his teens (he is now twelve and a half), than he might have gained otherwise. It’s a hope, not a certainty; I acknowledge this with humility and a little trepidation. 

Doubtles other parents will have cell phone stories of their own. We’d love to hear them. Meanwhile, I hope that mine might give others a little food for thought, or at least a chuckle of recognition. 

Regardless, every strength and wisdom to you all!

In solidarity,

Ben’s mom

*Ben’s name has been changed to protect his identity, but he is a child known to Dolphin Bay.