Org Report

That Smartphone Can Wait Until 8th

Sep 2017 🇺🇸 Fairplay

This is a first-person essay by Brooke Shannon, published on Fairplay's site about a month after she launched Wait Until 8th, explaining why she started the pledge. Shannon describes watching smartphones reach children years before she felt they were ready and lays out the pledge's group-commitment structure — a school-grade cohort of at least ten families agreeing together to delay smartphones until eighth grade. She frames early, unsupervised smartphone access as linked to exposure to inappropriate online content, social-media-driven pressure on self-esteem, and difficulty children can have limiting their own use, while noting that several well-known technology executives restrict their own children's device access to similar ages. The piece is both a personal account and a call for other parents to join. TechKids Foundation cites it as an early primary statement of the founder's own reasoning and the pledge's original scale.

2,900 parents, 49 states, 500+ schools

As of this September 2017 piece, Shannon reported roughly 2,900 parents across 49 states and more than 500 schools had signed the newly launched Wait Until 8th pledge.

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CITATION

Brooke Shannon, "That Smartphone Can Wait Until 8th," Fairplay, September 6, 2017. https://fairplayforkids.org/smartphone-can-wait-until-8th/

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