My Daughter is 10 and is Asking for a Smartphone

My daughter is 10 and begging for a phone. What do I say? Well, uh, her peers probably have phones. So as a parent, uh, what's the purpose of the phone? Uh, in most cases, I'd have to find a reason to give it to a 10-year-old that would make justification for it. There's a lot of other devices in our home. We have a shared iPad, we have other computers. Um, so yeah, I can hear the argument right now, but my friends have one. I can hear it and that's okay. But before we ever get you a phone, we're gonna do some research as a family. We're gonna talk about it and we're gonna talk about the implications of it, and we're gonna talk about the guidelines and rules. So it may take us some time to have this conversation. Right now, I can tell you I'm not ready for you to have a phone. If you need to communicate, you can use the other electronic devices in the home. But we really need to do some research and understanding. So as you have this device, you can begin to understand how to best use it. I learned something the other night that the more time we're on our phones, uh, we're more likely to be anxious and depressed. Um, we're more likely to have challenges. And usually that's because we get caught up in things. So I'm gonna, we're gonna have to figure out how to have some guidelines and some rules related to this. But at this time in your life, at a 10 year age, 10, I'm gonna say there's a lot of other things that I would recommend that we do before that. And I know that's not what you wanna hear, because as a parent, I wanna say yes as much as possible. But this one in particular, I'm gonna be moving much more intentionally and slowly than I ever have. So I hope that doesn't bus burst a bubble for you, because I'm not trying to do that. 'cause I care about you and I want you to have what you want, but just not yet. And that's me modeling. That's just a role play that I would say. Um, a again, maybe you want them to have a phone at 10 for, you know, whatever that, but I'm just sharing an approach of how to communicate it. Yeah, but mom, dad, my friends all have one. You're right, they probably do. But I'm a little more concerned about what they're doing to us. And I'd like to share some things that I've learned about it with you and here's why. And so I'm gonna educate. I'm gonna inform, not because I'm trying to preach, it's because legitimately we should have concerns.