Smartphones and children's mental health

Children’s mental health has deteriorated across high-income countries since the early 2010s, coinciding with the mass adoption of smartphones among young people. I provide the first quasi-experimental evidence on delaying children’s smartphone ownership through a community-led policy. Since 2024 the Smartphone Free Childhood movement has coordinated families across the United Kingdom through a “Parent Pact” to delay giving children a smartphone until age 14. Using a matched difference-in-differences design, I compare changes in children’s mental-health needs in English schools where a large share of parents signed with changes in similar schools where very few did. Where at least one fifth of families signed, school-recorded social, emotional and mental health need falls by around 8 percent of the counterfactual. At the same time, child psychiatric disability claims, determined independently by the Department for Work and Pensions, also fall by about 6 percent in the same communities. The effects are larger among younger children who are less likely to already have a phone and in neighborhoods where more parents sign the pledge. The findings support coordinated ownership delay as a near-zero-cost complement to school phone bans and statutory age limits, and they give parents causal evidence for delaying a child’s first smartphone through the primary-school years.