The parents saying 'no' to smartphones

Brooke Shannon said no to phones years before it grew into a movement.

In 2017, she was driving past a middle school in her neighborhood when she saw a sea of kids, all staring into their palms.

“It just made me sad,” she told me. “This was going to be life for my kids—either they’re going to be one of the only kids with their heads up, or they’re going to have a phone in their hands staring down with the rest of these kids.”

That inspired her to launch the nonprofit Wait Until 8th, in which parents pledge to keep smartphones away from their kids until eighth grade, or 13 to 14 years old—the longest she felt like she could get parents to hold off in a community that already had teched-up first- and second-graders. Shannon designed the pledge to go “active” once ten parents in a single grade sign on.