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From the New York Times. You're listening to the Wirecutter show.

Hey, everyone, it's the Wirecutter show. I'm Christine Cyr, Classette.

I'm Kyra Blackwell.

And I'm Rosie Garon. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times.

Each week we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better. This episode of the Wirecutter show is called is it time to get your kid a phone? Rosie? Kyra, how you doing?

Hi.

Good.

It's a big week for me. My kids are going back to school, which for every parent is like the best. It's so wonderful. Good for the kids, too. Yeah, good for the kids, too. But this is a real milestone for my family because I now have a middle schooler. My daughter Lucy, who is eleven, is going into 6th grade because of her age. There is one conversation that we keep having at home almost weekly, and I actually just want to tee it up. I took a little voice memo. Do you want to hear?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Lucy, how do you feel going into middle school with our decision not to give you a phone?

I feel like I'm worried that, like, all of my friends and everybody at middle school will have a phone and I'll be, like, the only one. Even, like, my friend told me, like, she's not gonna have a phone, which I'm glad about to have, like, one person at least be there with me. And I know this is not gonna happen, but, like, what if people make fun of people that don't have phones?

You get that baby a phone right now, Kyra.

It's tearing me up inside. I feel like I know what I have decided, but I still vacillate because kids and phones and their digital lives has just been a really big topic of conversation this past year. In June, the surgeon general called for a warning on social media for kids and adolescents and in the spring, Jonathan Haidt came out with his very popular book, the anxious generation, which I think has really spurred a lot of conversation around kids and social media. So it feels like it's just really, it's almost been in the water lately for me in conversations with parents.

Yeah, it's really interesting because I actually did get my phone when I was your daughter's age. I think I had to be eleven or twelve. And it's so funny to hear your conversations now. And I'm hearing from the other side as an adult, and I kind of feel like the parents have more anxiety about the phones than I ever did as a kid.

Yeah. For me, it's like I never had to have this conversation with my parents because I'm a young Gen X and I didn't get a phone until I was 26. And, you know. Yeah, I know. Like ancient.

That'd be like if I got my phone today.

Yeah. I think that there is just so much to talk about here because I think the conversation has really been around social media lately. But I think this question of whether to get your kidde a device is a really crucial question. So today we're going to dig into.

It, obviously, at Wirecutter. It's not our job. We're not interested in telling you what you should or shouldn't do. We just want to lay out all the options for you. So today we're going to bring on Ellen Lee, who's a journalist at Wirecutter who covers all things baby and kid year. She's done a ton of research into different smartwatches and phone options that families might want to consider, you know, when they're thinking about buying a phone for their kids.

But first, we're going to talk with Doctor Devorah Heitner about where to even begin the conversation with your kid about whether to get a device or not. Devorah has studied kids and technology. She's written books about the topic, and she's just super, super knowledgeable about really how to engage with your kid in a positive way to start this conversation. And something I really love about Devorah's work is she also talks about how parents can model good digital behavior with their kids, which is actually something I think I need to become better at. Do you feel like I'm addicted to my phone?

Sometimes? It's like you're looking on your phone and I'm like, mom. And you're like, don't respond. And I say mom. And you're like, and you don't respond. And I like say the, like last time and you're like, what? Like, I've been saying it for so long and you've just not been paying attention. I also kind of think that you're a little addicted to.

Guilty.

They read you for filth, girl.

Yeah, that was my eight year old. She's got my number. She, yeah. Guilty as charged. We'll take a quick break and then we'll talk with doctor Deborah Heitnere.

Welcome back to the Wirecutter show. A little later, we're going to bring in Ellen Lee from the Wirecutter newsroom to talk about what she's learned from reporting on devices you can buy for your kids, from bluetooth trackers all the way up to an iPhone. But with us now is Doctor Devorah Heitner. Doctor Heitner has a PhD in media, technology and society from Northwestern University. She's the author of two books on parenting and tech screenwise, helping kids thrive and survive in their digital world and growing up in public, coming of age in a digital world. She also consults with schools and nonprofits about digital wellness policies.

Devorah, welcome to the Wirecutter show.

Thanks.

It's so great to have you here. I, you know, as a parent of an eleven year old, I have a lot of questions about getting my kid a phone. I'm curious, as someone who's, you know, really specializes in this topic, if a parent or caregiver is considering getting their kid a phone or a similar device, how would you advise that they kind of think through that decision?

I would think about their readiness in relation to both their experiences socially. Are they good at setting boundaries with people? How impulsive are they when things are tricky socially? Are they the kind of kid who's really struggling with impulsivity? Are they struggling with being accountable for their behavior in relationships? Are they someone who struggles with boundaries, like saying no to people? Those are all things one might want to work on potentially before a phone. I would also think about their ability to just keep track of things and just general organization. And I would just look at the whole picture of your family. Are you ready to take this on as a family? Because it is a big communication device that requires a lot of mentorship from the grownups and it's a lot of responsibility. So find a time to give a kid a phone when you can really all focus on it and think through all of these readiness pieces. And you can start working on some of the readiness and skill building for a year or two before you even get them a phone.

It seems like sometimes the phone comes into the home or into the kids hands, not just because the kid wants it, but also because the parent or the parents want it. Is that another kind of dimension to think through?

Devorah absolutely.

Weve become a culture where were very used to knowing where everyone is all the time and where its harder to tolerate ambiguity. Im a gen xer. My parents tolerated a fair amount of ambiguity. If I went out for a bike ride and they said, you know, come home when it gets dark or come home for dinner, they didnt necessarily know where I was in the interim. And for many parents today were so accustomed to the idea of knowing where maybe our partners are or where our colleagues are, were getting all these updates that we feel like we should know where our kids are. And that can push people sometimes to want to give kids a device, essentially to track them. We tell ourselves it's not tracking. I think a lot of parents say, oh, so my kid could call me in an emergency, but we really need.

To think through what's the emergency that's going to strike our elementary school or in the six block walk to school, versus the incredible responsibility of having this very powerful communication device. And we may want to push ourselves to tolerate a little more ambiguity. It might be worth waiting until that comes up a bit more. Like, for me, it was when my son was going to be home alone with regularity and we didn't have a home phone that we said, okay, we need him to have a phone so that it can be safe for him to be home alone. I think it's worth trying to be flexible with yourself and see how much ambiguity can I tolerate?

What do you think are some things that parents should be thinking about when they do figure out that they do want a phone and they are trying to introduce it to their kids?

It's really important to set expectations. A phone is not a great surprise gift. As much as we might see that in the movies or we might imagine that your kid will just be overjoyed, it's not a good surprise because you want to get all caregivers on the same page and the kid on the same page. For example, if you know you are not going to greenlight social media for the first year that your child has a phone, or you know that your child is not going to have the phone in their room overnight, those are good expectations to set before they get the phone. So it's not like elation to tears, right? Like, here's your phone. Oh, you can't have TikTok okay, now we're screaming, right? Like, it's better to know those things in advance and then also start to build the skills in advance, especially because the first thing most kids will do with their first phone is text. And I believe texting is the most under taught skill set in technology that parents are not doing enough, educators are not doing enough to teach kids how to text mindfully and thoughtfully.

Can you talk more about that? What does that look like in practice, do you think? And how do you advise parents and kids to sort of get better at that skill?

That's something you can practice with your kids before they have their own device. Whether they're already texting a little bit in a gaming platform like Minecraft or Roblox, the next thing to think about is who is your child going to initially be in touch with on that phone? So maybe their contact list should be quite short when they start. Maybe they could start out with their.

Own phone, but only have contact information.

For family and close friends that you already know. Now quickly, your child, if they're social and outgoing and many kids are this.

Way, will want to be texting the entire big group. You can decide if you want to hold off on that for some time and make sure they're up on the rules of texting. What do you do when someone says.

Something in a text that does upset.

You or make you uncomfortable? What do you do if you get in a misunderstanding? Untext. And these are all things that come up pretty rapidly, I would say, with the first phone. In a lot of cases with group texts, parents are often surprised at how intense those group texting experiences can be for, let's say, middle graders, 5th, 6th graders, 7th graders. Even the 6th grade group text can be quite a shark infested pool, depending on. And so you might want to have your kid wade in a bit more slowly with those contacts and again, practice even before they get a phone and talk about some scenarios with them. What will you do if you're on a group text and everyone starts talking in a mean way about a kid who's not in the group text? What will you do if one kid texts you and says, let's restart the group text, but without so and so?

So it kind of sounds like you need to have a baseline understanding of how mature and responsible your kid is and also who they're planning on talking to to. Are there other expectations or boundaries you should set before giving your kid their first phone?

I think it's very important to talk about if they're going to have access to search, like a Google or another search tool. If they're going to have access to download any social apps or games on the phone, that's a great expectation to set early and be really clear about. I don't have a lot of hard and fast rules that I think everyone should follow because I think every family is different. But I will say for most kids, having it out of their bedroom at night is going to be a rule that families should probably consider. And so that's something I would establish up front. Like, before they get the phone, if you're planning to not have them sleep with that phone, that would be a good thing for them to know about now.

So it's clarity on what the phone should and shouldn't be used for.

Absolutely. And then also how it's going to be throughout the day. So another thing you can do with a new phone user is maybe don't have them bring it to school. If you are getting your kid a phone, partly to sort of solve for the after school ambiguity, and I can understand why you might want them to bring it to school, but I would at least think about maybe a few weeks or even months where maybe they only are using it at home after school for a certain amount of time so that you can be there to support phone use. And frankly, so you're not setting your kid up to get in trouble at school. I think a lot of us end up sending our kids to school with these devices that they're not allowed to use during the school day. And that's a lot of expectation. Like if you weren't allowed to use your phone at work, maybe you wouldn't want to bring it because it would be just really difficult to resist the pull of what could be going on on that phone.

I wouldn't want to go to work.

No, I wouldn't either. Devora, I really liked what you just said about kind of teaching your kid how to text. It's not even something I had thought about, but I was reading screenwise, your first book. And in that book, you talk about kind of modeling good behavior or, like kind of teaching your kids how to use technology. And something that I thought was interesting in that book is you talk about these three different camps of parents. There are limiters, mentors and enablers. Could you talk a little bit about those different parenting styles as it relates to technology?

Absolutely. So limiters, I mean, I think all of us have experimented with limiting the ideas, like, okay, 15 more minutes or even going to a place of where withholding it as a consequence and giving it as a reward. Just a lot of limitations with that strategy, including that tech is so woven into our lives. If you follow why people believe that diet culture is so toxic. It's a similar feeling of scarcity when we limit, and it can make tech feel that much more hard to put down. Enabling can be parents who feel very free with tech, and sometimes those kids do fine. I mean, I've met kids who are very self regulated. They have access to something like a laptop in their bedroom or a phone in their bedroom, but they still put it away at night and go to sleep. Other kids will not thrive in that situation without some rules and expectation. So mentors is the ideal. The idea is that I've relayed a lot of strategies to him, and he's gotten to talk through scenarios with me over time that are useful to him as he navigates difficult situations going forward, a strategy of mentoring can actually be having your child teach you things and using tech together.

So, for example, if you're planning a vacation, sitting down and doing search about that destination together to see what your child does and doesn't know about search.

As it relates to using a phone, are there other ways that you other advice you have for mentorship in particular?

First of all, when you're driving, if you live in a place where you drive, obviously you never want to text and drive, ever. Certainly not in front of your kids who will one day be driving, putting your phone away at night, putting it away during mealtime, modeling how you respond to people thoughtfully admitting out loud when you find something on social media to be distressing, because social media can be such a comparison and envy kind of game. And so sometimes I've talked with my kid, my kid's actually on social less than I am, far less. But to kind of laugh with him at moments where I'm like, oh, this thing happened, and someone shared my TEDx talk on upworthy, and now I'm getting a little famous. Look at these views on YouTube. And for my kid to be like, wait, didn't you tell me that your number don't matter? That's not important. I'm like, oh, yeah, I think I did say that.

That's so wholesome.

Are there other things that parents should be thinking through to kind of prepare themselves mentally for giving their kid that first phone?

I would be expecting the dial to turn up on whatever is already going on with your kid. If you have a kid who's a social butterfly, who has a hard time saying no to playdates, who always wants to be part of everything. That's a kid who's going to want to give their phone number to a lot of people. They're going to want to be in all the group texts. And you might want to be thinking about distraction. They also may struggle with boundaries, feeling like other people will be let down. Like my dad says, I have to do my homework, but my friends will be really sad and disappointed if I'm not in the group text. So that kid needs maybe a different kind of proactive mentoring than a kid who doesn't know how to reach out to others or is too shy to even ask for someone else's phone number if they want to hang out.

And I know you've recommended this idea of extending grace to your kid, too, and understanding that this is a new thing, that they are going to mess up 100%.

They'll mess up 100%, and so do we. And when it's appropriate sharing examples of that time you sent something to the group text for Thanksgiving that you thought was only to your one sister and you were. But there are times we maybe didn't BCC at work or some time where maybe I've posted. For example, I've told my son this story where I shared big news that I got from someone that I thought was public, and I congratulated them on their new job on social, and it turned out they hadn't given notice or left their old job yet. You know, really, I learned my lesson. So these are stories we can share with our kids about our own mistakes. And yes, we need to extend grace. We don't want to teach kids that digital is this high wire act I wrote growing up in public in response to a worry that so many families expressed to me and educators that kids would have do the wrong thing online and be forever tarnished. And I think we need to let kids know. Yeah, digital is a big deal, and you can have a really hard time moving forward from things that you share in a very public way, but you can move forward from mistakes.

We don't want to teach kids that your mistakes are unfixable because that's a message that, at worst can lead kids to feel like they can't move forward in life.

Are there things that you should specifically be looking out for that might be signs that your kid is really struggling with their new device?

If they're looking at it and they seem really upset, not just like I'm withdrawn because I'm focusing on this phone and not you. And I think it's really important that a lot of adults associate the ways kids pull away from adults in these tween and teen years with their devices because they tend to be coincident. But it's really important to understand your twelve year old, your 13 year old, probably even without a phone, wouldn't come home and tell you everything about their day the way they did when they were nine, because developmentally they are changing and growing more separate from you. And if a kid is wanting a lot of privacy on their phone and seems distraught, I would ask, what's going on? If you're planning to look at your kid's phone, I would do that overtly and not covertly. So a lot of parents ask me if they should read their kids texts or look at their kids phones in other ways or use a tech device or an app to monitor their kids. And I would strongly suggest looking at the phone with them when they're a new phone user. Not every minute, but just occasionally.

Maybe it's once a week, maybe it's less frequently than that, but sitting down and looking at it with them. And again, that wouldn't mean a deep dive in everything in the 6th grade group text. Okay, I'm going to spot check this with you. What do you think? And letting kids know, too, that other parents may be reading the whole group text. It's important to understand what your privacy is and isn't. And I think being overt and clear and honest with kids that almost certainly in elementary and middle school, somebody's mom or dad is reading that stuff. So that's something to consider before you start dropping the potty words.

Transparency, I love it.

Devorah. It sounds like, you know, I think right now there's kind of like this panic culturally about kids and phones, and I think there are legitimate reasons for that. But a lot of what you're saying really resonates with me as a parent, that this is kind of an opportunity to really help teach your kids how to use this technology that they're going to be using anyways.

It's an incredible opportunity to influence them and support them.

Doctor Heitner, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for all of your insights. We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

If you want to delve deeper into Devorah Heitner's work, you can get a copy of her most recent book, growing up in public, coming of age in a digital world. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have our colleague Ellen Lee in the studio. We'll be right back.

Just a heads up if you're listening with kids in the room, we do mention some adult themes.

Welcome back to the Wirecutter show. This episode is all about kids and phones and practical advice and suggestions for parents and families considering getting a kid their first phone or device.

So earlier in the show, we talked with Doctor Devorah Heitner about ways parents can broach the subject with their kids about getting a phone. Doctor Heitner's suggestions included setting clear expectations for how, when, where you want your kid to use their phone and making sure that the ways that they're using it aligns with your family's values.

And now we're going to pivot to a conversation about the actual phones and devices parents might want to consider when they're shopping for their kids. For that, we've brought in Ellen Lee. Ellen is a reporter for wirecutter who covers baby and kid gear. She writes all of our guides to smartphones, to smart watches, bluetooth trackers, and other kinds of tech that you might want to consider for your kids. She's written for a ton of other outlets, and Ellen is also a mom.

Hi, Ellen.

Hi.

So great to have you here.

Ellen, how old are your kids? Set the stage for us. When did this phone conversation start in your house?

Well, we started working on this in 2019 when I had two girls who were tweens. My kids are now 814 and almost 16. So now my eight year old is actually helping a lot with the testing, too well.

So, Ellen, I'm curious, how did you run the tests for these? Paint us a picture.

Well, we definitely did a lot of real world testing. So I was strapping the watches onto all three kids, making them run around and do their thing. I was downloading the parent app and seeing if I could communicate with them. I was making my husband and other relatives and friends download the app so they could also see if they could communicate with them. So we were doing a lot of just real world, everyday life using of all of these devices. We've been pretty rough with them, and I think my kids kind of delight in that. They're like, yeah, let me just toss this around.

Woo.

I'm always like, don't actually try to break it, please. But we've, I definitely haven't been treating them with kid gloves.

And would you come back to the dinner table in the evenings and they would, like, download to you their experience out in the world?

Oh, yeah. They definitely have their opinions. They definitely have their favorites of the ones that they're using and the ones that they feel like aren't as fun. And then the harder thing we did was for the kids smartphones and for parental controls. We were testing things like, okay, what happens if I send a nude to a phone? What happens if I search for, say, something about where I can get weed or something like that? So I didn't want my kids to be doing that, so I did that on my own.

That's nice of you.

And then you got a call from HR. Is that what happened next?

So I actually asked my friends. I'm like, can you send me a dick pic? And they're like, sure.

Wow, you know, you've got a good friend.

What kind of job do you have?

No, in all seriousness, that's really good to hear, because I think those are the real concerns that a lot of parents have.

I think many people assume that when they want to limit Internet time for their kids on a device, that their only choice is like a flip phone or a so called quote unquote dumb phone. But there are many other options out there that might be more appealing to kids and their parents or caregivers. So let's start there.

Let's say that you're really just not ready to get your kid a real phone, but you also want to be able to keep track of them or contact them when you need to. What are the options?

Yeah, so there are a lot of options if you want to just track them. There are a lot of different devices. It's almost like tracking a dog or a cat, where you can have a little device like an Apple Airtag or a tile. You can hook them onto a kid's shoe and onto their backpack. And it uses Bluetooth technology to locate where they are, which means that it requires you to be in a. A location that has other smartphones around, and it'll use that to pinpoint where the tag is. You have a map that you open up, and then you can see exactly where that tag is. So the next level up from there is to get a smart watch.

And what are the options there?

Our favorites are the Gizmo Three, which is offered by Verizon, and the Apple SE with cellular service, which is offered by Apple. And you can use that with a variety of different cell phone plans.

Ellen, can you walk us through the gizmo? What is that? What does it look like? How does it work?

Sure. So the gizmo is, it's a fairly large watch. I would always say that it's kind of interesting how they're meant to fit onto a small wrist, but they're actually fairly large, and it connects to the Verizon service. You don't necessarily need to already be a Verizon customer to use it. You can just get a Verizon plan that's like ten to $20 a month. And what it is, is the child can talk to you, you can chat with them, you can text them, and you can track their location. You can set up something called geofencing, which means that you can say, like, if they arrive at school, it will alert you, hey, your child has arrived at school. Or if your child decides to walk away from school, it will also alert you that your child has left the school. All of that is done through a smartphone app on your phone, so the parent, the Guardian, has that kind of control. And then you can also add other contacts. So, like a sibling or a grandparent or a babysitter can also have the app and also talk and be able to communicate with your child.

My child actually has a gizmo. We did a lot of research. We read the Wirecutter review and looked at stuff in person, and we ended up getting the gizmo. I think that overall, we've liked it, and it works well for us. I will say I think that it's a little clunky. Like you said, it's really big, and I sometimes think she feels like she wishes she had a sleeker apple watch, which I didn't want to pay for. But what do you think are sort of like the pros and cons of the gizmo?

I would say the pro is that Gizmo has probably been around for the longest. They've had multiple iterations of it, and I feel like they've been in the game longer and have kind of worked out a lot of the kinks. I would say the watch is fairly sturdy. Our downside was that we did take it for a swim. Accidentally destroyed one of our watches. Oh, no. It's not waterproof. It is splash resistant, which we later learned.

You can take it to the splash pad, but not the town pool.

Exactly, exactly. But it's a fairly sturdy watch, and it kind of does everything that you need it to do. It's a little bit on the childish side. There are a lot of games on it that are very cute, but it's definitely in more of the seven to ten year old age range. It can make fart sounds, and, oh, my goodness.

Glad my daughter has not found that feature yet.

I'd argue that that's universal.

That's the biggest sum of money I'm.

Not sure that that's seven to ten.

What about the Apple Watch? Right.

So the key thing to know, we recommend the se, which is the most inexpensive version of the Apple Watch. I don't think really a kid needs the Apple Watch. Nine. You do need the cellular version, which makes it more expensive, but it does a lot. You can put it on almost any cell phone carrier, which makes it very flexible. If you already are an iPhone family, it just is very easy to integrate. You can lock it down during school hours. You can also track their location. You also get alerts to see if they've arrived or not arrived at a certain location. The big bonus that I think especially tweens and older kids will appreciate is that it's easy to chat with people. You can use imessage on your watch. You can do group texts. It just has that flexibility that you don't have with a gizmo watch.

Okay, so we've covered trackers and we've covered smartwatches. Let's talk a little bit about phones. So, similar to the gizmo, which was created specifically for kids, there are phones that have been created just for kids, like smartphones that have limited access to the Internet. Can you walk us through the options that you've tested and recommended?

Yeah. So we've tested both smartphones for kids and also what we keep calling dumb phones or flip phones. We've tested both of them. The smartphones for kids market has really started to grow. When we first started, there was only like one. So the ones we recommend right now are currently the bark phone and the Pinwheel phone. They are basically all Android phones that have been modified with their technology to be able to create it and make it a kid's phone. So that means there are a lot of restrictions on it. The nice thing about the bark phone is that you can kind of grow with it. So if you want to start out and only let your kid call and text, they basically get a smartphone. They can do things like take pictures or record video. You pay a little bit extra, but you can also send group texts, and you can send photo and multimedia through the phone. You can do a lot of the things that people want to do on a smartphone. And then as your kid gets older, you can pay more. It's a monthly subscription. And as they get older, you can allow them to have the apps that you approve, even Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat, with some degree of monitoring.

I always say some monitoring because I feel like people think, oh, if I get this phone it's gonna keep my kids safe. But it only keeps your kids safe to a certain degree. It will alert you to say if someone sends a questionable message to your child or if someone sends news to your child, if your child sends nudes to someone else, it might catch that. It doesn't catch everything, but it does catch a lot. Sometimes it catches too much. I think there was one example where, like, a kid was talking about getting, like, tylenol and drugs and that that was flagged to the parent.

How about the pinwheel? What? Why might someone choose the pinwheel over the bark? And what do you like about that one?

So the Pinwheel has the library of vetted apps, everything from team snap to manage, like sports to flashcard apps and stuff like that. It's definitely for a younger cohort, I would say. I think the struggle with something like that is once they get older, there might be certain apps that they can't download, or they might need to use a browser for certain things, and then they won't have access to it. One of the things that Pinwheel has that bark doesn't have is that you are able, on your phone, to be able to see all the messages that your kid is sending. So as they're texting away to their friends, you can actually follow those conversations.

So if you're kind of trying to debate what kind of phone to get, this category, generally for bark and Pinwheel, they look like a smartphone, but they're not. You don't have as much access as an iPhone, so there's a big social element at school to having a phone as a kid. They pull this out. It kind of looks like the other smartphones, but you're able to have more control over what they're doing on it.

Exactly. Yeah.

What about, like, I would kill to revert back to a flip phone. Are there any good options for kids?

I feel like flip phones are harder to find, but they are out there. The one that we recommend is the TCL two, and it's of your very basic black flip phone. You know, you can call and you can text. You can only text one person at a time. You have to use your numerical keypad to make those letters.

Can you play snake?

Not on the TCL flip. So the thing is, these flip phones do have some things. So they do have a camera. It's not very good, but it does have a camera that takes pictures, even short video. They even have a browser. So that's the key thing that I feel like people forget is that they do have some Internet access granted, it's tiny. It's like this tiny little square. But you can go onto any website you want as long as you can type in the URL.

You just have to have the dedication.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there are no parental controls on a flip phone. The idea is that the flip phone itself is a parental control. It means that if you're the type of parent who wants to know if your kid is going onto certain websites, you can't monitor that. One of the things we did was we were like, so what can we do on this flip phone? And I was able to get onto pornography sites really, really easily with no oversight whatsoever.

Okay, wow. So flip phone is maybe not always the answer. It has more access than you might think. So let's talk about what I think is probably the holy grail for most kids, which is an iPhone. We do recommend. I believe it's an iPhone se, the most sort of basic, cheapest iPhone in our guide. Ellen, what do you think? You know, when would you recommend getting an iPhone? Like, what are the pros and cons of getting an iPhone for a kid?

The iPhone is what most kids want. It's easy to message their friends. Group chats are super easy. It has all sorts of apps, and a lot of the Android phones have the same apps. You can also message on a smartphone, but there's just the allure of the iPhone. The downside to the iPhone is that there is parental controls. They have screen time, and it works fairly well. The problem is kids are really, really smart. If you go onto YouTube, you can find a million videos of kids showing you all the different hacks they figured out to get around screen time. Right? Like, everything from changing the time zone to of your phone so that you can circumvent, like, the time restrictions, there's all sorts of different ways that I personally have not even figured out how to hack myself. But kids are very resourceful. I hear over and over again how easy it is for kids to get around screen time. And then the challenge for the parent is that you have to keep up with screen time. It's not as intuitive as I think parents would like. There are all sorts of little things, like, if you've done the latest iOS update but your kid hasn't, or vice versa, then the phones don't always talk to each other very well.

You know, like, there's all sorts of these little hiccups I get in the way of having it work perfectly, perfectly.

Okay, Ellen. So if there are parents or caregivers listening and they're still sort of confused or not sure about what they should be getting their kid, whether it should be a tracker, a watch, a phone. Do you have guidance on how to think about that? Should they be thinking about it by the age of the child? Are there other factors that you recommend people think through?

So I would recommend parents think about where they're at. So if their kid is maybe in elementary school, they're on the younger side, and you just want to know the location of your child, then maybe the air tag or the tile is a good fit for you as they get older, if you want to also be able to check in on them, if you want to give them the freedom. Like, my child has started to roam around the neighborhood on his own, and it's nice to be able to have a watch on him. And I can call him and say, hey, it's time to come home. Or, hey, you know, so and so is picking you up, like, around, say, like, the eight to ten year old range is, like, a great time to get a watch? I would actually say that the nice thing about something like an Apple Watch or even a gizmo is it allows you to delay giving them a phone because it can do a lot of the things that parents want in terms of the communication aspect and also the location tracking. And then as they get older, I think that it is time for them to get a phone.

I mean, I think of it as scaffolding, where at some point, they're going to need to be able to handle having a smartphone of their own.

We usually ask all of our guests one question. So, Ellie, what was the last thing that you bought that you really love?

Well, I'm really excited about my new robot vacuum. It hasn't come yet, but I'm hoping that it will do miracles to my house and keep it clean, as we all do. I opted for Wirecutter's budget option, the eufy.

Oh, I have that one.

That's how I say it.

Yeah, the eufy. It's good. It doesn't solve all my life problems, but it makes it a little bit easier.

I think this is the beginning of the rest of your life. Ellen.

Ellen, thank you so much for joining us. I feel like I learned a ton today, and I think this is gonna be super helpful for parents navigating this issue.

Thank you so much.

What are your takeaways from that conversation for me?

I mean, obviously, I don't have kids, but I didn't realize that there were that many options. Options like, you don't have to just jump straight into an iPhone if you don't want to.

I think that was one of my takeaways, too, is that you can think about what might work for your kid or for your family based on where they're at maturity wise. That might be a watch of some kind, or frankly, it might be a smartphone. And I, again, think it's really nice to have all of those options.

Yeah, I think for me, as someone who's navigating this decision right now, it was helpful to hear about some of the benefits that a phone could bring. I think the conversation around kids and phones has, for a very good reason, been very negative. Like, there's lots of reasons to be concerned, but really thinking through sort of the access that a phone could give my kid for transportation or for being, like, creative or communicating with her friends in a more independent way. So, I mean, that's gonna give me something to think about as I continue to think through whether we get her a phone.

It's a little empowering and it's definitely a little bit more positive. Having said that, my kids are two and a half, and they will be getting phones when they're 23 and a half.

Oh, yeah, just wait until they're 26. I mean, that's.

Oh, wait till they're 26. Just like Christine. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage and check out Ellen's reporting on phones devices for kids, or if you want to check out the products we recommended today, go to nytimes.com wirecutter or find a link in the show notes. As ever, that's it for us. Kyra. Christine, bye.

The Wirecutter show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Kiel. Editing by Abigail Kiel. Engineering support from Maddie Maciello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, original music by Dan Powell, Marionde Zano, Elisha Ba itup and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy, and Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. If you like the Wirecutter show, follow us. That way you won't miss our new episodes every Wednesday. Thank you for listening. What the kids doing on Pinterest? That's my takeaway.