Inside the growing screen-free childhood movement
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Parents across the U.S. and abroad are joining efforts to delay smartphone use and reduce children's screen time.
Why it matters: Concerns about smartphones' effects on children are fueling broader efforts around offline socialization, digital wellbeing and screen-free childhood initiatives.
- Grassroots groups tied to this movement are emerging worldwide.
Case in point: Smartphone Free Childhood, a nonprofit launched after a viral 2024 Instagram post by British parent Daisy Greenwell, has expanded into an international movement encouraging parents to delay giving smartphones to children.
- Massachusetts mother Emily Boddy helps lead SFC U.S. efforts and has collaborated with groups including the Anxious Generation, Fairplay, the Screen Time Action Network, the Tech-Safe Learning Coalition and Schools Beyond Screens.
By the numbers: SFC runs a WhatsApp group with 1,000 advocates featuring national discussions on topics like AI and education technology, Boddy tells Axios.
- Many in the WhatsApp group "are leading grassroots work in their own communities, where they could have anywhere from four parents that they're collaborating with to a list of 400 parents," Boddy says in a video interview.
Between the lines: Research suggests smartphone and social media use is leaving kids stressed and depressed and screens are affecting babies' development and sleep.
- Studies show kids "consistently choose hanging out with friends over screens when they genuinely have the opportunity to do it," Greenwell says.
- "Boredom is often the starting point for creativity, confidence and independence," she says, so it's OK for kids to feel that and go outside and enjoy offline activities or just "sit around talking nonsense with their friends."
What to expect: Parents looking to move away from smartphones can expect an "adjustment period" if their children are used to constant digital stimulation, Greenwell says.
- "At first they may insist there's 'nothing to do,'" she says. "But given time, their imaginations and play instincts do come back."
- SFC works with parents who not only want to delay smartphone access until their kids are 14, an overall group goal, but also want to take "little steps" like having no phones in the bedroom or no phones in the bedroom after 8pm, Boddy says.
Zoom in: Boddy recalls how smartphones contributed to anxiety, body image concerns and exposure to pornography among some younger relatives.
- To avoid similar pitfalls when she had children, she joined forces with other parents so their kids would do offline activities like baking cakes together and talking on landline phones. Boddy lends her daughter her phone for text messaging, while some of her daughter's friends use flip phones.
- "When kids have that opportunity to engage with each other again and not have screens present in their everyday socialization of school, they really love it," Boddy says.
The bottom line: Both Boddy and Greenwell emphasize that groups like SFC are not anti-tech.
- Watching a family film together, gaming with friends, or "using a laptop in a shared family space, learning, creating, researching" can be healthy, Greenwell says.
- The issue is kids having "24/7 access to a highly addictive, personalized supercomputer" in their pockets, she says.
- "Technology should complement childhood, not consume it."
Go deeper: A modest proposal: No smartphones for kids
