The email I sent to fellow third grade parents

Building low-screen community, one scary-but-exciting email at a time

So far, life as a low-screen family has been… pretty easy. While statistics scream that kids are getting phones at younger and younger ages, our third grader seems to have no peers with a phone and no desire for one herself. (So far, I know of two kids her age who have Gabb watches, but that’s it.) I’m incredibly grateful for that, because I know it’s not the case everywhere¹ — but I also anticipate our chosen lifestyle is only going to get harder to maintain. Maybe it won’t be until fifth grade, maybe it won’t be until middle school, but at some point, peers will start getting phones and social media, and our children will almost certainly want them, too.

This is the collective action problem that Jon Haidt writes about. No one wants their child to feel left out, and kids would arguably be better off if we all waited to get them phones and give them access to social media — but with each marginal kid who pockets a smartphone, it becomes harder and harder for the rest of us to hold out.

Unsurprisingly, I want to get ahead of this downward cycle. Knowing that our kids will be some of the ones “left out,” it behooves me to encourage as many other families as I can to wait on phones for their kids.

So, even though the exposure level felt a bit like peeling back a layer of skin, I decided to kick off my more-formal low-tech community campaign earlier this month. Armed with the class directory, I sent an email to the parents of June’s classmates as well as those of Shep’s classmates. This is what it said (feel free to copy and paste if it’s helpful!)…