After much deliberation, we decided to wait to get our daughter her first phone until she started high school (9th grade, a few months after her 13th birthday).

After much deliberation, we decided to wait to get our daughter her first phone until she started high school (9th grade, a few months after her 13th birthday). I'm very glad we did. If anything, I wish we'd waited a little longer however, the logistics of not having a phone had already been increasingly inconvenient for at least a year and starting high school pretty much forced it. Prior to that we controlled screen time of all types pretty carefully, at least compared to some of her peers. She did have quite a bit of exposure to console gaming, PC gaming, television, tablet and did homework on a school issued Chromebook in middle school. But none of it was 'free feeding'. For things we didn't do as a family (TV / gaming), it was either limited time per day or weekends and holidays-only during the school year. We're also not a home that has a TV on most of the time or TVs all over the place. For example, we've never had TVs in bedrooms or the kitchen. Our television viewing, whether with her or not, has always been 'appointment style'. We turn it on only to watch a particular movie or DVR/streaming show and then turn it off when it's over. We think growing up this way has made it easier for her to gravitate toward better habits. We're pretty happy with how this has worked out. Today she's almost 16. We think she's still a little too obsessed with her phone and social media but it's definitely not as bad as most of her friends who had their own phone earlier and/or had less controlled screen time much earlier. We can also confirm the studies which report social media generally tends to have more negative than positive impact, at least for teenage girls.