“We’ve given these companies a portal to our children. They can control and manipulate them, send them notifications whenever they want. And the kids don’t seem to turn off the notifications. They seem to leave them on.” — Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” in an interview with The New Yorker
In his 2024 book “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt explains how premature exposure to smartphones has engendered a sharp increase in teenage mental illness. His ideas quickly reached a group of concerned parents in Lexington, leading them to form Lex Kids Be Kids—an organization devoted to delaying smartphones and fostering in-person interaction. Now, the organization has grown into a 170+ member community of parents who work to cultivate phone-free environments for their children.
Lex Kids Be Kids was founded in the spring of 2024 after a few parents emailed their schools’ parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) to share their concerns about smartphones and social media. Their emails echoed other parents’ long-standing worries about allowing children to access phones at a young age.
“I’d been feeling uneasy about [the phone-based childhood] for a long time, even before I had kids. It was just constant exposure to this world that I didn’t feel like [the kids] were ready for,” said Wendi Hoffer, a member of Lex Kids Be Kids’ Steering Committee.
When Haidt published his book in March 2024, parents like Hoffer united over his message that smartphones were contributing to a “great rewiring of childhood” that included increased mental illnesses and a lack of independence. They made it their mission to materialize Haidt’s four proposed solutions—banning smartphones before high school, blocking social media access until 16, turning schools phone-free and allowing children more freedom to explore the real world—in Lexington.
To pursue these goals, Lex Kids Be Kids pairs community engagement with policy advocacy directed at both the Massachusetts legislature and Lexington Public Schools. Their community engagement efforts are two-fold—while mostly focused on delaying the age at which parents give their children smartphones, the organization’s Steering Committee also arranges playground meetups, movie screenings and coffee chats for both kids and adults to enjoy, providing a community for children without smartphones.
“If your child comes to you and says, ‘Everybody else has a phone.’ You can say, ‘Listen, I’ve got all these friends. And this Lex Kids Be Kids group, their kids don’t have phones or social media!’” said Katie McCafferty, a member of Lex Kids Be Kids’ Steering Committee.
The past summer, McCafferty allowed her daughter to bike to camp on her own, and saw an increase in the child’s confidence.
“When I tell you, it was her favorite thing ever because she was so proud of herself—that she had the independence to [bike to camp] and come home—she knows I trust her,” McCafferty explained. “You need to give these kids the opportunity to push the boundaries a little bit and form some independence so that they become confident beings, and they’re not constantly anxious about everything.”
To further its effort to delay smartphone use, Lex Kids Be Kids encourages parents to sign the Wait Until 8th pledge, a national commitment in which families agree to postpone giving their children smartphones until the end of eighth grade. Filling out the form requires one to input their child’s school and grade, so that once ten parents from a particular school’s grade have signed the pledge, each parent is emailed a list of all other pledged families in that grade. Lex Kids Be Kids has nearly doubled the amount of active pledges across LPS in its year and a half of activity. Still, despite receiving many affirmations from parents in favor of the pledge, getting new signatures has shown to be a struggle.
“Every single parent I talk to feels the same way, and yet there’s not enough signatures for the pledge to be activated, which to me, I don’t understand the disconnect,” McCafferty said.
Members of Lex Kids Be Kids have also done legislative work, contributing their support towards LPS’s new cellphone policy and the current Massachusetts bill to make schools cellphone free. They have been in contact with Senator Cindy Friedman, as well as Superintendent of Schools Julie Hackett, bringing with them nearly 100 signatures from residents who support their initiatives to standardize cellphone policies and encourage social interaction—especially at school. In such a sense, Lex Kids Be Kids has allowed Lexington parents to unite and use their numbers to achieve real policy change.
“Lex Kids Be Kids’ parents are aligned in a way that supports these initiatives of not just delaying phones and increasing face to face interactions, but also the policies. We have momentum there. We can say, ‘Okay, let’s all make this the collective action that it is,’” Hoffer said.
The organization is not a high commitment unless parents choose for it to be—membership could mean as little as joining the parent Facebook group or email list and receiving occasional communication about upcoming events or general information. The members also recognize the nuances that accompany their mission, and openly acknowledge that there are cases where giving children a phone is necessary.
“I want to clarify, I’m not against having a cell phone,” McCafferty said. “If you have a sixth grader that wants a cell phone, that’s fine. If you need it to call your mom and tell her where you are to pick you up, or [for] emergency situations, that’s one thing. But to me, there’s no need for that kid to have a smartphone. There’s plenty of options out there of dumb phones where you can call and text, but can’t go on Instagram or Snapchat.”
Hoffer has been coordinating an “Alternatives Fair” with neighboring towns to showcase different options of dumb phones for parents to explore. She has also personally testified to the Joint Committee on Education in support of well-defined exceptions to phone-banning legislation that would appropriately accommodate students with special needs.
Now, the organization is looking to broaden participation in its in-person events. One upcoming initiative is a Good Neighbor Day bingo board, created in partnership with local businesses and restaurants to encourage screen-free social connections among Lexington residents. Modeled after a similar initiative in Stow, Massachusetts, the board features phone-free activities in each space and offers prizes for those who complete the challenge. The program runs throughout September and culminates during Good Neighbor Day weekend (Sept. 27-28), alongside a phone-free playground meetup on Sunday at 10 a.m. at Center Playground.