The Melrose Messenger

“Taming the Tech” Tackles Child Cellphone Use

By Patrick DeVivo

Last Thursday, the Melrose Unitarian Universalist Church, as part of its “Thoughtful Thursdays” series, sponsored a timely program titled, “Taming the Tech: How Schools and Parents Can Take Charge in the Smartphone Era.” The program offered presentations on the topic from four perspectives: a parent, two technology experts, a legislator, and a school administrator.

The first presenter was Colleen Conway, the mother of two children attending the Horace Mann School in Melrose. Conway has been instrumental in establishing a local chapter of “Wait Until Eighth”, a national organization that encourages parents to delay allowing children full use of cellphones. A large part of their work is a pledge by parents not to give their child a cellphone until the end of eighth grade.

“My husband and I felt very strongly about delaying and avoiding as much tech as we can for our kids,” said Conway. “I recently read ‘The Anxious Generation’ by Jonathan Haidt, and wanted to do something tangible for our community, to start a conversation among other parents at Horace Mann.’ In his book, Haidt asserts that smartphones are fundamentally changing childhood for our kids.

Conway shared her own observations of the dangers of excessive cellphone use among children: less time playing outdoors, reading books, and interacting with friends and family.

She also summarized research offering further evidence of the problem. Children who scroll on cellphones for 3-7 hours a day are subject to the same brain response as individuals suffering from gambling addiction and substance abuse. Children who spend more than two hours a day have been shown to get lower test scores on thinking and language tests.

“There is evidence that excessive smartphone use at an early age can actually alter a child’s brain chemistry,” she said, “and that seven hours of screentime a day can cause premature thinning of the brain cortex, the area of the brain that processes information received from our senses. This can affect the way a child learns, focuses, and engages with the world, negatively impacting real-world relationships, increasing cyberbullying, lowering self-worth, and, most disturbing, increasing suicide rates between the ages of ten and fourteen years.”

Conway also reminded the audience that bottom line profits of large technology companies are directly dependent upon increasing screentime and clicks, despite the growing evidence of the emotional and physical toll this is taking on our children.

In response to these rapidly growing concerns of parents, the Wait Until Eighth pledge is a simple way for parents to support each other in creating and enforcing unpopular but healthy boundaries for children. “It eliminates the ‘but I’m the only one who doesn’t have a phone’ argument,” said Conway.

A group can be created through the Wait Until Eighth website for each school and grade. This is usually done by an individual, like Conway, or a small group of parents. Sign-ups are confidential, and the group is not viable until ten households have pledged and enrolled. At that point, parents receive a welcome email and resources from Wait Until Eighth. These resources address the often-expressed concern from parents that they need a smartphone to communicate with their child during the day. “Dumb phones” and “smart watches” are the most common alternatives.

Presently, there are 145,000 Wait Until Eighth groups across the United States, including groups in over 100 Massachusetts schools. There are eight Horace Mann families currently enrolled. Conway has mostly limited her conversations to parents she knows. But the response to date has been positive enough to make her confident that they will reach and exceed the ten-family threshold with further outreach.

While delaying cell phone use altogether is one strategy, other parents seek solutions through technology itself by implementing parental controls on their child’s phone. Sara Murray and Kristin Thorp, from the SDM Foundation, a technology support organization in Melrose, addressed technical controls and strategies available to parents.

They provided a high-level overview of available tools, including a range of alternatives from applications that apply broad limits to browsing capabilities, to applications that provide very strict controls over most internet access and extensive tracking of usage and content. As the mother of two high school students, Murray reflected on her personal experience and stressed that the best approach to parental controls is unique to each family and is dependent on factors, including the types of devices and applications already in use in the household, as well as each person’s overall comfort with technology.

Thorp added that the approach at SDM is “not to tell parents what should be done, but what can be done.” She said that they consult with parents on all kinds of devices, including iPhones, iPads, laptops, and Chromebooks.

“There is no magic solution,” she said. “It’s important to understand what controls can’t do as well as what they can do, and controls won’t work if there’s no conversation and understanding between parents and children.”

At SDM, they routinely remind parents that once their child turns thirteen, the child can opt out of controls and set up their own accounts. Conversations about technology and expectation-setting should take place well before this point.

Following these discussions that were focused on parental resources and support, State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian presented an update on pending legislation banning cell phones in schools altogether.

Lipper-Garabedian first referred to data from surveys of educators indicating cell phone use as one of the major problems they face today. She added that in her own conversations with high school students, the effect of cell phones and social media on mental and emotional health is becoming a much more frequent topic with young people themselves. At the same time, the average age for a child to carry their own cell phone has dropped to ten years old.

As the mother of two preteens, Lipper-Garabedian has taken an active part in efforts to address this problem through legislation. Recently, she led a group of state legislators who travelled to Quebec to exchange ideas and learn about efforts that the province has taken to address the problem. She also cited US Surgeon General rulings in 2023 and 2024, calling first for the establishment of safety standards for technology platforms and then warning labels on these same platforms. A majority of states already have some level of prohibition on cellphones in school, but Massachusetts is one of the few states that has no such regulations.

Lipper-Garabedian’s work in this area led to her co-sponsoring the Study Act in 2025. The Study Act has three parts: a “bell-to-ball” ban on cellphone use in Massachusetts schools, an education provision requiring schools to educate students and parents on the risks and harms of cell phone use and exposure to social media, and accountability provisions placed on technology companies.

Last July, a version of the legislation was passed by the State Senate, including the bell-to-bell ban, but not the education and accountability provisions. In the House of Representatives, the bill was favorably referred out of the Joint Committee on Education to the House Ways and Means Committee. This version included the usage ban and the education provision, but not the accountability provision.

Jason Merrill, the principal of Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School and Melrose High School, closed the presentations with comments about the current state of phone usage at the schools.

“The vast majority of students have phones, at least at the high school, and the vast majority have no restrictions, no monitoring, and no limits on excessive use,” Merrill observed. “Ironically, school is the only place where there are restrictions.”

Phone use at the middle school and below is banned. Merrill complimented programs like Wait Until Eighth, which attempt to raise awareness and make inroads into the problem during the elementary school years. He advised parents of students, especially those in the lower grades, who have given their child a phone to “get in their business.”

Merrill acknowledged that in the past, the high school could have done a better job limiting excessive phone use and modeling good behavior. Prior to this year, there were three loosely monitored options for high school students: keep the phone out of sight, place it in a phone condo for the day, or use it responsibly.

A clearer policy banning phones in all learning spaces was implemented this year. Hallways and the cafeteria are, in most cases, not considered learning spaces. Merrill credited students and teachers with doing a great job in adapting to these stricter guidelines. In fact, he optimistically noted a marked improvement in the environment surrounding the overall issue of cellphones and social media among high school students.

Continued public discussion about the issue, pending legislation, and the fact that most area high schools have similar policies has probably contributed to this improvement. As an indication of this progress, Merrill noted that “you go to a football game on a Friday night, and you may see 300 kids in the stands, and you hardly see anyone using a phone.”

Posted March 19th, 2026