‘Not until they’re 18’: Dad’s strict smart phone policy for his 5 kids
A Sydney dad-of-five is banning smart phones for his children until they turn 18 and have finished high school. Here, he explains why
A Sydney dad is waiting until his five children turn 18 before giving them access to a “childhood-ending” smart phone.
Dany Elachi has a strict focus on ensuring his children, aged eight to 16, enjoy their childhood – and that means not spending hours every day distracted by a “shiny screen that buzzes and pings and lights up”.
On December 10, new federal laws will ban any child under 16 from having access to social media apps, including Facebook, Snapchat, X (Twitter) and TikTok. But Mr Elachi plans to extend that to 18 in his family to let his children finish school without losing focus.
“Our eldest daughter is 16, I think introducing a smart phone now on the cusp of her HSC (Year 12 in NSW) would be too risky,” says the founder of the Heads Up Alliance, an Australia-wide community of families who are delaying social media and smart phones for their children.
“I think she will manage the next couple of years without a smart phone and then knock herself out when she’s finished school.
“That’s definitely the approach we’ll take with all five of our children. They understand now what the rules are and don’t even ask.”
Mr Elachi says he has witnessed the drastic impact of a smart phone on his eldest daughter, Aalia, who has just turned 16. When she was 10, he and his wife, Cynthia, gave in to her requests for a smart phone – and instantly regretted it.
“We quickly saw that it was a real time sucker, a life blocker ... it was basically the end of childhood,” he says.
“It’s like a poker machine in your pocket. The poor child has absolutely no defences against something as brilliant as that, but not all that glitters is gold.
“It was taking up so many hours a day and blocking her childhood. Music, sport, art. playing, all the good stuff that she should be doing in her childhood were being impacted.”
Their daughter’s smart phone – a hand-me-down from her parents – was swapped out for a “dumb” version that can only call and text to ensure she was contactable. Mr Elachi says almost instantaneously, Aalia “came out from her bedroom” and started reconnecting with her family and her interests, diving back into reading.
Almost six years later, she “still doesn’t have a smart phone, she still doesn’t have social media and her whole world didn’t fall apart”.
“She has lots of friends, plays sport ... all the doom and gloom that everyone said would happen if she got cut off Instagram didn’t happen,” Mr Elachi says.
“She found ways to stay socially connected.”
When they decided to delay social media, Mr Elachi turned to fellow school parents for support, creating a like-minded community cohort united to stop their children feeling isolated or left out for not having smart phones.
Over the years, that group has steadily grown into the national parent advocacy group Heads Up Alliance, which now spreads across the country and is run by Mr Elachi.
“It all happened by accident. It was a school community that we called a local alliance so we could all hold out together and reduce our children’s feelings of missing out or being the only one in the world who didn’t have a phone,” he says
“Creating that community showed our daughter that that wasn’t the case. It also gave parents a little bit of muscle to say ‘we can do this, we’re not going to give in just because everyone else has one’.”
The Heads Up Alliance has become a powerful lobby group. It took the lead in the push to ban phones in public schools across Australia and was also instrumental in the federal government’s social media ban, which becomes law on December 10 this year.
Mr Elachi says delaying social media for children is the “positive message we want to share”.
“You have a chance of holding out a few extra years to give children a few extra years of childhood that we think are so critical,” he says.
