How Not to Hate Your Teenager’s Phone: David Eaton

Episode Transcript

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How Not to Hate Your Teenager’s Phone

Guest:David Eaton

From the series:Why Teens Walk Away (Day 3 of 3)

Air date:July 29, 2026

David (00:04):

For all of you first-born moms and dads out there, who are listening to this right now, and you’re like, “I’m going to keep my kids’ phone locked down forever,” the last thing you want to hear them whisper is, “I can’t wait to leave home. I can’t wait till I’m 18. I’m going to get out of this place. I’m going to do whatever I want.”

Ann (00:29):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:35):

And I’m Dave Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

So when we were parents of teenagers—

Ann (00:52):

Yes.

Dave (00:54):

—we’ve already said we thought it was awesome. Although we were scared to death because every parent told us to look out for the teen years and yet—

Ann (01:01):

So fun.

Dave (01:01):

—but here’s the thing. When we raised our three boys, there was not a thing called the smartphone. It was just about to come out. And I think today it’s a whole different conversation.

Ann (01:12):

It’s a gamechanger for sure.

Dave (01:13):

I mean, you talk about being scared. I mean, again, the smartphone is a gift from God in some ways. It’s wonderful, but like anything, there’s a curse to it as well. And so we need help helping parents raise kids in a culture that’s different than it was in our day. And we’ve got the man, the legend, in the studio. David Eaton is back from Axis and Axis is all about helping parents and teenagers navigate this world we live in. Welcome back.

David (01:44):

It’s good to be back.

Ann (01:45):

His book is amazing. I think every parent should get this, Engaging Your Teens World: Understanding What Today’s Youth Are Thinking, Doing, and Watching. So as a parent of a teen, this is a book you need to have on your bookshelf.

David (01:58):

And it’s a book that you should skim. You should read some. You should grab a chapter because the first half is all about building the connection, the heart connection with your kid. And the second half, we’re talking smartphones, and college, and social media, and Fortnite, and Minecraft, and LGBTQ, and all of these big gnarly conversations. But what’s interesting about all these conversations that come up is that they all revolve around the smartphone. And the smartphone is the greatest leap of human agency that you will have in your lifetime, currently. So when you give your 9-year-old or your 13-year-old or your 12-year-old or your 17-year-old a smartphone for the first time, it’s going to be just an entirely different way to be human.

Dave (02:43):

David, I’m thinking I want to give my kid a smartphone. It’s the thing they’re supposed to do. How old should my child be before I give it to them?

David (02:51):

You’re right. That was the question I asked you as we left the previous show.

Dave (02:55):

And I’m guessing you have the right answer. Let’s try and answer it. He did ask us that yesterday. I don’t even know what Ann would say. What would you say?

David (03:02):

Because I’m like tenacious on this because I’m going to make you answer anyway. I’m dog on a bone on this. So this is the number one question: “What age?” and this is a huge trick question. Okay. But what age should you get your kid a smartphone?

Ann (03:13):

I have no idea. How’s that?

Dave (03:17):

Well, it is interesting, as you know, the movie, The Social Dilemma—

Ann (03:21):

Yeah.

Dave (03:22):

—the founders of Facebook, some of the people that invented some of this stuff, are saying, “Wait.” They’re saying it should be older. “Don’t give—” I mean, if I remember it right, they don’t have an 8-year-old, 10-year-old in their family with a smartphone. They’re like, “That’s too early.” I think 10 years ago I would have said 10 years old, 12 years old. Now I’m like, “I know it’s probably impossible—” Parents are like, “There’s no way I can keep my 13-year-old daughter from a smartphone,” but I would say it needs to be 13, 14 years old.

Ann (03:54):

Oh, I think that’s early. And I think it depends.

David (03:58):

It depends on what?

Ann (03:59):

Depends on the child’s age, maturity. Maybe we have the kids pay for it. Can they afford it? So there’s a lot of questions I would want to know. So I hope you have some answers for us.

David (04:10):

But I mean, what if your nine-year-old is at soccer practice, and they move the field, and they get out early, don’t you want to know where she’s at? It’s your little girl.

Dave (04:25):

And she can text you with a dumb phone. She doesn’t need to be on the internet.

Ann (04:29):

But the phone changes the landscape of your entire home when it’s a smartphone.

Dave (04:34):

She wasn’t just talking about the kids.

Ann (04:36):

Yeah.

Dave (04:37):

She and I have had many conversations like, “You are so connected to your phone. We’re not having a conversation right now, you and me.” It’s like she called it my other wife because I’m looking at it and I’m like, “Yep, I’m doing a text,” or “I’m working on a sermon,” or “I’ve got important things going on right here on my lap. We can talk later.” It can be a divider in your own home.

Ann (04:58):

Oh, I’ve seen it with us. I’ve seen it with our kids in their marriages. It’s a divider.

Dave:

David, answer the question.

David (05:03):

Let’s get into it. Let’s get into it. So it’s a trick question because the question is, what age should I get my kid a phone? It assumes two things that aren’t true. The first thing is it assumes that your kid doesn’t already have a phone.

(05:15):

And so your kid already has a phone. If their friends have a phone, your kid has a phone. So on the scary side of it, our kids are only as safe as their friend’s phone. So we have to prepare them to have wisdom to interact with the pocket rectangle. So the first challenge with, “When should I get my kid a phone?” is you have this, “Well, they already have access to a phone already with their friends. The second thing is that it assumes that when you get your kid a phone, that they’re going to have 100% access to it, that they can do whatever they want. It’s just like, “Hey, it’s your 12th birthday. Here’s a new phone,” or “Hey, dad got a new phone so you can have my old phone.” That’s where it gets into this marvelous conversation that we should totally have about the smartphone is that a lot of wisdom is needed in that space of where you say, “No, I’m going to allow you to have a little bit of access to this and I’m going to slowly release this to you.”

(06:06):

And so I think there are four essential smartphone conversations that parents have to have. We talk about this in the book Engaging Your Teens World. Axis—again, A-X-I-S.org. We have a resource called The Culture Translator, an email that comes out every Friday that talks about what’s going on in your kids’ world. So you have Engaging Your Teens World the book, but also, we’re going to talk about what’s going on in smartphone land every single week because it is such a huge point. And so I’d say that the first thing is that it’s very tempting to think of technology as neutral.

(06:39):

And just say, “Oh, everything is neutral. The smartphone is neutral. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just powerful and complicated,” as Sherry Turkle would say from MIT. Originally, at Axis, we agreed with her. We’re like, “Oh yeah, the smartphone isn’t good or bad. It is neutral. Just like all technology is neutral.” And then we took a step back, and we thought for a second, “Wait, did God make a neutral world?” And so neutral would be the vantage point of just saying, “It’s a random world that we just showed up in out of ex nihilo. So here we are. There’s a big bang that happened and there’s just random atoms colliding together, and now we have humans and humans make smartphones. So it’s just neutral.” No, that’s not the story that we believe about the world. That’s not the history that we believe. We believe that God made the world very good; and then, it becomes cursed; and then, through Jesus, there’s a possibility of redemption and reconciliation.

(07:33):

So the first conversation you have with your kid is, how is anything very good? How’s it messed up, and how can we redeem it as a family? Especially if you’re like the parent, who has fear, often. And it’s easy to have fear, right? So there’s this mom and she’s like, “I got my girls”—she had twin girls. She’s like, “I got them a smartphone. They’ve been begging me for it. They’ve been beating me down. Finally got them a smartphone.” And she says, “My daughters weren’t looking for the darkness.” But she said, “The darkness was looking for them.” And what did she mean by that? Some—I mean, I think her daughters are in junior high, and some junior or senior in high school started texting them immediately and started asking them for nude photos immediately. And so all of a sudden, this mom’s like, “What have I done?

(08:16):

I’ve gotten them—” So she snatches the phone away, which, of course, the girls hated. Because that’s the empathy that we need to have with our kids. Can you imagine? So Dave, you’re funny.

Ann:

He is funny.

David:

You like to tell jokes.

Dave (08:31):

What?

David (08:32):

I know, you’re quite good at it. Can you imagine missing out on like half the jokes? Can you imagine just not being able to have that conversation? You’re left out of the inside jokes. All of a sudden, if you don’t get your kid a smartphone, they’re missing out on half the conversations. How good does it feel to be left out when you’re in junior high or high school?

(08:52):

It feels terrible. This is something you can use anywhere. You could say, “How is TikTok very good?” And if you can’t think of a reason as a parent, I would say, “Do some of your homework. Figure it out. What’s amazing about it? What can you celebrate?” Because if you don’t start off from a position of celebrating some of the ingenuity and some of the great things that are in this world, you’re just going to be a huge downer all the time and it’s just always going to be a culture war and it’s always going to be like dad is always critiquing instead of celebrating. Then so very good curse and how can we redeem it?

Dave (09:26):

Previously, one of the things that worked with me as a musician when I would walk in their room as a teenager and say, “Hey, I learned this lick on this song that you’ve been listening to.” They were like, “What?”

David (09:40):

Wow.

Dave (09:40):

Because they expect me to walk in and go, “What are you listening to this junk for?”

Ann (09:44):

That’s what I would say.

Dave (09:45):

Yeah. But when I walked in with a guitar and said, “Hey, this pretty cool song, let’s talk about the lyrics.” It was always a cool conversation. It’s like, “What do you think he’s after in this lyric here?” Rather than condemning it, it started a conversation. And sometimes by the end of the conversation, we were both going, “Yeah, he sort of missed the whole thing, hadn’t he?” That was a way to engage it.

David (10:08):

You were celebrating because you could play it.

Dave (10:10):

Yeah. I wasn’t saying this is bad. I was like, “Wow, this is actually really well written. I don’t agree with the content, what his values are, but here’s why and let’s talk about it.”

Ann (10:20):

And movies are the same.

Dave (10:21):

Same thing with a smartphone. It’s like, yeah, let’s have a conversation. There’s a lot of good here. There’s evil.

David (10:26):

And just like there’s indie music, like indie bands, now there’re indie apps or there’d be indie influencers. There’re so many different versions of that where you can take a position of curiosity. Let me hit the other three really important—so there’s four really important conversations, one big action step. I’ll say the big action step. I’ll just get it out is that you have to write down what your family believes about the phone. It has to be written down. And don’t feel shame if you haven’t done it yet, and don’t feel shame if you got your kid—eons ago, I got them a phone eons ago. That’s the number one thing to do, where you write down a family pledge or a family contract, or a family whatever. You can call it whatever you want. What’s important is that it is written down, and you start having that conversation. You can beat up the document. It’s not like in stone.

Ann (11:14):

Give us an example. What’s that conversation start and look like?

David (11:17):

I work so hard to make this as simple as possible. There are eight smartphone domains—eight different areas. Four of them are purely philosophical and four of them are technical. So the philosophical ones are: are there non-negotiables? It’s really important for you to say to your kid, “You’re not going to look at porn on your phone.” They’re going to be shown porn on the bus to the baseball game. They’re going to be shown porn in the locker room on their friend’s phone.

Ann (11:45):

This is very depressing, David.

David (11:46):

Yeah, it is.

Ann (11:47):

It is.

David (11:48):

But remember, sex is good, right? So we could celebrate that. God has given that as a gift and also the phone is good. We can celebrate it, but then you come back and say like, “Look, because we cherish this and because it is so valuable, this is what I want you to do when someone says, ‘Look at this.’” And you just have to get ahead of it. And look, we’re parents. We can handle the awkwardness.

Ann (12:12):

When do you think that conversation starts?

David (12:14):

Now. It always happens now, and then it keeps happening.

Ann (12:18):

And have you done that?

David (12:20):

What we do is we have a book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures or something like that. And there’s like a little kid version of it. Then there’s a little bit of older version of it. And not because I’m the best parent in the world, but every now and then I just come across things that freak me out. I’m like, “Man, what can we do to get ahead of this?” And then also you just talk about: “Zion Daniel, you’re a boy and boys are good. And Shiloh Abigail, your sister, she’s a girl. Who’s better? Boys or girls. Neither you’re both awesome.”

Ann (12:50):

And made in the image of God.

David (12:51):

You are awesome. And just to hit them with these positive messages about their sexuality on every layer. And this is kind of a strange thing we do is I would just say when women get pregnant, the baby is not in their tummy.

(13:11):

Because Daddy has a tummy, everyone has a tummy; baby’s in the uterus and that’s a very, very special thing that women have and men don’t. And that allows them, one of the many things, to allow them to have a baby. So yeah, what are the eight domains? So the first four are philosophical. So you have non-negotiables, very important non-negotiable. You shouldn’t send a nude photo. Well, that’s just not a conversation that we had to have when we were kids and what a beautiful place to be as a mom or a dad or a grandma or grandpa or as a youth pastor to say, “You are loved; you’re important; you’re valuable; you’re beautiful; you are desirable. This is not the way to express that.” That’s the non-negotiable. And so there’s all kind of non-negotiables. The second thing is money. Who’s paying for this? Who’s paying for it when it breaks?

(13:57):

Who’s paying for cases? Who’s paying for data plans? That just needs to be out there. Third thing is location. Can you have phone in bed at night? Can you have the phone in the bathroom? Can you have the phone in the shower? Can you have the phone at church? Can you have the phone before your homework’s done? Can you have the phone on the weekend? All those giant—

Ann (14:14):

So these are family conversations.

David (14:15):

Yeah. And every family can choose what they want. And you say no phone at the dinner table. They might say, “Okay, mom, fine. No phone at the dinner table for you either.” And then the fourth one is time. Just how much time do I get to have on that? All of these are philosophical and the four that are technical are app store, social media, internet browser and texting.

(14:40):

And so all four of those have different rules of engagement, and all four of those can take you to the worst places of being a human. And all four of those can malform you as a person. But they’re also like great ways to interact. And just like you would never say, “Oh, it’s amazing. It’s your 16th birthday. I know we haven’t done driver’s ed yet. I know we haven’t trained at all, but here, here’s the keys to my pickup truck. You turned 16, you earned it.” And I mean, guess what? I’ll actually tell you, I know exactly where you were the morning of your 16th birthday. You were the DMV waiting in line, because Ann, what did a car represent for you?

Ann (15:24):

Freedom.

David (15:24):

Yeah. Freedom to do what?

Ann (15:26):

Whatever I wanted.

David (15:27):

Right. Like what?

Ann (15:30):

Hang out with my friends, hang out with boys, go to parties.

David (15:34):

Go on dates, get a job, go to athletic events, go to concerts. It was your freedom. The smartphone is the new vehicle. And so that’s why you don’t see a 16-year-old waiting outside the DMV on their 16th birthday because they already got their freedom. For us, our cars were the greatest leap in human agency for our life. For that 10-year-old, which is the average of age of getting a new smartphone, that’s the greatest leap of human agency. Conversation number one is very good, cursed and redeemed. How can we do it as a family? Conversation number two—I’m going to give you these quickly—is what is it for? And we outline this in the book Engaging Your Teens World, outline it longer in Smartphone Sanity. What is it for is just talking about the purpose behind it. So if you can come to agreement that the phone is supposed to draw us closer together—and yet, Dad’s on email, and Mom’s on Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram, and the daughter is doomscrolling on TikTok, and all of a sudden, you’re like, “Oh, this is not what it’s for,” but also, it’s pretty cool.

(16:35):

I can touch my phone in a certain way, and a pizza will be delivered to my door. That’s pretty awesome. That’s amazing. So the first one: very good, cursed. How can we redeem it as a family?” It invites it into a new narrative and starts with celebration. The second thing is all about what is the purpose of this? What is it for? The third thing is “Driver’s ed,” and so it’s the idea of wisdom. And so for all of you first born moms and dads out here who are listening to this right now, and you’re like, “I’m going to keep my kids’ phone locked down forever,” the last thing you want to hear them whisper is, “I can’t wait to leave home.

(17:13):

I can’t wait till I’m 18. I’m going to get out of this place. I’m going to do whatever I want.” So you need to have a position of like, when you get a phone, whoever pays for it, however they pay for it, all the other things that are figured out, we want you to demonstrate to us that you are responsible and awesome. We want to have no limits that we impose on your phone, at some point, while you still live in our house. And then you cross your fingers and you hope that they will self-regulate. You hope that they’ll say, “Hey Dad, I actually do want to be under accountability.

(17:47):

I do want to be under authority. I do.” And so whether that’s inside your house or whether they’re a group of their friends, you want them to do that instead of being like, “Finally, I’m out of here. I’m going to do whatever I want. I’m going to buy my own phone so I can do whatever I want my own phone.” So the first one, very good, cursed. How can we redeem it as a family? The second one is, what is it for? This is all about purpose. The third one is all about “Driver’s ed,” which is wisdom. And the fourth one is all about trust. And so the fourth conversation is this: you got to tell your kids over and over and over and over and over again—you need to say, “You can tell me anything.”

(18:22):

And you need to say that to your three-year-olds and your seven-year-olds and your seventeen-year-old—”You can tell me anything,” You can tell me anything.” And then you just got to hope that it kind of hits them and hits them and hits them and hits them and they absorb it and they absorb it, and they absorb it and they start saying, “Maybe they’re actually being honest. I can tell them anything.” And then one day, they’re going to tell you anything and you got to practice your “I’m not shocked face,” and you got to figure out what happens.

Dave (18:47):

I think one of the questions I would have—I wonder if parents are thinking the same thing—is how do I trust my son or daughter, teenager with a smartphone when I don’t trust myself? I have boundaries around my own phone use, and I have restrictions on websites and things that I can’t get to.

Ann (19:12):

And Dave, especially if there’s not a moral compass in their lives where you think, yeah, they are not following Jesus. And so do I give them that freedom?

David (19:22):

Well, that’s what’s interesting. One, I would say amazing that you’re living the examined life. Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living. At Axis, we like to say, “The unexamined faith is not worth believing.” And so you’ve said there are certain things that are better. Therefore, I’m not going to have, for me, I’m not going to have email on my phone, not because you can do a whole lot of bad with email, but you can work all day long. And so I don’t want to be the dad who’s working all day long on his phone.

Dave (19:56):

So you don’t have email on your phone?

David (19:57):

No, I do not.

Dave (19:57):

Way to go.

David (20:00):

I’m not trying to virtue signal because you just got to figure out, what is that app for you? So you’re modeling that to your kids. And so that’s a great way to say like, “Look, I am leading by example here.” And you say, “Well, what if your kid doesn’t have the Holy Spirit?” or “What if your kid doesn’t have a moral compass?” Well, there actually—and this has been an interesting thing we’ve been watching at Axis, and we haven’t thought it through yet—multiple stories that I have heard in the past week where a parent says, “My oldest kid was off the deep end with social media, had some hard conversations, was groomed by predators. We had a hard conversation.” and they’re like, “And my youngest kid doesn’t even want social media.” So you have a whole new generation who just says, “I don’t want to manage that.”

(20:50):

Who says, “This is not life to me.” Says, “This is just some game that someone else is profiteering.” And so there’s a whole sociological, there’s a whole psychological case that can be made that just says, “This is actually hurting our humanity;” but there’s a great balance that can be found in there. And so that’s why the fourth conversation—“You can tell me anything,”—you want them to come to you. And if they can’t come to you, they’re going to go to someone else. We want that conversation to happen. And even when it comes to social media. A great thing that you could choose to do is say, “At some point, we’re going to let you have one. Why don’t you pick one?” Okay. Well, once they pick one, you say, “Well, I don’t want you to post anything yet. I want you to show me what you’re posting.” “Mom!” “Well, you just wanted to post a picture of your awesome birthday party, which was great, which shows everyone who came to the party what a great time they’re having, and everyone who was left out because we can’t invite the entire school of what they’re missing out on.

(21:50):

And so I want you to post a different picture because we don’t want your other friends who weren’t here to feel left out.” Well, you’d never get to that point. And one other thing you can know is that there is so much pain in the smartphone space. One, Axis is here to help you with that, but two, there are new products being released every single year to try to help remedy this. Axis’s current favorite phone is the Pinwheel phone. There’re other devices that are out there that are that great kind of baby step.

Ann (22:21):

So drivers training.

David (22:22):

Yeah. Driver’s ed.

Ann (22:23):

We’re teaching them, equipping them to be safe.

Dave (22:26):

Yeah. And if there’s one thing I read in your book—and you’ve said over and over in the last couple of days—is engage; engage, have conversations, listen. I mean, seriously, parents and teenagers often are afraid of that very step; and sometimes, it’s a scary step to walk down the hall at 10 o’clock at night or whatever, open their door and sit on the end of their bed and say, “Let’s talk.” But that conversation is going to be a lifetime conversation.

Ann (22:55):

And I think to ask our kids, “How are you doing? I want to know how you’re doing. What can I do to help you?” Those conversations and especially praying over your kids and for your kids and together as a couple if you’re married, that’s life changing too.

David (23:10):

And something that’s even more exciting is having a teenager in your home is like having tech support that lives inside your house.

Ann (23:17):

That’s so true.

David (23:18):

So just ask them for help.

Ann (23:20):

Yeah.

David (23:20):

At some point you want to be like, “This phone could be the greatest adversary in our relationship, but I need your help. You’re good at this. You understand how it works. Help me with this new—” And there’s always going to be something new, and they’re going to be great if there’s that trust there, if there’s an understanding around what’s going on to work together towards that; and actually, have the phone draw you closer as a family.

Dave (23:50):

What a great day with David Eaton. I mean, I learned something every time the guy walks into the studio. I feel like I’m 15 again.

Ann (23:57):

I don’t know about that, but I feel like this is such good stuff. And again, his book is called Engaging Your Teen’s World: Understanding What Today’s Youth Are Thinking, Doing, and Watching. And if you have a teen, this is a book you need to get. And again, you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Dave (24:18):

I tell you what, listening to this, I’m thinking their parents going, “Help.” I mean, we’ve been there. It’s like, “Somebody please help me. I don’t know what to do.” Guess what? I’m going to tell you where to go, FamilyLife.com/ParentingHelp. It’s free and we put together resources that will help you right now right where you are. So FamilyLife.com/ParentingHelp.

Ann (24:43):

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