Step 3

Tell your friends

Share Alameda Unplugged with neighbors, parents, and friends who believe in helping our families unplug and thrive together.

• Share

Step 4

Wait Until 8th for Smartphones

Take the pledge to delay giving kids smartphones until at least the end of 8th grade, when a child is in high school.

• Pledge Now

3

More Real World Independence

Inspired by the non-profit org, Let Grow, we’re pushing ourselves out of our parenting comfort zones to give our children more independence and enable them to grow into confident, resilient young adults.

• Learn More

4

Model Healthy Tech Habits for Kids

Kids learn more from what we do than what we say. We’re working to be mindful about our own tech use—knowing they’re watching and modeling their habits after us every day.

• Learn More

Why

By delaying smartphone ownership, we can give our kids a more balanced childhood that allows them to develop the social, emotional, and cognitive skills necessary for healthy adolescence and adulthood.There are other alternatives to smartphones that can provide necessary communication without the distractions and potential harms associated with smartphones.

How

Collective problems require collective solutions. Turns out that we're not alone and there are hundreds of thousands of families that feel the way we do about smartphones for kids. It's just been hard to find one another. Not anymore!The non-profit organization Wait Until 8th website is focused on empowering parents to say yes to waiting for the smartphone. We're encouraging neighbors, friends, and family to take the pledge because it’s already a nationally recognized, reputable non-profit that has organized around one of our shared goals.

Why

Concerns about social media’s impact on kids aren’t new—and they’re gaining increased national attention. In a New York Times Op Ed, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy urged Congress to require warning labels noting that social media can harm kids’ mental health. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains that before age 16, adolescents’ brains are still developing crucial skills like emotional regulation and impulse control—making them especially vulnerable to the pressures of social media.

How

The challenge with social media is that it’s not something any one of us can fix on our own. When every child’s friends are on social media, choosing differently feels impossible. But imagine if that changed—if the norm shifted toward real connection, where kids made plans face-to-face and friendships grew through shared experiences, not screens.

Why

You might recall a childhood of riding bikes through the neighborhood and dropping by a friend’s house just to see who was home. Sadly, that kind of real-world freedom is fading, mostly because of:

The Result

Our children are spending more time indoors on screens and less time engaging in unstructured, unsupervised play with other children.Maybe you can feel it or maybe you suspect that all that screen time isn't great for their development. If you need data to support what you know in your gut, check out the resources linked below.

Call to Action

Inspired by the non-profit organization
Let Grow, we’re pushing ourselves beyond our parenting comfort zones to enable more real-world experiences that will help our kids grow into confident, resilient young adults.Let Grow has a fantastic guide with
4-weeks worth of activities to help build independence and resilience.

Then What?

We encourage our children to make in person play dates with friends and walk to/from local parks to meet up. We plan ahead with a time to be home and know who they will be with when they're out having fun.Also available at the link below is a
"Kid License" available in both English and en español. This is the recommendation from the Let Grow organization.