Seventh grader Lucy Stadalman got a phone at the end of fifth grade because she started babysitting her sister more.
“I needed to find a way to talk to my parents,” Stadalman said.
She now has social media, but she said her accounts are private and her parents manage them. She also has a time limit on the apps, set by her parents.
With the advancements of cellphones and the rise of social media, parents and families have to navigate when to get phones for their kids and what to allow on their phones.
Around 95% of teenagers aged 13-17 reported having access to a smartphone in 2024, up from 73% in 2014, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey.
Roughly 1 in 5 teens say they are on TikTok and YouTube almost constantly, according to a 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat are the most popular social media sites used by teens aged 13-17, according to the survey.
Freshman Anna L’Ecuyer has had a phone since fourth grade, but she’s only had social media for a few months.
“I feel like I’m at the age where I, like, know how to use it properly and safely,” L’Ecuyer said. “I kind of wish [my parents] would have let me get it sooner, but I understand they’re just, like, watching out.”
Freshman Brooklyn Kessler has had a phone since fourth grade, too, but she didn’t get social media until seventh grade.
“That’s just when my parents let me get social media,” Kessler said. “That’s when, like, everyone else was getting social media, like my friends.”
Older teens are more likely to use social media than younger teens, according to the survey. Seventy-four percent of 15- to 17-year-olds said they used TikTok in the survey compared to 58% of teens ages 13 and 14.
The Eudora Times talked to nine students, and eight of nine got their phones between fourth and seventh grade. Senior Adria Chrislip got her phone in eighth grade, but she shared a phone with her brothers once she started middle school.
“I think getting a phone in your transition to middle school or seventh grade, when you’re involved in sports and activities, can be helpful for communication with your parents,” Chrislip said.
Elementary Principal Seth Heide said the school has fourth and fifth graders who have phones because they’re responsible for walking home with younger siblings. He said he “would give them very limited capabilities with that phone,” though.
High school Principal Bill DeWitt said, realistically, he thinks students should not have the ability to do anything more than call, text and dial 911 before they’re 16. He said “there isn’t a single app that’s being developed for smartphones that is truly looking out for the safety and well-being of our kids.”
In a study published in 2024, researchers found young adults with high levels of depression also have high levels of social media use. However, this doesn’t mean that social media was the cause.
In a survey from 2025, though, almost 50% of teens said social media harms people their age. Still, 74% of teens surveyed said these platforms make them feel more connected to their friends.
Senior Britney Gassert said problematic content exists on social media, but you don’t have to engage with it.
“It depends, I think, on how you use it and the people and things that you interact with and you follow,” Gassert said. “For me, I don’t think it’s that negative because I don’t interact with that kind of content.”
Roughly two-thirds of adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content on social media, according to a 2025 advisory from the U.S. surgeon general.
Senior Cooper Gray agreed people should be educated on the dangers of social media before using it.
“I think people need to know where and where they shouldn’t go on it,” Gray said. “Also, people just having access to you easily. Like, they can friend you and you can talk to them in, like, less than a minute.”
Gray said he has both public and private accounts on social media.
Sixth grader Landon Lewis said he uses his phone to call, text and watch TikTok. He said social media is fun, but can sometimes be bad if your account gets hacked.
Middle school Principal Jeremy Thomas said the school tries to remind students of the dangers of social media, but he understands that it can be a fun experience if kids treat it responsibly.
“We try to remind kids a lot that, ‘If you aren’t properly using this’ or ‘If you do it in the wrong way’ it could have serious consequences,” Thomas said. “It’s just a matter of, they’re immature, their brains aren’t developed, and they just need that adult supervision to monitor what they’re doing.”
Heide said the elementary school has technology classes to teach students responsible use.
“It begins with their technology classes here of just the personal responsibility online and reporting things that seem suspicious,” Heide said. “Internet safety is a big part of the curriculum that they talk about here in technology class.”
With cellphone use increasing among younger people, Thomas said it’s good to monitor adolescents’ screen time because too much can have detrimental effects. Excessive screen time can harm students’ “cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional growth,” according to a 2023 National Institutes of Health study.
The middle school does not allow cellphone use during school, and Thomas said it began more strictly enforcing the policy this year. Eighth grader Nolan Plegge said he supports it.
“You wouldn’t want people on their phone all day at school,” Plegge said.
The elementary school has the same policy of keeping phones in backpacks during the day, and the high school recently adopted a new policy that doesn’t allow cellphone use during class periods.
DeWitt said ideally, he doesn’t think teenagers should get phones until they’re 18.
“In a perfect world, you would want to delay a lot of this,” DeWitt said. “But that’s just not practical anymore, because the phones are so ubiquitous and everybody has one. And parents have to decide how hard of a line do they want to have in order to protect their children?”
Reach reporter Bella Waters at [email protected].
