During my recent commute to work, I texted faraway families about our fantasy baseball league, which was great because I felt connected with them for a second. I then switched the app and got angry with the stupid opinions I saw on X because of its advanced toxicity and numbing disconcerts that I stopped using it anymore. It's been a lot of minutes before I stop reading silly original posts and relaxing my face muscles.
It's the duality of the cell phone: it connects me with loved ones, and sometimes I think it ruins my life. I need it, I want it, but sometimes I hate it, I fear it. Many people have to solve this problem - for parents, this is probably the worst, who have been flooded with the media recently, suggesting that smartphones and social media may harm children’s mental health, but they also want their children to enjoy the benefits of technology and prepare for adult life in the digital age.
It was because of this tension that I took the train to the town of Westport, Connecticut last week. There, a parent-led group called OK To delay to organize an "alternative device fair" for families who want to know a variety of phones that intentionally limit their functionality. (X won't frown with these devices, as most of them block social media.) Over the past year, similar bazaars have appeared here and there, usually in the more affluent suburbs of the Tristate area. The Westport's Fair was set up after an event last fall in New York's Rye, and was set up in the spacious conference room of the most perfect, most complete public library I've ever seen. When I arrived about 30 minutes after the four-hour race, it was bustling when I arrived. Chat is already at a healthy party level.
The tables set up around the room each showcase different equipment. One stall has a flip phone from the Barbie brand; another is offering a retro-style "landline" phone called The Tin Can. But most gadgets look the same - base, rectangular smartphones. But everyone has their own special, restricted App Store, and a range of parental controls that are much higher than what was available just a few years ago. A parent showed me her notepad and she explained the nuances between these phones in detail. She plans to share information with a group of online parents who cannot come. Another mom told me she would ask people at every stall how easy it would be for kids to crack the phone system and bypass the parents’ controls - you can see kids discussing publicly on the internet all the time.
A few years ago, I explored the “stupid phone call” trend, a cultural curiosity of returning to the time before the smartphone by avoiding complex devices and buying something simpler and intentionally restricted. One of the best phones I've tried is the Lightweight Phone II, and I don't like it because it's so small that I've been worried about myself breaking or losing it. In the library, I chatted with Dan Fox of Light Phone, who showed people the latest version of the device. The lightweight phone III is larger and thicker and has a camera, but still uses a black and white screen and bans web browsing and social media apps. He told me that this was his third replacement equipment activity in a week. He has also been to Adressley, a village in Westchester County, New York, in Manhattan's Upper East Side. He speculated that kids like light phones because it doesn't require all the Rigmarole about filters and settings parents. It's designed for adults, so it looks cool and is designed in Brooklyn, which looks cooler. (Fox then left early to join his colleagues in Kendrick Lamar's concert.)
Westport's crowded rooms reflect a widespread focus on the impact social media may have on children and adolescents. But this is also a very specific expression. Explaining the momentum of the hosting market, Becca Zipkin, co-founder of OK To To To Delawt to Delay, told me that it has become the standard for kids in the area to accept iPhones as the standard for primary school graduation. One of the goals of her group is to postpone this ritual and create a different culture in the community. "It's not a world without choice," she said.
The options on display in Westport are more interesting than I thought. They reflected the tricky balancing act parents face: how to let kids enjoy the benefits of being connected (a chess game, a video call with Grandma, a GPS route to soccer practice, the feeling of autonomy that comes from setting a photo of Olivia Rodrigo as your home-screen background) and protect them from the bad stuff (violent videos, messages from creeps, the urge to endlessly scroll, the ability to see where all of your friends are at any given time and therefore every time you exclude it, please note).
Pinwheel, an Austin-based company, has demonstrated a solution that uses a custom operating system for Android phones, such as Google Pixel, that allows parents to receive "trigger words" alerts in their children's text and allows them to read every message at any time. Like most others shown at the fair, Windmill’s custom app store prevents kids from installing social media. During the demo, I saw that the windmill also blocked other wide range of applications, including Spotify - the booth waiter told me that the nearby mom said the app contained "unlimited porn" and that the statement surprised us both. (According to him, kids put links to porn in playlist descriptions; I don't know if that's true, but Spotify did have a brief problem with porn appearing in a small number of search results last year.) The app for the arts-and-crafts chain Michaels was also blocked, for a similar but less explicit reason: A red label placed on the Michaels app advised that it may contain a loophole that would allow kids to get onto unnamed other platforms. (Michaels did not respond to my comment request, Spotify declined to comment.)
In addition to the standard suite of surveillance tools, many devices are equipped with AI-powered tools that will review children’s phones: naked content: nudes will be blurred and trigger alerts sent to parents; a child who receives text messages from a friend with a potty will only see a series of asterisks instead of a specialist.
Zipkin told me that “continuous involvement in surveillance of iPhones is under a lot of pressure on parents,” he refers to parental controls provided by Apple, which could become the focus of constant negotiations and constant negotiations and conflicts between children and their guardians. This is part of marketing these alternative equipment. Windmill highlights the help of AI on its website: “Instead of relying on parents to manually monitor every digital interaction (Because who has time?), AI-driven technology is learning behavior, acknowledge risks and actively ensure children's safety. ”
This story is similar on other tables. GABB, LEHI, Utah, Company, offers a feature that automatically closes video calls and sends notifications to parents if they find naked. Artificial intelligence still requires some work – for example, if they appear in the background of a phone call, it can trigger a poster of a man in a swimsuit or a man in a shirt. GABB also has its own music app that uses AI and human reviewers to identify and block songs in clear language or adult themes. “Taylor Swift is here, but it’s not Taylor Swift’s music,” Lori Mornency Kun, a spokesman for the company, told me.
At the next booth, another Utah-based company, Troomi, is demonstrating a system that allows parents to set content filters to profane, violent discussions and “hints” based on their child’s age. The presenter also showed us how to add custom keywords to the system in case parents think that the AI tool doesn't find everything. (“Hazardous content even has a chance to reach your child!” Read an article on the company’s Chipper Instagram account.)
Throughout the room, Bark is an Atlanta-based company that started with a parent-control app and then launched its own smartphone, which offers another good-looking board with similar features. The man alerted his parents about 26 possible issues, including signs of depression and signs of cyberbullying. I pose to the booth waiter, Chief Business Officer Christian Brucculeri, who is a child who may be joking 100 times a day and wants to kill himself without any real suicidal thoughts, which is Brucculeri's problem and seems to be understandable. He believes that false positives are better than negative factors that are missed. He told me that when Bark received an alert that threatened to harm his or her children, it called for law enforcement, but that alerts were first reviewed by humans. "We're not beating kids," he said.
Although everyone in the library is polite, there is clearly a fierce competition in the alternative equipment space. Troomi, for example, sells itself as a "smarter and safer alternative to windmills." Pinwheel's website emphasizes that its AI chatbot Pinwheelgpt is a more useful tool than Troomi's chatbot Troadi - Pinwheel believes this is confusing for children, as the bot is anthropomorphized in the form of a comic woman. Bark provides a page that compares each of these competitors to its own product.
Afterwards, Zipkin told me that my parents gave her various feedback on different devices. Some of them believe that monitoring the granular level of the text is an indication of any emotional distress or experimental curse, which is excessive and invasive. Like her, others impressed, with some of the AI features seemingly taking some burden on parents who are tired of being constantly alert. Although she has heard of all the negative things about artificial intelligence in person, it seems to her that it is a way to use it forever. "It's very attractive to know that your child isn't receiving harassment or bullying material, sexual images or explicit images or something like that," she told me. "I think it's amazing to know there's technology to stop it."
Of course, as every parent knows, there is actually no system that prevents all dangerous, serious or hurtful things from entering through outside phones. But now there are so many alternative equipment companies to choose from, which proves how much people want and are willing to find something that hasn't been possible so far: a phone that doesn't have anything bad.