At this current stage in life—in my early 40s, a married father of three kids aged 10 and under—nothing on this planet has produced a more visceral reaction, a repulsion and feeling of self-hatred, then when my 2 ½ year-old daughter would stand up on her tiptoes, her cute little hands fully extended toward me, and proceed to plead for my iPhone.

She would wail.

“I want to puuussshhh!!!”

She would beg.

“I want to holdddd!!!”

She would demand.

“I want to seeeeee!!!”

And it killed me. Every. Single. Time.

It’s a sound that had easily eclipsed that of nails on a chalkboard as The Worst Sound Ever. It would leave me cringing, clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth over how life so quickly got to this: in only two years on this planet, she had come to experience the power of a smartphone and the priority I’d given it in my daily life. And, really, I have no one to point the finger at but myself.

When I think about the reason behind ditching my smartphone, my kids are Exhibits A, B and C, because I know the varying degrees of impact and influence my behavior with a smartphone had over each of them. They have become my ‘why’ for switching to a flip phone.

What I’ve learned throughout 10 years of parenting—oftentimes the hard way—is that, intentional or not, we show our children what’s truly important to us by our behavior, not our words or intentions.

And whenever I had my smartphone with me I only gave my kids my partial attention.

From an early age, my children learned that a smartphone was important simply through the presence it held in our lives. Hell, no sooner than each of them was born, before the vernix was wiped from their eyes, was there an iPhone camera in their face, capturing the miracle of life.

But I don’t view myself as a bad dad, and this story won’t be self-flagellating. I see this as my problem to solve. Scott Peck, author of “The Road Less Traveled,” a book that always travels with us, so obviously states that “We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them.” He continues:

This statement may seem idiotically self-evident, yet it is seemingly beyond the comprehension of much of the human race. This is because we must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it. We cannot solve a problem by saying, “It’s not my problem.” We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say, “This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.” But many, so many, seek to avoid the pain of their problems by saying to themselves: “This problem was caused by other people, or by social circumstances beyond my control, and therefore it is up to other people or society to solve this problem for me. It is not really my personal problem.”

No, I do not manufacture smartphones or develop apps, but I used and abused an iPhone around my children and it’s my responsibility to own and address the problems my behavior created. Confronting problems, as Peck said, is painful. But I believe it’d be more painful to have to deal with greater consequences further down the line, when my kids are older.

My wife and I never had our heads in the clouds about the negative effects the presence of a smartphone could have on both our children’s wellbeing and their perception of the world. We have always been on red alert when it came to smartphones around the kids and with the kids.

There are lines we’ve never crossed, such as letting them have access to a smartphone—or any device—while at a restaurant, in their stroller, or anywhere out in public, as a way to keep entertained, distracted, occupied or quiet. The exception is on long flights, when they’re allowed to watch something kid-friendly from an Amazon Fire we got just a few years ago.

I’ll premise all of this with the fact that we are neither Luddites nor raising our kids in a bubble. We’ve brought up our family in some of the most densely-packed, over-stimulated cities in the world, from Chicago to San Francisco, Brooklyn to London and now Florence. (They’ve been exposed to a helluva lot—probably more than most people see in a lifetime.)

But it wasn’t until my 43rd birthday last August, when my wife gifted me a copy of Jonathan Haidt’s gobsmacking book “Anxious Generation,” that I was truly scared straight and, finally, motivated to take radical action.

If you’re a fellow parent, or plan to become one, then you might be able to relate to the tension I feel between digital life and being present. Lately, I’ve been reckoning with one question: what was I modeling for my kids without realizing it?

The casual creep of the smartphone in my life

Throughout my children’s lives I’ve seldom left a room, and rarely ever our apartment or house, without my smartphone. My kids have never known a phone to simply be a phone, like I did growing up, but rather as this tech-powered swiss army knife of a device that could do everything from making calls, to getting grandparents on video on-demand, to looking up the cost of a Lego set, to ordering groceries and dinner. (Remind me later to tell you a story of the time when $70 worth of Indian food was surprisingly ordered from my phone and delivered to our Brooklyn apartment.) And the myriad things a smartphone could do only increased with their age, their needs and wants.

I had always been too casual about leaving my smartphone within grabbing distance of my kids. Despite the lock screen, their little fingers somehow found a way to unlock it (or lock me out of it for 15 minutes, as the case may be). Quickly, they learned how to scroll through my camera roll and Apple Music, to take selfies and record videos of themselves. They were defenseless over the allure of the device.

While they’ve never had unsupervised access to the internet, one time I did find a video our two oldest kids had recorded, during the pandemic when they were 4 and 6, that left me shocked. My son signed off the video with a familiar refrain as a call-to-action.

“Press the like button and subscribe for more!” he gleefully said.

How did he instinctively know to end a video that way? Could it have been from a Lego speed build or set review video I had shown him? Something else? It reinforced to me just how sponge-like and impressionable their little brains are. He was like a little parakeet.

What I was (accidentally) teaching them

Technology has never advanced as fast as today. There is no hiding or running away from it. To be clear, I don’t want to avoid it—I see a lot of good in technology.

But the sheer presence of my smartphone, and how I used it, unintentionally signaled messages to my children that I became aware of only from hindsight:

That my smartphone was very, very important to me.

That it was okay to be constantly connected.

That distraction was normal.

Of course, it was never just me. When we lived in Brooklyn for five years, on certain weekday mornings I would take our two oldest on the subway to a daycare facility next to my job in the Financial District. My daughter would be in the stroller, my son on the seat attached to the back of it. As we rode the crowded 2, 3, 4 or 5 train, without fail the kids would face a wall of smartphones and tablets across from them, the heads of strangers cocked downward, eyes fixed on screens, fingers scrolling and tapping.

When I wasn’t gold medaling in the Olympic subway sport of standing balanced without bumping into strangers while reading a book, crouched over a stroller, as the train frequently swerved, jolted and abruptly stopped, my kids would just sit and stare at the dozens of personal devices before them.

Rarely would someone look, smile or acknowledge them back. Sure, this was New York City, and commuters are often in their own world, but I still think about the unintentional messages moments like those sent to children, who are still learning non-verbal cues from observing and interacting with people around them. On the subway, their observations reinforced just how important these rectangular devices were to us adults. No wonder why they liked to hold one themselves. They were - and still are - vulnerable to its power.

Some of the worst moments with our youngest child and smartphones happened in 2024. We took 18 flights during our year of world travel, including several long-haul flights. Whether we were flying from Africa to the UAE, the UAE to Indonesia, Singapore to Italy, or crossAtlantic, there was always some well-meaning stranger who would delight in holding and baby talk to our toddler. But well-intentioned or not, the moment would almost always lead to the stranger taking out their smartphone, placing it in our daughter’s hands and allowing her to swipe and tap away.

‘What the fuuuuccckk!!!’ was always my internal monologue.

It’s like the smartphone has become today’s version of the new rattle, the new board book, the new pacifier.

For us, those moments on a plane would always signal the end of an encounter that began so sweetly. And, without fail, my wife or I would need to practically hogtie and carry our tantrumming toddler back to our seats, because all she wanted to do was stay in the glow of that damn smartphone.

How I justified my own behavior to myself

Until 2024, I had spent the majority of every weekday of my kids’ lives working in an office. When I would come home, often after dinnertime, my phone would stay in my pants or suit pocket, or perhaps worse I left it out and nearby, but with the screen facing down (as if that really made it less distracting; just look at this research). Over the years I had made it a habit of always being available to my colleagues, regardless of what was happening at home.

It was only when we were relocated to London did I start to set better evening boundaries with my phone, which usually meant I would leave it on the foyer table next to the front door, or sometimes upstairs in our bedroom. But eventually I let those boundaries, like every other past boundary I had set, fall to the wayside.

Why? Because I felt like I both needed and wanted to be connected at all times. The problem with being constantly connected to my smartphone, and anticipating the notifications that would come, was that it led to more sloppy, ‘justifiable’ behavior as a parent.

In many ways my smartphone was part of our bonding experience, because the things we could do with it brought them some pleasure—whether we were surfing through Apple Music, lost in a never ending scroll of my camera roll, or allowing them to reply to a WhatsApp message from my brother or parents. That’s how I justified my behavior.

Today I have lingering guilt. I cannot count the number of times the kids have come into our bedroom in the morning hours and seen my head in the phone before they saw my actual eyes. Or the sneaky ways I used to look at my phone during moments of downtime, when we’re all sitting on the couch reading books. (Because our kids are voracious readers.) Or, in the most recent months, the moments when my youngest daughter would ask me to sit by her bed while she fell asleep. I happily obliged, but seldom without my iPhone.

Looking back on it now, she wanted me near her to provide comfort, to be a familiar presence in her dark bedroom. But there I was, a halo of blue light surrounding my face, head down, eyes fixed, being a super consumer of content I’d almost always soon forget. I feel sad for her, that she only got half of me in those moments, when what she deserved was a fully present parent.

Why I made the switch

I went into detail in the About section of this Substack on the five reasons that drove me to switch to a smartphone. The most important one being my kids.

It’s worth noting that my wife hasn’t struggled with her smartphone like I have. A big reason why is that she's been the primary caretaker of the kids since they were born, and she’s the most self-aware person I have ever known. She leaves her phone in the other room without ever thinking of it. She’s not actively on social media. When she does need to use the phone, which she uses regularly to conduct and coordinate everyone’s lives, she always leaves the room, or goes somewhere and turns her back so she’s not seen.

I, on the other hand, had to get honest with myself about what I needed in life. Fewer notifications, more presence. And that required a reprioritization. The smartphone had become a barrier, a distraction in my role as a father. It had been years since the phone was just a tool.

The behavior I now want to model to my kids: do as I do.

I want my flip phone to signal that:

It’s not a toy.

It’s not a distraction.

It’s not the center of attention.

It’s a clunky old thing only used for phone calls. I believe this new way of life will reset expectations. There will be no scrolling, no camera roll, no always-on temptation.

What I hope to replace my smartphone with

I want to be deeply present with my kids. I want more moments of boredom and voids that remain unfilled to leave room for creativity.

I want my kids to experience the world as more than a backdrop for an Instagram feed. I am confident that if I can succeed in showing them how amazing this Earth is, they won’t desire the dopamine hit of a virtual world.

I want to show them that just because something has become normal doesn’t make it good. I want them to always be awed by nature and use technology to make the world a truly better place.

Meanwhile, as I write this, my youngest was just having a conversation with her Magna-Tiles: two isosceles triangles held together by magnetic force and then hinged shut when “the phone call ends”—just like a flip phone.

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