When a parent hands their child their first phone, it should feel like an initial step towards independence: a way for them to stay connected throughout the day, navigate their journey home, and stay safe.
But in 2026, unboxing a device often feels less like an important milestone and more like a new minefield to navigate. Before the device is even in their child’s hands, parents are faced with an endless setup process – with screen time limits to enforce, apps to restrict, and parental controls to configure.
“When you buy an item for your child, you don’t expect to take it out of the box and then have to understand all the different ways in which you can try and make the product safe for them,” says Guy Holder, co-founder of Set@16. “You expect to take out the thing and for it to be safe for the age group. You don’t expect to have to start retrofitting [it] so that your child doesn’t see pornography.”
For the past two decades, children have been handed devices that aren’t safe out the box, when they should be. It’s time to rethink what a first phone should actually do.
The problem with parental controls
Parental controls on mobile devices first came to the fore in 2008, when Apple added a basic ‘Restrictions’ menu as part of its iOS 2.0 and iPhone 3G release. This enabled parents to block apps like Safari, YouTube and the phone’s camera.
Fast forward almost two decades, and parental controls are the most sophisticated they’ve ever been, with controls including daily screen time limits, app blocking, content filtering and restricting, and family controls that enable parents to remotely track their children, approve downloads and requests, and more.
These controls sound good, right? They sound beneficial. But not every parent has the tech awareness to know what to do. Not every parent has the time to set it all up, or stay up-to-date with the latest settings, or understand the workarounds that children can find to overcome the controls.
In short, they don’t offer the safety blanket they appear to, as Jane Rowland, co-founder of Safe Screens, confirms: “Parents can use the parental controls and turn all this stuff off, but… those parental controls are certainly not a panacea to keep children safe. Kids are much more tech savvy than we are and there are always workarounds… there's always that constant peer pressure.”
Charlotte Ashton, journalist and co-founder of Generation Focus, concurs: “We need to think beyond parental controls, and how we can tinker around the edges with existing devices. They are adult devices, and they simply shouldn’t be in the hands of children.”
Removing distractions and simplifying smartphones
Rowland thinks the route forward isn’t to remove phones, but to simplify them.
“I think there’s scope for a restricted phone that solves all of this. Essentially a brick phone, with very limited non-gamified functionality that means children can get their childhoods back,” she muses. “It needs to be very restricted to non-gamified apps and functionalities… banking, medical monitoring, train and bus passes… very functional apps, very basic and very utilitarian.”
It’s an idea that Jennifer Powers, founder of Unplugged Coalition, supports: “There’s something about a brick phone that allows you to use the phone for what it was meant to be used for, which was to communicate and use it as a tool.”
Aside from keeping children safe and connected with their parents, a simple ‘brick’ phone has the added benefit of removing distractions and creating intentional boredom – and almost certainly combatting phone and app addiction.
“They are able to use it for communication but won’t send them into lost hours of doomscrolling”, says Arabella Skinner, director of Health Professionals for Safer Screens.
Safe out of the box
As Holder states: “Parents need… something that’s safe out of the box; that lets them communicate with their child on the go.”
Earlier this year, child, education, health and tech experts came together to discuss ways to rethink technology for children. Xplora CEO Sten Kirkbak chaired the discussion and he was left in no doubt that parents are asking for a different kind of technology for children.
“It’s not ‘just one more parental control’ or ‘safer social media’ – it’s creating fundamentally different devices that are designed for wellbeing, independence, and real-world freedom – as we’re doing with XploraOne,” says Kirkbak. “Devices should be focused on communication and safety – without internet browsing, app stores, addictive feeds, or constant distraction.”
Rethinking technology for children, then, means offering alternatives that keep kids connected rather than distracted.
It’s about protecting childhood and letting children be children for a little longer. It’s time for a brick phone revolution.
