What Charedim got right about smartphones, and we got wrong

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How we laughed. When in the 2010s, Charedi Rabbis across the Jewish world came out and proclaimed bans on smartphones. How we chortled as their communities instituted the use of ‘kosher phones’, devices that only allow basic phone and text functions and no or limited access to the internet. What antediluvian idiots, those of us in the secular, progressive and modern orthodox worlds thought. Literally taking us back to the times and mores of Noah and the flood. Don’t they know we are in the twenty first century, and that this technology is the future?

We looked down in derision at them, and their stupidity in thinking they could go on keeping the modern world out, when we knew the marvels it offered were far superior to their backward ways. Haaretz, that bastion, as Kamala Harris might say, of not being burdened by what has been, noted in 2016, somewhat contemptuously, that these calls by Charedi Rabbis were their ‘attempt to divert Earth from its orbit a tad’. But who knows, perhaps this was all somewhat the wrong way round. Perhaps it was us who were the idiots, not the strictly orthodox. Useful idiots taken in by Silicon Valley – our kids and their lives so much detritus on the wayside in their stampede to billions of dollars of profit. Perhaps Charedim were on to something when they questioned whether the wonder tools introduced to us by Apple in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, were so wonderful after all. Steve Jobs, of course, was lauded by the media as a genius. The hero, who made all this possible. The prophet of the future who was awarded a whole string of honors when alive, and even posthumously given the highest possible US civilian honor – the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022, by good old Joe Biden.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Democrats, with their commitment to unburdening the rest of us from our history, and traditions, and the common sense to know when things might be damaging our children, were so enamored of Jobs. Would though the parents of all the teenagers who have suffered through their use agree? Take Missouri teenager Megan Taylor Meier who hanged herself 3 weeks before her 14^th birthday. Her suicide was attributed to cyberbullying. Or consider a survey in 2024 in the UK which found that one in five 16- to 18-year-olds have at one time felt that ‘life was not living’ due to social media. The same survey found that 47% of girls had been sent sexual images by a stranger. Or ponder a study of sexting in young adults across the US and Canada in 2023 which told us that most had started the practice by the age of 16. Or read a 2023 survey in the UK of teens between 14 and 18 which found that 22% watch porn frequently, and the average age at which they had started was just twelve years old. Twelve. The age when in traditional Judaism, girls take on the yoke of the commandments, and boys start preparing to. But it’s the Charedi Rabbis who had it wrong.

Well, belatedly, the world is catching up. An increasing number of parents are realizing that even if they don’t kill your kids, smartphones come with huge downsides. Grassroots organisations such as Smartphone Free Childhood or Wait until 8^th (i.e. wait until 8^th grade to give your child a smartphone) are highlighting not only the dangers of cyberbullying or addiction, but as well how they are radically changing childhood for the worse. Gone for so many is spending time outdoors, reading or just chatting with friends. Replaced instead by endless scrolling and the ultimately empty chasing of social recognition in the distorted framework of the online world. The same distorted framework which pushes the drive for clicks and likes that bring Silicon Valley its money. This is the world that Steve Jobs bequeathed us. This is the world that we hand to our children at 11 years old or younger, when we give them that new device, shiny out of the box. Yet it’s Charedim who are the idiots? No, it’s us.

In England there has been a lot of fuss recently about Chassidic schools sending their kids off to yeshivah at a young age. The government is worried about how they won’t be ready for life in ‘Modern Britain’ (a somewhat Orwellian phrase – as though there was an ancient Britain lying about somewhere in 2024 which our kids could grow up in as an alternative, lurking with intent to burden us with the past perhaps). But if sexting, and pornography, and spending your childhood glued to a screen are what ‘Modern Britain’, just as much as the ‘Modern US’, or ‘Modern Israel’, wants to offer its kids, then it makes you wonder who precisely should be taking lessons from who. Think about that the next time you drive past your local Charedi neighbourhood, and see the kids playing outside, learning Torah, and living authentic lives, as yours look at the next TikTok video on their phone.