We finally travelled to London in December; Lara would turn 12 on that trip. Before we left, I requested if she could wait until we returned to Singapore to receive her phone. I explained that she would be so excited to have her new device that she may forget to be in the moment on holiday and not appreciate and relish our first trip after two years. Much to my surprise, she happily agreed.

When we returned after two weeks, Lara excitedly accepted her gift, which was my old iPhone. We laid down all the rules, as usual: follow the screentime limits, no using the phone in school, and no using social media like Faceook, Snapchat or TikTok. She didn’t protest. Over the next three weeks, I noticed that Lara painted a little less, spent less time outdoors and created fewer candles for her business, On a Wick. Instead, she seemed to be very involved in her frivolous, time-consuming conversations with her friends.

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Then one day, out of the blue, I was sitting at my desk when she sneakily came into my room and asked if she could buy slime online. Lara is truly obsessed with slime and it has covered my walls, floors and upholstery. I despise it. She started to negotiate: if I bought her slime, she would give up her phone. I sat there, shocked, as she explained that her phone didn’t serve much of a purpose; it was distracting her from being creative and using her hands, which she loves.

She said that her good friends could still message her on her iPad, and that she was willing to give it up, turn it off and keep it out of sight. Sceptical, I said I would take the phone for a week to see if she would change her mind. One week later, she desired only the slime. It’s been two months now, and Lara hardly uses the phone except for booking a cab on Grab. Once she’s home, she promptly turns it off and returns it to my closet among our other old iPhones.

Lara and I spoke at length about the negative impact that owning a phone can have on our mental health, such as the increase in depression and anxiety, and the decrease in sleep. But instead of me giving examples, it was her telling me how she could see this effect on many of her peers and friends.

Whenever Lara’s friends ask her where her phone is, she feels “like a baby” for giving up her device for slime, so she tells them that her mum banned her from it. Still, I would rather have that and be in a house full of slime, than to watch my 12-year-old waste time on YouTube and get sucked into social media, all of which can leave a negative impact on her mental health.

Today, so many kids feel the pressure to be cool, to have a phone and feel a sense of autonomy. But hardly any of them at such a young age have a real need for it. I completely understand parents who are not with their children all day, or whose children need to take public transport—and for those reasons, a phone can be a necessity. Bill Gates only gave his kids a phone at 14, so maybe the best way is to communicate well with your children and allow them to deal with social media and online content once they’re at the right age and level of maturity. Maybe Lara will change her mind one day, but until that day comes, I’m happy to indulge in her slime obsession.

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