Start a parent pledge

A parent pledge is a shared agreement among families to delay giving their children smartphones and/or social media until a certain age.

It helps reduce peer pressure by creating a community of parents making the same intentional choice.

The goal is not necessarily for every single parent to sign the pledge, but to build a network of support around parents who do choose to delay – because it’s not easy to do alone!

Parents who sign the Wait Until 8th pledge agree not to give their child a personal smartphone (phones that just talk and text are okay) until at least the END of 8th grade. (The pledge does not say anything about social media.)

Their website has everything you need to get started. Start there.

How to go above and beyond

If you are looking to turbo-charge pledge momentum at your school – here are some over-achiever things that our SCPN chapters have tried with great success.

• Recruit grade-level representatives.
  • If you can, find one parent per grade who is willing to be an extra point of contact for people with questions about the pledge.
  • Any time you communicate about Wait Until 8th, include the names and contact information (with permission) of all the grade-level representatives. This helps show that there is a broad base of community support.
  • Each grade-level representative should also write an email in the beginning of the year to the parents in their grade introducing themselves, explaining their personal interest in the pledge, and inviting other parents to sign.
• Communicate about the pledge in many different ways (if you have permission): via grade-level parent emails, the school newsletter that goes out to parents, Back-to-School Night, setting up a booth at school/parish events, etc.
  • In-person, face-to-face conversations about the pledge are especially powerful!
• Communicate over, and over, and over again. Once per month in the parent newsletter during the first year and a half is not too much. After that, less often is okay (with more of a push at the beginning of each school year).
• Use parent testimonials.
  • Find parents in your school who are supportive – especially parents who are well known and well liked.
  • Ask these parents to write 1-3 sentences about why they signed the pledge, and with their permission, add these testimonials, along with a family photo, to your monthly ad for pledges in the parent newsletter.
• Celebrate milestones. Did a grade get its first 10 pledges? Are pledges officially active in all the younger grades? Let everyone know in the parent newsletter. Celebrate the wins!
  • You can use our Excel template to generate a bar chart to show pledge progress in each grade. Publish an updated bar chart along with a new parent testimonial each month.
    • How do you find the number of pledges in each grade? Simply email info@waituntil8th.org and ask for a numbers update. (Alternatively, ask your grade-level representatives to forward you the list of names.)
• Year 2: Incoming Kindergarten families.
  • Sometime in August, find a copy of the incoming Kindergarten roster and cross-check it to find any families who have already signed the Wait Until 8th pledge for older siblings.
  • Email these families. Say that you see they have already signed the pledge for the incoming Kindergartener’s older sibling(s), and ask if they would like to sign the pledge for the incoming Kindergartener as well. You can send a link to the pledge, but also offer that they can simply reply “yes” to your email, and you will sign up for them. (Yes, you can sign other people up on the WU8 website as long as you have their permission and basic info, which should be available in the parent directory.)
  • Then email all incoming Kindergarten families to explain the pledge and invite them to sign. Show them the bar chart from last year to show how much support the pledge has already at the school. Note that there are already ___ pledges from Kindergarten families, and the school year hasn’t even started yet! “We are so excited to see this momentum…”
• Siblings. Sometimes parents don’t realize that they need to sign a pledge for each child. They mean for every child to be covered by the pledge, but they only actually sign one pledge.
  • After the pledge is well established, ask your grade-level representatives to forward you the names of all the pledgers.
  • Find some volunteers to help you pick out parents who signed up some but not all of their kids.
  • Email these parents to let them know the situation and gently invite them to sign the pledge for all of their kids – or if they prefer, simply reply “yes” to the email, and you will fill out the pledge form for them for their remaining kids not covered by the pledge.
• Make sure people know that their kids can still have basic phones. There are a lot of great phone options for kids! Please widely share our parent guides: short version and long version.

• When you appear at in-person events, you can have people sign the pledge on paper. Then, later, you can do the data entry for them. It keeps things simple. Use our template.

It is not necessary to do all of the things listed, but that is the playbook followed by the SCPN chapter at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which is currently the #1 school in the United States for Wait Until 8th pledges!

The SCPN chapter at Our Lady of Mount Carmel leads the nation in Wait Until 8th pledges

Pros and Cons of Wait Until 8th

Other pledge options

To gain easier access to the data, you might consider simply creating your own pledge (same idea: no smartphones until after 8th grade) and offering it via a Google Form.

If you would like a more customized pledge, consider using this Pact Builder tool.