Parents didn't stop giving children phones. They moved the line by a year.

In September 2025 Mediemyndigheten (the Swedish Agency for the Media) published its report Ungar & medier 2025, Sweden's largest survey of children's media habits, carried out every other year since 2005. One figure in it drew attention: the share of nine-year-olds with their own mobile phone fell from 82 percent in 2022 to 67 percent in 2024.

The agency itself calls it a break in the trend, and that's fair. Access to a mobile of one's own has risen in every age group since the surveys began. The biggest jump came between 2012 and 2014, and among teenagers it has been essentially universal since 2016. For the curve to turn downwards anywhere is new.

But the interesting part isn't that it turns. It's where it turns.

Only the nine-year-olds

Look at the neighbouring ages and they stand still:

• 10-year-olds: 90 percent have their own mobile phone. The share with no access at all is 7 percent, the same as in 2022.
• 11-year-olds: 95 percent have their own mobile phone. The share with no access at all is around 3 percent, also the same as in 2022.

So the whole decline sits on a single year of age. At the same time, the share of nine-year-olds with no access to a mobile at all rose from 12 to 23 percent, almost a doubling.

That means something different from what the headline suggests. Parents haven't stopped giving their children mobile phones. They've moved the moment. The line that used to sit at nine now sits at ten.

It's a small shift in the statistics and a big thing in a child's life.

What happens during that year

A year sounds short. But it's a year in which classmates gradually get phones, in which contact between children increasingly happens through them, and in which a child without a mobile has to go through an adult every time they want to reach someone.

That's where the gap opens up. Not in screen time. That's falling too: the share of 9–12-year-olds using digital devices more than three hours a day is down ten percentage points since 2022. It's about the social side. A child who waits for a mobile isn't just waiting for a device. They're waiting for the chance to get in touch with a friend on their own.

And that chance has nothing to do with the screen. It has to do with being able to make a call.

Why it matters to us

We're building Barnluren for exactly that year. A landline phone at home, with no screen and no internet access for the child, connected only to contacts the parents have approved. The child can pick up the handset and call a friend who also has Barnluren. The family answers in a free app.

We're not saying a phone settles the question of when a child should get a mobile. That's something every family decides for itself, and Folkhälsomyndigheten's (the Public Health Agency of Sweden's) recommendation to wait until the year the child turns 13 is a better starting point than anything we could say.

But the figures show that more and more families are choosing to wait. And whoever waits needs something to wait with. Otherwise the waiting goes quiet.

Source

Mediemyndigheten, Ungar & medier 2025, published 23 September 2025. The figures on nine-year-olds are in section 1.1 and chart 10 d. Data collection took place in the autumn and winter of 2024.

Read the report at Mediemyndigheten