She started the debate about kids and phones. Now she wants to end it.

Twenge with her daughter Julia,13, who has what the teen calls her ‘kid’s phone’, because it does not access the internet and has limited apps, at their home in San Diego. Twenge has emerged as one of the research world’s loudest voices on what she sees as the obvious, incontrovertible risks of smartphones and social media for kids. — Sandy Huffaker/The New York Times

Jean Twenge’s three teenage daughters aren’t exactly Luddites, but they’ve put up with stricter technology rules than most of their friends have had to follow.

Julia, Twenge’s 13-year-old, has a Pinwheel – a “kid’s phone,” Julia calls it – with no Internet and limited apps. And Kate, now 18, had a flip phone until she was 16 1/2. Her friends were boggled by how long it took her to plunk out simple texts, but Kate says she learned skills her peers have never had to master. Like, how to find her way without GPS. Or how to have an actual phone conversation.