The teens saying no to social media (and yes to brick phones)

On a Thursday night at a Mount Maunganui skatepark, 16-year-old Israel Cameron pulls a brick ZTE phone from his pocket. The throwback technology has the capacity to make calls and send text. It can’t access the internet. It doesn’t download apps. Nor does Israel need it to. For now, he has decided not to use social media.

“I’ve had it for three, maybe four years, and it has never let me down. Yeah, it is pretty trusty,” he says, over the clatter of skateboards at the park. He found the phone in one of his dad’s drawers, brought it out of retirement and customised the back in woodwork class.

Israel’s best mates have made the same decision. Isaac Reid, 17, has a $40 brick phone that he added an SD card so it can store music that he funnels into his wired headphones. Connor Cummins, 16, has a classic Nokia flip phone.

Related stories

“We catch a bus to school and just everyone's like this, just head on the seat in front of them, just probably watching some naughty things, so we were like, ‘Oh, I don't know. We should try to be good kids,’ but yeah, I don’t know, it didn't look that fun,” says Connor.

The boys surf, skate, and they’re in a band together called Go Getter. There’s a lot you can fit into a day if you are not scrolling on social media for nine hours, which was the daily average for one of their friends during the recent school holidays.

Israel, Isaac and Connor are rare. A 2025 survey found that 95 percent of New Zealanders aged 15+ use social media. It mirrors findings in the US where 90 percent of Americans aged 13-17 use social media, including YouTube.

The debate over the extent of harm for young people from screen time, social media and online sexual content continues to rage. And so does the discussion on what to do about it, with New Zealand announcing last week that it is exploring a ban on social media for those under 16, similar to a contentious Australian law passed last year. However, law or no law, at least a handful of New Zealand teens are making their own decision to steer clear of smartphones or social media or both.

“I have no social media... I don’t intend to have social media. I just don’t think it’s beneficial to me right now,” says Ari Taylor, an 18-year-old who lives in Auckland and is in his final year of school. He does have a smartphone.

Ari’s younger sisters are both on social media, and his parents allowed him to sign up from 13, the age suggested by most social media apps. At 14, he considered getting on TikTok and Instagram, but decided against it.

“I can get addicted to it. I could stop living life in the moment and start living it for Instagram moments, or for like TikTok moments or whatever. I just didn't see any benefits.”

Being the only kid without social media in his friendship group has drawbacks. Ari had to ask his basketball team to communicate through a group WhatsApp message rather than a group Instagram message. When the team comes over to his house to hang out, he leaves a basket at the door for everyone to put their phones in so they can communicate in real life rather than through their phones.

Israel, one of the Mount Maunganui teens, spent years nine and 10 at without anyone to talk to on the school bus because everyone was on their phones.

“Sometimes I just wouldn't know about things because they'll have it on a group chat on something, and I can't get on group chats on my brick phone. So I just wouldn't go to stuff because I had no idea about it.”

“Then also, like, you could film yourself skating and heaps of people could see it instead of just five,” adds Isaac, on the allure of social media.

Isaac signed up for Instagram for a while, logging on through a desktop or his mum’s phone.

“I wasn’t very good at controlling how much time I spent on it. I just always remember feeling really frustrated, just how much time I felt like I was wasting.”

He watches YouTube Shorts on a desktop at home.

“It’s not like it's fully gone. It's just whenever I'm out, it's not a temptation because it’s just actually not there.”

Israel has two older siblings who were allowed smartphones and social media at age 13. He was mad when his parents changed tack and said no when he reached that age, a sign of the quickly evolving conversation on the harms of smartphones and social media use.

He spoke to his two friends. Isaac and Connor’s parents wanted their kids to delay social media and smartphones as long as possible. Then Connor’s dad threw out a challenge: the last of the three friends to get social media or a phone would get $1,000.

“But then he just kind of pulled the plug because we got brick phones, so we kind of got scammed, but in a good way, because it kind of ended up better than what it would have been, so I'm not mad about it,” says Israel.

Connor’s dad, Sam Cummins, doesn’t believe a complete prohibition on social media from parents would work. He wants to leave room for “gradual exposure and sensible decision making” as his kids develop.

“The problem is that [social media] is designed to be entirely addictive,” he says.

The challenge did create a loose agreement that the three friends would stay off social media and smartphones together.

“People might just be like, ‘Oh, you're a weirdo with no phone,’ but then, a group of weirdos you feel fine in, but I think by yourself, it'll be a lot harder,” says Connor.

Ari says his parents never dumbed down their answers to his questions, treating him as an equal partner.

“... I love my mum and dad, and I think a big part of that is they have boundaries, but their boundaries, like they explain their boundaries, they explain why, and they’re open to changing those boundaries.”

Ari’s mum, Nicola Taylor, is the co-founder of two financial technology companies. The family didn’t have a TV until Ari was 13. He was allowed to play computer games such as Minecraft, but only once school finished for the week.

The family all have strict time limits for various apps on their phones that they can’t hack. Only Taylor’s husband has the code to extend her time limits on social media and vice versa.

“Nobody in this family is having unlimited screen time, not me, not them,” she says.

Should the government be restricting access to social media for children and teens, or, as the ACT party argues, should parents be the main influencers?

Holly Brooker, an online safety advocate and parenting educator, believes it is both.

“While I support the government’s desire to set an age limit for social media to 16, it is not going to be a quick fix. It can’t be the only approach.”

Brooker is calling for a reform of the entire online safety ecosystem, including an online regulator to hold the industry to account, education for parents and education on critical thinking specific to online content starting in primary school.

Restricting social media to 16 plus will make it easier for parents who want to delay their kids signing up for social media and support teens making their own decision to stay off, she says.

Yet, even teenagers who stay off social media will be influenced by it indirectly through their peers, says Claire Meehan, a criminologist at the University of Auckland who studies the intersection of young people's digital and sexual lives.

She says the government’s proposed ban is “fundamentally flawed”, raising concerns such as potentially handing over more personal information to tech companies for age vetting.

“...I think recognising that online and offline spaces are closer than we all think, and what goes on online often reflects what happens offline.”

And social media can be a positive experience, Meehan adds, especially for minority groups such as LGBTIQ+ young people or those wanting to connect with family or culture overseas.

The main question for the Mount Maunganui teens - and their parents - is when they will get a smartphone and whether or not they will sign up for social media.

Israel will get a smartphone when he leaves home, but he doesn’t have plans to get social media. Isaac wants to keep his brick phone as long as possible. Connor is keen to get a smartphone.

“I'm a bit scared that when I get one, I'll be like, ‘Oh, what is this?’ Like a new drug or whatever, and just get addicted to it,” says Connor.

“But, yeah, I feel like you need to get one, just one day. But for now, when I'm still in school and living at home, it's fine.”