Mobile phone use among young children has decreased since 2021, but the biggest changes have occurred in the past couple of years, according to a poll by a telecommunications firm.
The proportion of children between the ages of five and seven who have a smartphone has steadily declined in recent years, according to findings of a survey commissioned by Finnish telecommunications firm DNA.
While mobile phone use among children has decreased since 2021, the biggest changes have occurred in the past couple of years, the firm explained in a press release.
Its 2025 survey about the use of mobile phones by children found that about a quarter of kids aged 5-6 have a phone, while 58 percent of 7-year-olds have one. The new figures represent a drop of “dozens of percentage points compared to last year”, according to DNA’s survey (PDF report in Finnish)
“In previous years, almost all 7-year-olds have had a phone of some kind, whether a smartphone, a basic phone or a watch phone. Children’s phone use and the associated challenges have been a hot topic in recent years, and parents have started to pay more and more attention to the harmful effects of smartphones in particular,” Jussi Mälkiä, DNA’s brand development VP, said in the release.
Quick changes
He said that the public debate about kids’ use of smartphones has likely prompted parents to wait until their children are older until they get their own smartphones.
“Attitudes have changed rapidly in this respect,” he said.
“The [survey] shows that there seems to be a downward trend in phone ownership among the youngest age group. DNA does not recommend giving unsupervised access to a smart device to the youngest schoolchildren or to children below school age,” Mälkiä said.
He added that the company advises that adult supervision of a child’s use of smartphones is “always a better safeguard than age limits”.
“Even children who do not have a smart device of their own are exposed to a wide range of content through their friends’ smart devices. It is common for children who have a smartphone to share their device with friends who do not yet have a device of their own,” he said in the release.
“It is comforting to know that around 30 percent of children aged between 5 and 7 years still only use a phone under supervision or with a parent. We want to encourage all parents to adopt this approach,’ Mälkiä said.
DNA said its online survey was carried out by Nepa Insight between 22 January and 11 February of this year. It queried around 1,000 parents between the ages of 5 to 16 years and had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points in both directions.
The All Points North podcast looked into the government’s plans about smartphone use in schools last year. Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Finland pushes back on phone-based childhood
