Paying Kids to Stay Off Their Phones: Incentive or Bribe?

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Paying Kids to Stay Off Their Phones: Incentive or Bribe?

Dangling cash and cars can motivate teens to delay social media, but the debate is dividing parents

By Julie Jargon

Sept. 6, 2025 8:00 am ET

Parents are offering kids cash or even cars to delay social media use or phone ownership, bypassing typical lectures.

Parents are getting so fed up trying to keep their teens off phones that some are bypassing the usual lectures and parental controls and are instead offering cash, and even cars.

Jennifer Abbott, a small-business owner in Brooklyn, N.Y., said she made a deal with her two kids to each get $1,800 when they turn 18—if they can stay off social media until then. “It’s all or nothing,” Abbott says. “They’re both pretty pumped about it.”

Her son, Beckett, 12, says the money will help with college. Her daughter, Evie, 11, says she plans to invest. “I’ll put it in the bank maybe, for it to multiply,” she says.

Abbott says she realizes her kids are still young enough that they don’t feel like they’re missing out. Her goal is to normalize life without social media before it becomes a dependency—and while $1,800 still seems like a lot of money to her children.

“If we offered this to them at 16, they wouldn’t take it,” she says. “They’d be asking if there’s compound interest.”

Some parents are paying their kids to delay getting phones altogether. Parents whose children have already made the leap into social media are paying them to use phones less. Those who do it say it’s a way to buy time until kids are more mature.

Jennifer and Scott Abbott offered their kids Beckett and Evie money to stay off social media until they turn 18. Photo: Jennifer Hatzes Abbott

Yet the practice has generated a debate.

“Kids should never be bribed to do something that is good for their health,” said Adrienne Principe, founder and president of Turning Life On, a coalition of parents, educators and community leaders focused on healthy tech use. “Kids need to experience the internal rewards for taking care of themselves.”

Others say it more bluntly: You’re the parent, just put your foot down.

The case for cash

Is paying kids to forgo social media really any different than paying kids to do chores? What about companies that pay employees not to smoke, or insurers that offer lower premiums for safe driving?

“We’re always incentivizing our kids in different ways—that’s Parenting 101,” says Jamie Gordon, a licensed social worker who works with digital-health nonprofit Screen Sanity. “A reward could be, ‘You do your chores and keep your room clean all week, and I’ll let you have a friend over.’ Is that a bribe? I think every family is different and has to do what works for them.”

Gordon, a mother of three who lives in Leawood, Kan., told her 14-year-old son he could choose the car he gets at 16—within reason—if he agreed to delay social media until then. He said he’d take a Ford Bronco.

Some parents also feel that rewarding the decision to postpone social media is more pragmatic than disabling some of their phone settings. Kids are known to find workarounds to parental controls.

Susan Dunaway, a therapist in Olathe, Kan., has seen firsthand the effects social media can have on teens and their families. That has convinced her it’s easier to prevent problems than to fix them. Plus, she says, the financial incentive empowers kids who are facing peer pressure.

When her two sons were 11 and 9, she and her husband offered them each $1,600 for delaying social media until they turned 16. Now 19, her son Eli Dunaway says the offer worked well. He put his cash reward toward the purchase of a used car.

“They could have said, ‘You’re not having this, end of discussion,’ but having that deal made it easier for me not to go behind their back and sneak around to get Snapchat,” he says.

Still, Eli says it was often hard being left out of group discussions on Snapchat. He had to make an extra effort to ask friends about weekend plans. He downloaded Snapchat shortly after his 16th birthday.

Dunaway’s other son, now 17, cashed out last year yet still doesn’t have social media—by choice.

E-bike or Snapchat?

Georgia Jones used an e-bike to persuade her 14-year-old son to postpone getting Snapchat. Some of his friends started using the app in seventh grade. By the end of eighth grade this past spring, he began to feel like he was the only one without it. But Jones worried about the impact social media could have on her son’s mental health.

“I told him, ‘If we were to get you an e-bike, would you consider holding off on the Snapchat conversation for another year?’ He didn’t hesitate,” says Jones, of Leawood, Kan.

It worked…for a little while.

Jones enjoyed a summer without any begging for Snapchat. And she discovered other benefits: By having his own transportation, her son gained independence and responsibility.

Now that her son is in high school, he’s facing renewed pressure to be on the app. She’s no longer sure the Snapchat-free streak will last.

“The verdict is still out,” she says. “I recently downloaded Snapchat for myself to better understand how it works.”

Whatever happens, her son gets to keep the e-bike.