As a mom of a nine-year-old girl who wants to be (read: thinks she is) nineteen, I am all too familiar with the parenting struggle of setting fair and reasonable limits on a child’s access to technology and social media. I also know that once one of your kid’s peers starts strutting around with a smartphone in hand, your own kid will ask you for one every. single. day. So should kids have cellphones and, if so, at what age? I turned to an expert for a breakdown of the pros and cons, plus some sensible advice on how you can mitigate the latter should you choose to give your child a phone.

Sadfishing Is the Latest Teen Mental Health Warning—Here’s What Parents Need to Know

Jennifer Kelman is a mental health expert on JustAnswer, where she has provided online support to those in need since 2012. In addition to her work on JustAnswer, Kelman has been a licensed clinical social worker for more than 30 years and maintains a private practice specializing in relationships, parenting, and children’s mental health issues. She is also a children’s book author and has lectured extensively and appeared on news and television programs across the country.

When it comes to cell phone safety, Kelman advises that parents ease their children into the privilege by choosing a phone that can grow with the child. In other words, you don’t need to feel pressured to buy your 10-year-old the latest iPhone with all the bells and whistles. Some devices are easier to monitor than others and if you simply want your child to have access to a basic mode of communication, there are plenty of options. For example, both my seven-year-old and nine-year-old have TickTalk smartwatches that allow them to text only me, their dad and my fiancé when they’re connected to WiFi, but don’t allow them app or internet access. (In our custody-sharing situation, we found this to be a helpful way to allow the kids freedom to reach out whenever they’re missing the other parent.)

Kelman also recommends the Pinwheel phone—a smartphone that looks and acts just like a regular Android, but is remotely controlled by the parents so they can toggle on or off access to any and all of the (thoroughly vetted) apps available to the child, and even create a custom schedule for how and when the phone is used. This particular option also allows parents to give their child more cell phone freedom gradually as they get older and more responsible.

There’s no cut-and-dry answer here. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all topic,” says Kelman, adding that “it’s not like giving a kid a cell phone is always bad, but that also doesn’t mean that all kids should have them. You just have to know your child and let that guide your choice, as well as the specific rules you set for how they use it.” In other words, there’s nothing wrong with giving your kid a phone, but make sure you’ve considered all the factors first, or as Kelman puts it “don’t just give one quickly and freely because your kid’s pressuring you about it.”

Again, there’s no right or wrong age—namely because this decision is very specific to the individual child and the needs of the family. That said, Kelman tells me that she is “all about the delay,” which is to say that there’s no need to rush to give your kid a cell phone until you actually see the value in them having one. (And for what it’s worth, I’ve joined the growing “wait until 8th” movement as I don’t really see much sense in giving my kids phones until they’re at least 13 years old.)

I touched on this already, but the key to keeping your child safe online is to have clear-cut guidelines for their interactions with technology, an easy way to enforce those rules (i.e., parental controls) and frequent conversations about the potential risks to their safety, too. After all, at some point we all have to trust our children to use their judgment and make responsible decisions…but that doesn’t mean you should hand them the keys to the car and expect them to know how to drive right away.

The 5-Word-Phrase Every Kid Needs to Hear, from Toddler to Teen