The First Smartphone Dilemma — Free 5-Part Email Blueprint

You already know you're not ready to say yes.

A free 5-part email course for parents navigating the first smartphone decision — coming soon. Join the waiting list.

Your information will never be shared. Unsubscribe any time.

What this course is

Five emails. Nine days. A clearer path.

The pressure is building. Your child is getting older, their friends are getting phones one by one, and somewhere underneath all of it is a quiet conviction that you're not ready to hand them a smartphone yet.

You're not wrong.

What's been missing isn't more information. You have plenty of that. What's been missing is clarity — an honest, well-grounded perspective on one of the most consequential decisions you'll make as a parent. That's what this free course is designed to give you.

Email 1
You're not alone — and you're not wrong. The research is catching up to what you already felt was true.
Email 2
The real reason to wait. It's not about the dangers. It's about the advantage your child builds in the years before the phone arrives.
Email 3
Two beliefs that are keeping you stuck. And what's actually true instead.
Email 4
"But won't my child be left out?" What the research actually shows about smartphones, friendship, and loneliness.
Email 5
What comes next. How to move from conviction to a real plan.

Founding Member Access

The lowest price it will ever be offered.

Founding Cohort

This free email course is the entry point to Not Yet: The 14-Day First Phone Blueprint — a complete step-by-step program for parents who want to delay their child's first smartphone confidently, without fear of harming them socially or academically.

The course is launching to its first cohort soon. Parents on this waiting list will be first to know when enrollment opens — and will receive founding member access at the lowest price the course will ever be offered.

You don't need willpower. You need a plan. This is where it starts.

— ✦ —

Dr. Herman Middleton

I've spent decades studying a single question: what does it mean to be human — and what threatens it? That question has shaped everything. It includes a PhD in theological anthropology, a lifelong vocation as a student and educator, and a serious engagement with the thinkers — Neil Postman, Jacques Ellul, and others — who saw this coming long before most people were paying attention.

I built Not Yet because parents navigating this decision deserve more than a pledge and a book. They deserve a plan.

Founder, Gadfly Academy · gadflyacademy.com

You already know you're not ready to say yes.

Five emails. Nine days. A clearer path.

The lowest price it will ever be offered.

Ready to hold the line?