“Bare feet, comfy clothes, and a late morning start to school… I think we will be enjoying our new adventure!!” That was Danielle Busby’s caption on August 25, when Ava, Olivia, Hazel, Riley and Parker posed on the porch with handmade “First Day” signs for sixth grade. The quints are 11 now, learning in a homeschool co-op, and they have started youth group, according to the show notes for episode 103 of their parents’ podcast. So here is the question now following this family everywhere: when do five 11-year-olds who grew up on national television get their own phones?
No announcement sparked this — it comes from what Adam and Danielle have actually said in recent weeks. On episode 107 of More Than Reality, they told listeners, “Our job as parents isn’t to make the world easier for our children. It’s to prepare them to live in it.” Yet they have also kept the girls off the podcast microphone until they are older and insisted the girls put the screens down and go outside. So which is it — prepare them by handing them the phone, or protect them by holding it back?
Team Hand Them the Phone: “Prepare Them, Don’t Hide the World”
Team Hand Them the Phone starts with Adam and Danielle’s own words. If the job is to prepare children for the world, then a phone at 11 — with rules, limits and parents watching — is preparation, not surrender. Every classmate already has one, and the girls who miss the group chat miss the friendship too. A supervised first phone teaches the habits; a sudden, unsupervised phone at 14 teaches nothing but speed.
The parents have always loosened the reins gradually, matching freedom to the child. Blayke is the proof — at 15 she is in public high school and learning to drive. They are asking for the same first step every other 11-year-old gets.
Team Not Until They’re Older: “Give Them One Private Thing”
Team Not Until They’re Older hears the same facts and reaches the opposite verdict. They have been on camera since before they could walk — the first all-female quintuplets born in the United States, born April 8, 2015. A phone at 11 is not just a way to call Mom. It is social media, group chats, comments from strangers and screenshots that never disappear. The family stepped back from television on purpose; why hand the spotlight straight back through a smaller screen?
The parents have already decided the quints will more than likely not join the podcast until they are older, and the homeschool co-op was chosen partly to protect their daughters’ innocence in middle school — the same reasoning behind whether the quints should get a say in their own fame. A childhood that was public from birth deserves one private thing. The phone can wait.
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Both sides keep coming back to the same person: Blayke. She turned 15 in April, and she is living the question in real time — public high school, a learner’s permit, a social world her parents cannot fully screen. Blayke turned 15 in April with a birthday slideshow tracing her from a tiny baby to a teenager behind the wheel — trust earned over time.
One side says look at her: thriving, visible, herself — proof Busby kids handle freedom well with guidance. The other side says look closer: she got there by being given time, not everything at 11. The quints turn 12 in April. If Ava, Olivia, Hazel, Riley and Parker asked for phones for their birthday, should Adam and Danielle say yes with rules, or hold the line until they are older? Pick your side — and tell us where you would draw the line for your own 11-year-old.
