Who is actually behind this
Three of us, in Sheffield, mid-thirties, no children yet.
Knock is small. Three friends, in our mid-thirties, all of us with day jobs that aren't this. We grew up before phones did, can still hum the Nokia jingle, and can mostly still beat each other at Snake. None of us have children yet. Friends and siblings do, and have spent the last three years asking us the same question.
Why three childless people wrote a phone for children
Friends started having children around 2018. Around 2022 they started worrying about phones. By 2023 the same conversation had happened forty times in our living rooms and theirs, in Sheffield, Leeds, Bristol and Stroud, and we noticed two things. One: every family was trying to time the switch and never quite getting around to it. Two: none of them had a script. So we wrote one, then we sourced the phone, then we wrote the friend-network briefing, then we put it in a box.
We are not parents. That is, honestly, useful here. We have no skin in any one family's decision and no personal regret to project. We are the friends with the strong opinion, the ones who actually read the Ofcom report, who you'd phone on a Tuesday evening before the WhatsApp parents' meeting on Thursday.
What grounds the proposition
One piece of behaviour-change theory. Most parents already know it in their bones: a single family standing against a strong norm feels mad; a friendship group acting together feels reasonable. We are wired to lean toward what the people next to us are doing. So the kit is built four-up. Three families switching in the same fortnight is a thousand times easier than one family switching alone in March.
And one piece of evidence that is not yet settled, said clearly: the science linking adolescent smartphone use to mental health is largely correlational. We cite Ofcom, Parentkind, Ipsos, the Department for Education by name. We never call the science settled when it is not. We do think the precautionary case is strong enough to act on. The full position is on the risks page.
How Knock content gets written
Long-form pieces are drafted by one of us and read end-to-end by another before publish. Statistics come from Ofcom, Parentkind, Ipsos, the Department for Education, peer-reviewed work where relevant. If a stat isn't in the source, it doesn't make the page. AI tools help reshape drafts and check for inconsistencies, never to invent a claim, a quote or a parent story.
Phone reviews are based on actual hands-on use with the UK families we work with, not just specs. We charge each phone, drop each phone, leave each phone in a coat pocket through a Sheffield winter. Prices are checked at three UK retailers before publish and refreshed monthly. Where a phone has only been briefly handled, that's stated on the page.
If a factual error makes it through, email hello@knockphone.co.uk. Corrections appear on the page within a working week, and anyone we've already emailed about the piece is written back to with the correction.
What we will not do
- Make a recommendation a parent we know wouldn't take seriously.
- Accept payment from a manufacturer to change a recommendation, a ranking or a review.
- Use AI to invent a quote, a parent story or a statistic.
- Publish a piece that hasn't been read by a second pair of eyes.
- Use stock photographs of children's faces.
- Pretend to be parents. We are not. The site is more useful if that's up front.
How to reach us
Email hello@knockphone.co.uk. Replies inside one working day, Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm UK time. One of us reads every one, at the same kitchen table. Corrections, questions about a specific child's situation, press requests, schools that would like one of us to come and talk to parents, all that address.