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People really handing their kids devices that have cellular service and unfettered internet access? All my kids devices have 2 layers of adblock, parental controls, and no cell service.
Ok. Or you could, you know, not give them these. Some pretty good data coming out on why this isn’t a great idea. It’s not just luddite ranting.
Yup. I let my kids (7 and 10) play video games or watch approved shows and that’s about it. They get 1 hour on Saturdays, and they can “earn” more any day by reading: 1 hour reading = 30 min “screen time.” We have a max of 2 hours/day, but they can bank time day to day.
It works pretty well. They definitely abuse the system by going beyond their allotted time, but if I “find out,” they lose privileges for a couple days, so it seems they stay pretty honest on average without a ton of oversight.
I don’t have any parental controls/blocking except for:
- ad blocker - screw ads
- passcode on Switch - mostly because of my 4yo, my older kids know the code
Basically, I operate on trust and honesty, and I think it works okay.
I’ll probably get my kids a dumb phone for school when they get old enough. I want them to have cell service for emergencies of any kind.
I thought about that but I myself am broke and have gotten all of these from relatives that no longer use them. If I could go back in time, I would have abstained and ripped our N64 from my brother’s closet sooner.
I’d love a small box with a button that literally just calls my phone, has a mic and speaker and nothing else, no screen, no software, no proprietary lock-in. just a button.
i think an apple watch eould be great for that use case.
First, it is Apple so all sorts of lock-ins. Second - not everyone is rich like you.
Why would you not fetter the Internet access?
LoL your asking the addicted to not make their kids addicted. Good luck!
The worst thing about this in my opinion, is that this is mostly a problem for the children from less resourceful families. There is already a tendency for children from lower socioeconomic households to have more problems with concentration. Adding smartphones will only exacerbate the problem and fuel the fires of growing inequality.
this. the concern maybe not at the smartphone, but, quoting inaccurately from Amartya Sen, have the freedom to choose and to become, respectfully to others
My kid developed myopia. Phones are not good for kids at all. Plus they get get extremely addicted. No good.
The problem is those family sets the standard for everyone.
In middle school it started from poor family who can’t afford other activities than handing down their old smartphone, then the percentage grew to the point not giving a smartphone to your kid means he’s isolated from the group.
Perhaps, but parents need to commit to what they know is healthy for their kids. I didn’t have a phone until I bought it myself in college, even though “everyone” had a phone. My sister is doing the same with her family (has a 17yo with no phone), and I plan to do the same with mine (10yo w/ no phone).
My kids (oldest 10) can whine as much as they want, but they’re not getting a phone until they earn my trust. And given how much they break the rules we already have, it’s going to be a while.
My sister and I aren’t poor, nor were we growing up, we’re both middle class or even a bit above. More people need to push back, because phones seem to be screwing kids up. Look at statistics for suicide and depression, suicide seems to be going up while depression remains pretty consistent, and that seems to have changed right around the time when smartphones became ubiquitous (2015-ish).
So no, my kids aren’t getting phones anytime soon, and it really doesn’t matter what their friends’ parents do.
The problem with this approach is that you might be cutting off your kids from their friends.
Smartphone messaging apps are the way kids communicate nowadays, and if your kid is not in the group chat he/she is isolated.
Yes, that’s the FOMO angle, but kids find a way.
Growing up, most of my friends had phones, and while I missed stuff, I went to most of the parties and had good friends. My sister has teenagers, and they have strong friend networks and whatnot. Good friends will accommodate you.
But communication is a small part of what kids do on their phones. A lot of it is “preparation,” like following TikTok trends so they’re up on what’s currently popular. There’s almost no positives here, only negatives if you don’t spend your time the same way your peers do. If they don’t have a phone at all, they’ll blame their parents, but it’s not the failing of the individual. I’m totally willing to be the “bad guy” if it means my kids aren’t being peer pressured to do things that aren’t beneficial to them. They’ll still have access to tech, but only during limited times at home.
Good friends will work around your lack of access to a phone. I absolutely think the negatives outweigh the positives here, so I’m not letting my kids have a phone, it’s not worth subjecting them to addiction and peer pressure. To me, it’s like smoking (which was still cool when I was a kid), it just impacts your mental health instead of physical health.
I went to look around a nursery the other day, one that is attached to a school. We walked past kids that couldn’t have been older than 6-7 dancing (possibly filming) to a TikTok vid, on a brand-new looking iPhone.
I’m usually against governments getting involved in the internet, since they have such a piss-poor understanding of tech, but it would be good to see some kind of regulation that bans people of a certain age from operating a smartphone without a limited set of operations (i.e. to contact parents, to get school alerts, etc), alongside school bans for the use of social media on school grounds. My wife is a teacher, and cyber bullying is rampant, whether it’s the police getting called in over someone (underage) sending nudes and having them posted online once they break up, or fights being planned via iMessage or WhatsApp, and sometimes even people creating fake Tinder/Grindr profiles of their teachers (or to try to match with them).
Obviously, there are parents that’ll just say “fuck it, it keeps them quiet” or ones that’ll let them use a smartphone due to peer pressure, but a lot of it can be cut down before it becomes a problem.
In many ways, I’m quite glad I grew up with AIM and MSN Messenger. This kind of online power would have been crazy to me as a kid, and I don’t envy kids that have to deal with this landscape.
Alternate headline: a quarter of UK parents are lazy and borderline absentee.
I think it’s fine for kids to have a phone as long as the parents properly limit their use
Is the sort of parent who gives a 5 year old their own phone going really going to a limit the use? I think the crossover in that Venn diagram is pretty small.
It is not hard. Just have a family app and you can set an allowance of total and for each app. Takes like 10 minutes to set up.
I know, but my point is that sort of parent has no desire to do so.
Either do I. But it’s better to know what’s going on and putting in the work. Your kids only benefit from it.
good point
Beyond the proven addictive effects of handing a dopamine device to your kid, there are legal ramifications many parents aren’t aware of.
WhatsApp and TikTok aren’t just there like air, free for all to consume. They are service providers and both sides are bound by a contract, the EULA. IIRC, WhatsApp recently reduced it minimum age from 16 to 12. So if you install WhatsApp on your 8 year old’s phone, you have broken the contract.
The only ramification being that they close the account if they find out. No one is getting arrested, getting a fine, or even going to court.
Seems bad, man.
how else are children supposed to communicate with friends other than at school?
They aren’t.
Mail 📬 ?
Homing Pigeons 🪽?
I guess their parents could arrange for them to meet sometimes.
Wait, that’s too much work.
Dumb phone exist. My children got their dumb phones when they started walking to school on their own (so they can call us in case of a problem).
No internet, only 4 harmless games and I can control which numbers are allowed to call them and which numbers they are allowed to call.
Made that mistake once. No more.
Post-birth abortion?
They don’t let you out of the room if you do that one. Plus the annoying little buggers are cute. And then there’s the inevitable… you’re fucking getting old. In your 20s you tend to be pretty stupid and learn from that. In your 30s your at the top of your game. I’m your 40s you realize how valuable time is and that you’re running out of it. I assume there’s some more wisdom to be had between here and 6 feet under. Actually I’m choosing cremation. I want to be a vanilla creme. Why don’t they just call it burning of the bodies? They gotta call it cremation because it sounds like ice cream like that. But yeah, when you die you don’t take anything with you. So without kids to sell your shit and ruin everything, what’s the point? Right?
🤦♂️
I am actually surprised that they even can use it. This is the time when they start to learn to read…
Removed by mod
These things were made for kids. But I guess there is a kids mode available on smartphone. Never even looked for it.
But yeah, games and movies I guess they are looking for.
Have you met a kid? Kids know more about tech st 2 than some adults. They can navigate devices very easily without reading. They just copy what they see.
You’re correct that most 5 year olds cannot read… However there’s so much you can do without knowing how to read. Plus kids are very good at pressing buttons and can figure stuff out by trial and error.
I guess even pressing random buttons is fun enough.
Disclaimer: I know the article is for the UK, but I’m in the US, so my reply will be US focused
There’s always more than one side to every issue…
- Social media is the devil and Parents before 2000 didn’t have to worry much, or did they, about their kids being on the internet 24/7
First, you needed a computer, a pretty expensive, bulky item, and then you needed the internet, mostly tied to a fixed landline that interrupted the main form of personal communication up until around the mid 90s. Even in the late 90s, internet options that wouldn’t interrupt the landline service usually had big draw-backs (usually price or shared bandwidth, etc). The point is that while the internet and social media existed back then (newsgroups, BBS, IRC, etc), their availability was limited by external factors.
Before the age of 15, my parents wouldn’t allow us to have our own computers, we were limited to a few hours per day of screen time, and less than 1 hour per day on the internet. In addition, the 1 hour of internet had to be on our father’s computer which was in public view. These rules didn’t stop us from doing bad stuff, but it definitely limited things.
After the age of 16, we were able to have our own computers, but internet access was still limited to 1 hour per day. Fortunately for me, I had an older brother that was 18 and leaving home, so before he left, I asked him to create an account with the ISP and I’d pay the bill). At this point, I was 16 with unlimited internet, the only problem was it still interrupted the main house land line, but that changed a year or so later with DSL.
Even when the technology and availability was semi-difficult to work around, I still got into a ton of online arguments with random, unknown people about stupid stuff, formed online friendships and “relationships”, sexted, even got into arguments with other jealous dudes trying to steal my online girl, etc.
All of this is to say though that while my social media experience during my teen years wasn’t nearly as bad as what kids are subjected to today, my parents were right that they had reasons to be worried, and I’m sure the rules they did enforce along with the hoops I had to jump through with the tech kept me from making some pretty unfathomable mistakes which is kind of ridiculous considering everything else I did that I’m not admitting to ;-)
Today parents shove a smart phone into their child’s hand to stop them from crying or to keep them busy, but many don’t realize the power of influence the phone, social media, or they have over their child.
I really hate to say this, but a parent should not be a friend. My parents didn’t do everything they could, but I’d give them a solid B rating (85 grade) on trying to minimize any bad influence from the internet given the tech that was reasonably priced and at their fingertips. However, today, parents just straight don’t have any excuse.
There are $50 routers that have pretty extensive, standard parental tech on-board. They can limit the access to the internet per day and for certain hours, log all websites visited, deny access to certain websites, etc. There are more tech savvy options too, logging all traffic, Remote viewing, etc.
Android and Apple phones can block all incoming / outgoing, calls / SMS except for those on an approved contact list, You can deny access to certain apps, even force the phone / app to go into a limp mode when a certain “on-screen-time” is met, etc
Parents today have so much available to them to prevent their children from being “mind-controlled” by social media; however, the most important aspect is awareness or resolve to do something about it. A parents’ job, until the child becomes mature enough or legally an adult, is to always present, support, and or sometimes enforce the overall best, healthiest decision.
While I won’t deny that some stuff on social media has gotten out of control, I mostly think parents today are to blame and the government needs to stay out of it except if they want to enforce a higher minimum age limit for social media or try and penalize the companies for obvious negligence on not properly making the efforts to keep younger children off the platforms.
Sounds like you would be a horrible parent. The last thing kids need is their father to snoop around in their web traffic and erode any kind of privacy. Children are still humans, and you should respect them as such.
Children are still humans, and you should respect them as such
Absolutely; however, children aren’t adults and until the child is an adult, the parent is the legal custodian for that child. Part of that duty is to protect the child from negative outside influences and / or themselves if need be. When it comes to my child, while they are not an adult, nothing is off the table of consideration in order to protect them.
The last thing kids need is their father to snoop around in their web traffic and erode any kind of privacy
Respectfully, we disagree. The last thing a child needs is to be scooped up in a web of lies by an online predator and kidnapped, raped, humiliated, or worse… killed.
You seem to think I would refuse my child any privacy, but that isn’t the case. I will protect my children the best way I can from any harm, and that starts by being aware and setting limits for them that not only protects them but also protects their privacy. If those limits get violated, then I have cause for concern and would need to re-evaluate those limits… and in that situation, yes, I would snoop on their web traffic.
I’m a firm believer that the middle road is usually the best stance to take in most situations until you’re given valid reason to act. I doubt anything I have said thus far has swayed your opinion; therefore, I think we will just have to respectfully agree to disagree. :)
It’s much easier to give your kid your old phone and pay $10 a month for a kids’ account than to deal with your kid constantly wanting to use your phone.
Being a good parent isn’t doing whatever’s easiest to distract your kid.
When they are at the point of going to sleepovers, play dates at friends, camp, etc it also makes a lot of sense to give them a lifeline.
The kids line I pay for gives me all the parental controls I could dream of and control over her contacts. I am 100% present, but I’m not dumb enough to send me kid out into the world without a lifeline.
It seems being needlessly judgmental is the easiest of all.
Dumbphone seems enough for a “lifeline”. Also parental controls where the parent sees absolutely everything seem dystopian af anyway, I would not like to expose my potential child to such an experience.
Lmoa you’re suggesting that me fully managing my seven year old’s phone is dystopian? The free-phone-because-it’s-my-old-phone with great parental controls is way safer than a dumb phone with no contact management or GPS tracking.
You can do whatever the fuck you want in this “dystopian” world, but try to be less judgmental when you think a dumb phone is a better option for a child.
Why do they need a “lifeline”? They can ask an adult to call you if they need something. If you don’t trust them at a sleepover or play date, then don’t send them.
I let my kids go to their friends’ houses all the time and sometimes to the local park by themselves, and I’ve never once regretted not giving them a phone. They know our address, phone numbers, and how to get home, and we pre-arrange what time they should be home (they have simple watches).
That has worked well for us.
It’s also easier to give them all the candy they can eat, than to deal with your kid constantly wanting candy. Doesn’t make it healthy.
For sure, its easier than being present as a parent
When they are at the point of going to sleepovers, play dates at friends, camp, etc it also makes a lot of sense to give them a lifeline.
The kids line I pay for gives me all the parental controls I could dream of and control over her contacts. I am 100% present, but I’m not dumb enough to send me kid out into the world without a lifeline.
It seems being needlessly judgmental is the easiest of all.
deal with your kid constantly wanting to use your phone
They are being ‘needlessly judgemental’ about this line, you can fret over the importance of having 100% control over the device (which is weird to me as well but that’s besides the point), having your kid conditioned to constantly want your phone is what people are calling you out for.
Yup. My kids want mine, but it’s probably because I spend too much time on it as-is. So I’m trying to cut back.
I never let my kids play with my phone though. That’s just a giant “nope” from me. Either they have their own and I trust them with it, or they don’t, there’s no in-between for me.
I use my phone for work. My child sees me use my phone 8 hours a day. Of course she wants to use the thing she sees me use all the time. She loves taking pictures on our hikes and looking through the photo albums. This is completely normal and supervised.
What’s weird is all the assumptions that I would let my kid have free rein on a smartphone, and assumptions as to how my child really enjoying using my phone is somehow a bad thing. We live in a not great part of town and having gps tracking, only mom/dad/grandparents as contacts, and other safety features makes my old-gen smartphone a good lifeline.
Ya’ll are missing the forest for the trees with your assumptions.
Read your own words, you’d rather give your child a phone than deal with your child wanting yours. That is exactly what you said, no assumptions needed.
Yes, I’d rather teach them to responsibly use their own tool instead of them wanting mine, in a supervised way. So crazy, right?
Next time start with that instead of giving them a phone because that’s easier than dealing with the child, people might not get their knickers in a twist.
