I applaud the initiative. I waited until the beginning of 7th and it was pretty hard, honestly. We don't give them free access to it, though (but ironically it's most valuable to ME for them to bring it to school).
After high school ended (2:30pm) most days I used to have some kind of club activity (2:30pm-3:30pm) and then hang out in the cafeteria or by the front of the school, waiting for a parent to pick me up on the way home from work (5pm).
I had a dumb phone so I could stay in touch, and I could also walk home if I wanted (40min / no sidewalks / 35mph roads), but most of the time I just sat down and did homework and read books. Spent a ton of time on the computer at home.
Got through "Brothers Karamazov" and "Anna Karenina" that way -- just 1.5hr a day of focused, uninterrupted time. I absolutely never would have read them and would have spent the whole time scrolling TikTok if I could have. Hrmm.
Sorry for being old but playing wow is different from scrolling tiktok. If These were drugs, wow would be a weed kind of thing and tiktok and the other cancers would be crack cocaine. In my honest humble opinion ofc
I would say yes, reading Brothers Karamazov is probably a better use for a developing mind's time than playing WoW.
Hell, that's a better use for an adult's time than playing WoW. But adults get to do whatever they want with their free time, and it would be hypocritical of me to judge.
The kid who plays wow at least plays in a group.
And Dostoyevsky.. "Crime and punishment" is one of the worst books I ever read. You van literally skip 90% of it. Could be a 2 page short story.
But feel free to downvote, apparently reading the classics makes one a classy person, not a dumb snob who thinks they are better than everyone...
You are just projecting your own snobbishness onto others with these reactionary comments. I don't even care what other books you've read and liked like my sibling response requests... let's see what books you've written. I don't much care about your uneleborated opinions unless you can demonstrate how to do well that which you claim others do poorly.
The fact that you think the only reason anyone would read a classic novel is to brag also displays a lack of imagination and self awareness. No, it couldn't possibly be the same curiosity you extol in other comments about tinkering with technology!
We need more people with the capability to think critically with nuance, who can focus on something for more than 5 seconds. WoW only does one of those, and really it's not focus so much as captivation. You don't learn much about the real world from it. On the other hand, I found quite a few insights into my own present day relationships while reading The Brothers Karamazov and Swann's Way.
Is it possible the world is wrong about Crime and Punishment and we just needed rvba to wake us from our delusion? Sure. Is it more likely you just didn't get it? That's where my money is.
In Finland our kids pretty much go to school themselves from the age of six or so, and walk back when they're done for the day - and their afterschool activities are over.
So most kids seem to have a phone, be it smart, or dumb, from that kinda age. Certainly none of the kids wait for their parents to collect them that would be pretty inconvenient.
We have a house phone, which is normally in the unihertz "student mode" which prevents installing apps and only allowing use of some apps.
When our kids ask for their own phone, the answer is always an easy no. I have no problem with computers. But the internet is not your friend. Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times.
If they want to stay up late, their forced to sneak a book into their bed.
No to both - but it’s important to teach kids self-moderating, both when it comes to food and to internet stuff. Withholding either is in my opinion solving it short-term while leaving kids unprepared for dealing with these things themselves.
Two years after the begininng of secondary school; in general lower-secondary starts around age 11, and in the US it usually begins with Junior High which is often, but not always, 7th grade,
Which in America is the year that it becomes legal to use social media, if anyone’s wondering (not like it’s specifically illegal under, but collecting data from users under this age isn’t allowed so the networks don’t allow it)
Primary 1 seems to be a pre-primary school type curriculum and you leave secondary school at the same exact age. So you reinforced the parents point, even your exception is pretty much the same except you call it P1 instead of nursery. From what I read, in most schools P1 activities are play based, many times there's no individual desks. It's basically kindergarten.
I think I’m missing your point- is your (overall) point that I should have known what age range 8th grade is in the US without looking it up? And that I should also know what activities happen in a US kindergarten?
I’ve had really strange replies to my original reply. I posted some information that I had to look up for the benefit of other people and now for some reason I need to say that school starts around age 6 in my country when my son started Primary 1 when he was closer to 4.5.
Others are trying to say that I should somehow automatically know that most of the world uses the similar(?) age ranges. I don’t even know what age school starts at in other parts of the UK despite sharing borders with them. Maybe I’m ignorant but it’s never been information that I needed to know or retain.
Was posting the age range of US grade 8 so controversial?
I'm still surprised the "dumb phone for kids" and "dumb watch with basic comms" markets are so underdeveloped (from my perspective). I would love my kids to have (a) gps tracking, (b) ability to send texts/calls to like 5 predefined numbers, (c) tell the time, and nothing else. But watches all seem to have games or weird gamified fitness trackers (Google's new fitbit for kids). Or they are super kid-ish, like bright blue with animal icons, and would be revolting to my older kids. That would make it easy to wait until 9th grade for a more feature-rich phone, though maybe still not unfettered access.
Does anyone have a basic watch/dumbphone solution for older kids that they like?
Gabb seems to be the closest, but even that has a "virtual pet" type game built in that gamifies certain things.
I've also done an android phone with an MDM in kiosk mode. None of those let you limit who is contacted though, so it ends up being more like a classic dumb phone in that you can't browse the web, but can dial whomever you want. Just make sure that you disable the Google SMS app and use a stripped down one (I used simple-sms).
Everyone has a different threshold for what they want from a dumb phone, some wants Google Maps, some think Youtube is ok, Google Chrome etc. which makes it hard to have a one true dumb phone. If you give access to the play store it's no longer a dumb phone
The best way to have a dumb phone tailored to your needs is to take a cheap smartphone and make it dumb, either by using a different launcher, or a customized OS
I wish there was an easy to customize "dumb android os" that would let you pick initial applications you want to have, and then disable play store
It’s true. My daughter didn’t have a phone until 9th grade, which she just started. She had talked about getting a dumb phone because she wasn’t very into the smartphone thing, which I was supportive of. However she now takes public transit to high school, and really wanted the Transit app so she could easily navigate in the city. So, an iPhone is where we landed.
And I have to say, it is astounding how quickly that thing got its hooks into her. I naively thought she might have been immune to it, given her habits and attitude. Boy was I wrong.
Out of curiosity, what are her phone habits like?
And, as others have mentioned, you can turn on parental controls to limit what apps she can have on it. Have you done this already?
I started describing the situation and then realized doing so is a breach of her privacy, so deleted my comment. I did have parental controls on it in terms of the apps she has access to, but had not limited the time spent (my mistake). I wish there was also a way to limit the number of pickups.
yeah, I have an app blocker on my iphone to block news websites/apps called Freedom. Essential these days to staying productive - although, don't think this app would work for your child, because it is not very reliable and needs to be restarted every few days.
This is a great point. Kids can detect hypocrisy a mile away. Parents cannot, with a straight face, tell their kids to not be addicted to their smartphones when they themselves are addicted to their own smartphone.
It's a real addiction, no matter how resistant you are.
I'm 44. I've never had social media accounts. When I was 18 or so, I had a Palm Pilot with a cellular modem cradle that let you actually go to (mostly text-based) websites. It was the first smart phone, really. Amazing for finding information, for someone who didn't even have dial-up internet until 5 years earlier. But eventually I put the Palm Pilot away. It wasn't really addicting (and it was insanely nerdy to walk around with a computer connected to the internet, in your pocket like that).
I militantly avoided owning anything beyond a flip phone again until I was 36 (2016), when I finally caved in and grudgingly bought a cheap Android phone to work on a mobile game. (For the first 6 months of development, I'd just written and tested it under emulation, but bug reports were getting too hard to reproduce). Six months after that, I found myself doom-scrolling on the damn thing every time I had a free moment.
What I noticed during my smartphone-free years of watching people play with theirs were a few things: They weren't considered nerdy. They weren't considered computers. The social awkwardness of looking at a device in public had changed into a shield for people against the social awkwardness of looking at their surroundings or acknowledging other people. People forgot how to interact and how to sit and wait without doing something with their phone. Doing something with the phone was more than passively sipping a drink or smoking a cigarette; it was a way to show other people that they didn't want to interact. Or a way to hide from interaction.
I think this has to do with the way apps are structured. The vast majority of people never needed a computer in their pocket. Computers were for information and for work. I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.
> I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.
I just wanted to highlight this section of your post for anyone skimming to have more of a chance of seeing it. Excellently put.
I would add - and think it's essential - that yes it took a great amount of marketing, but also a great amount of people who could have said or done something turning a blind eye and not sounding the alarm. I'm thinking mainly of developers who were happy bringing home a fat paycheck, and governments who were happy to have more information about their populations.
I'm happy to say I never built a free-to-pay game. I was only interested in casual arcade stuff you could play in 2 minutes while waiting for a bus. I considered anything with virtual goods to be unethical. Hate me if you must.
Still, I think gambling can be ethical. If done right. Giving a fair shot at a 97% average payback to consenting adults is at least as good as selling them garbage tokens.
So a bit of a side-track: I did design a slot machine (Flash, online) back in 2010, that let you build up bonuses and see how many multipliers you had built up until you were ready to use them on the next spins. That was when I was running my casino. I thought it clever. A player could use them at any time.
I tried to get that slot machine design approved through the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and they told me it would be illegal. A machine couldn't have a "memory" like that, which would entice players to keep adding money to get back their built-up bonuses. I countered that the player could run the bonus feature at any time, but, apparently even that violated the rules. If the player ran out of money, they'd still need to add more to trigger the bonus they'd accrued.
Flash forward to this year, I'm in Vegas and basically every slot machine is some variation of the fireworks/dragon machine where 3 separate bonuses build up over time... but not in any clear way, and where the last part of the bonus could take forever to actually be hit. Nor can the player force their bonuses into play. I dumped $700 on a machine, $100 at a time, explaining to my partner why this type of game was illegal 10 years ago, until I gave up on the SOB.
I'm mentioning this because, as a dev of casino games, I myself would have considered that type of game to be completely unethical. I don't specifically blame the devs; I think regulatory capture by companies like Bally has a lot to do with it. We had laws that prevented the worst kinds of addictive stuff from being peddled to the public, and those have been directly attacked and chipped away at.
Or you can get an iPhone and use parental controls. My kids has a tablet and I get to decide what can be used and for how long, and nothing gets installed without my approval.
Apple is really dropping the ball here, there are serious issues with parental controls on iOS.
No way to revoke install permission. e.g. child got ahold of a parent's unlocked phone, turned off parent approval for their own phone, and then installed a social media app. We have uninstalled the app, but he can re-install without requesting permissions. We have resorted to a 1-minute (the minimum) screen time limit instead. (Only work around would be to create a whole new iCloud account for the child!)
You used to be able to delete the purchase from purchase history, but now you can only hide it, hiding it should just retrigger the approval process?
There are well known / well documented ways to circumvent screen time limits.
You can't add additional pass code / authentication for the settings app or the parental controls
No way to prevent deletion of messages and call logs (and 3rd party tools just do a remote sync on Wi-Fi, after the kids already likely deleted them)
Parental controls are often janky or laggy and sometimes just don't work at all. And often require multiple re-authentication (iOS 18 / Face ID does improve this to be fair)
Your comment reads a bit silly to me. It’s like your child has control over this situation instead of you, and you’re trying your hardest to negotiate a good position for yourself.
If your child doesn’t use the phone in the way you want them to, you could take the phone away.
Either Android or iPhones can be customized. The parent has to take the time to sit down and set it up.
The iPhone has a lot of parental setting customization. You can disable certain built in apps, prevent installing anything from the App Store or just prevent making purchases, set screen time restrictions, and a whole bunch of other things [1].
Android has similar settings with Family Link [2].
I didn't have a phone at all until I was in high school! Looking back on all the times that I was tragically killed or maimed as a result, it's a miracle I'm able to write this comment today!
I'm glad to see high schools pushing back on this. My college student had classes their first two years that required a smartphone in order to participate in class. Failure to procure an Android or Apple device that could run the app they used was an automatic 20% markdown on one's final grade for non-participation.
A friend shared a photo of a wall organizer that (middle school?) kids put their phones into during class. Even though I'm now long out of school, that they sort of have to adapt or else it will really affect the educational outcomes.
I don't think people failing out of college really has the same stigma for the institution. I wonder if in fact it would even help with the prestige somehow.
Smart watches were banned in our kids primary school as some of them have cameras and were used to take inappropriate photos. We have finally decided for an analog watch and no tracking as we live in a safe neighborhood and they know most of the neighbors.
Did you ban pens and eye glasses too? Love places that make rules that prevent nothing from the offenders but make it worse for everyone else. If they had a hidden camera in a smartwatch they'll have a hidden camera in some other cheap gizmo.
I got my child an AppleWatch SE (a few years ago), which yeah, technically has a bunch of apps but they're not really useful or of interest to them, and if they don't have social media accounts (which mine don't), then it acts as a phone and locater without all the rest.
On the downside they kept begging for a phone so they could text their friends, which was reasonable, and texting on the Watch is a terrible experience. So we finally did give in to a phone but with locked down parental controls, so they can't install apps, etc. (though I'm finding those iOS parental controls don't work as well I had hoped; there's a huge issue with them being reset suddenly -- lots of forums of people complaining about this).
If it’s like an iPhone (or Mac!) you can disable all the apps you don’t want them to use.
Apple parental controls are great. Except on the AppleTV. I just want PIN unlock for any apps not on an allow-list. This does not seem like much to ask. But no.
Do you have a Mac at home? I wonder if a middle ground could have been reached by providing space and time for iMessage on the computer. It would be like the old IM days!
I would submit map functionality to the list as well. I think it would be healthy for a kid old enough to tell time to experiment with navigating, maybe following along on their map on drives.
This problem was quite well solved by a kids learning their way around using their eyes and good paper map.
(I miss paper maps. They were actually designed to confer understanding — in particular, every street showed a name! Smartphone navigation apps and navigation websites often don’t show names any more.)
I agree that spending time with a really good map is like reading a book and confers more understanding than a map app. Map apps are pretty crumby, presumably because they're crammed into a screen. Paper maps are still a thing, I was at a book store the other day with a really big paper map section. In particular I enjoy geologic maps; they add depth and history to the landscape around you.
Map apps are much faster for navigation though. At least on the scale of walking a few blocks.
We've used both gabb and an apple watch and they both work decently well. The apple watch has a few too many features by default but it's not as engrossing as a smartphone. The gabb watch was great overall. We switched from gabb -> apple at the end of 6th grade because we felt like our daughter had reached a point of being able to ignore the distractions of the watch in most settings and for the most part that's worked out well. We upgraded specifically to allow texting/IM'ing friends, which may or may not be within what some people want happening.
I will note that having her be able to call us is fantastic. There's a lot of end-of-school "hey you need to walk home today / walk over to my office / oh wait i'll pick you up" kind of coordination, which we could probably avoid with careful advance planning but it's really nice to be able to be flexible.
And also, youtube shorts / tiktok are the most addictive thing I've seen put in front of a child that age. She can browse YT shorts on her school computer at home (!!) and it's .. it's really stunning how absorbing it is for her. And not in a good way.
My daughter has a normal android phone with Google Family Link and tons of builtin apps removed and websites blocked. The parental controls are pretty good.
Gotta agree here. The only apps that aren't blocked are the phone itself, messages, and a few games. Doesn't even have a browser on it much less social media. It's really been fantastic in letting her have a phone for communication, and technically she can text her friends if they want to, but no social media. It's pretty close to a dumb phone really. The location tracking alone is worth it, to me.
My only annoyance came when she turned 13, and Google decided to offer her complete freedom without parental consent. Left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about the project, which is a shame.
It was scummy, because naturally it will always cause tension. I feel the right way would have been to approach us. Instead they approach the child who will always click freedom. They also sent us parents an email letting us know she's free to do as she wishes and we're SOL.
We told her she could stay under Family Link, or else buy her own phone and service. That seems effective.
Sorry Google, I'll decide my childrens' internet access. Not your giant advertising machine.
But you don't need any of this? The parental lock out settings on Android and iOS are superb - you can buy any modern smartphone, and lock out everything you want so it acts like a dumbphone with a nice screen - i.e. disable the web browser, disable app installs etc.
I see this comment a lot and it seems to mostly highlight that people aren't investigating the very capable tools which already exist.
I think the problem is it's not a defensible business because there's little barrier to entry to create an Android watch with less features. Every carrier has their own dumb, minimal smart watches, but I'm sure most of them suck because the product management is probably outsourced.
Essential features and nonfunctional requirements:
- Calendar, time and date, alarms and reminders
- IP67
- Ruby or gorilla glass screen (scratches OK)
- Locked-down phone, texting, messaging, and location sharing
- Ability to call 911
- Minimal apps
- Minimal animation
- Band that's somewhat difficult to undo and hypoallergenic material... silicone seems pretty neutral
- Not disassemblable without tools because the kids I know would have them in pieces in minutes.
- Neither a fashion statement nor a kid group social faux pas
If any existing models fulfill these close enough, then great. If not, then it might be worth entertaining but would need a go-to-market strategy to compete with every other smartwatch mfgr on the market with unlimited funding.
Samsung has partnered with Safesurfer in NZ to create a "kid safe" social media free version of the Galaxy A15 and A25. Not a samsung / android fan tbh.
lol, I know someone who got his kid a "dumb" flip phone figuring that would solve things. Pretty soon, his kid was showing me how it was android underneath and all the apps he had sideloaded.
You can get a basic flip phone from tracfone with a year of service (calls and text only, no mobile data) for $20-40. You can keep that plan but change to a regular smartphone and use google family app for parental controls.
This is exactly what the Fitbit Ace LTE does. So far it's been great since my daughter has no desire to ask anything else on it besides increase physical activity to get prizes
I'm not a parent, but I see why someone might want to always know exactly where there child is and invest in anything which might improve their safety.
On the other hand, raising children without GPS surveillance seemed to work pretty well for many years. Is saying something like "Put on your timex and be back home by 6." no longer feasible? (Or if you want be even more old school "by sundown".)
Yes. The Timex smart watch is perfect for this. You can find them on eBay for $20. You can get a SIM that works with T-Mobile usually. The only issue is that sometimes they are locked and getting them unlocked is some work. But I love these watches.
I'm using the watch for older people. There is a sport watch, which I think has an esim. I have one of these but haven't been able to use it yet.
Feel free to ask me more over email if you want. It's on my profile page. I definitely went down the rabbit hole on finding this watch and it was a doozy.
Our friends basically locked down an old phone to just the apps they approve of. Their 8-year-old is home alone for about an hour after school, and they don't have a landline.
We plugged in an old phone to a wall outlet, and just keep it locked with a pin. It allows for emergency calls. There is almost always someone home, so we don't feel the need to allow our kids to call us.
Another set of friends trusts their 11-year-old with full access.
Apple Watches have been great for us. Both of my kids (ages 10 & 13) use a cellular Apple Watch which gives them a way to call/text with us and their friends but it doesn't give them access to social media. I know they'll want a phone soon (my youngest is already asking) but it's an easy "no" for us. I think waiting until around age 14 (or later) sounds about right. I'd like to delay even longer if possible. We'll see how hard they push.
All of the studies (bonus points for linking to news articles instead of directly to the studies) have something to do with "time spent using screens/a phone/social media", but nothing to do with age of first use.
How can anyone trust this website has any basis in reality when they wrote a whole page explaining why and none of it was applicable?
Of course parents should regulate how much time their kids spend on electronics (similar to how parents of previous generations would prevent kids from watching TV 5 hours a day) - but this website presents no evidence that giving a kid a smartphone in 8th grade rather than 5th grade would make a meaningful difference.
IMO it's not the phone itself that matters, it's what the kids do on it. Phone can be good to communicate with parents, bad for nearly anything else at a young age.
You may be confusing what happens with a phone with what is required.
Certainly kids can have a social life without a phone. It’s not required. I just had a kid who didn’t get instagram until 14. They claimed that their life was ruined, but they had a healthy social life without it (and without a phone).
I think people generalize what will happen without things they think are common incorrectly. Just because phones are used for many things, it doesn’t mean those things are impossible without phones.
I do think it works better if more parents did it and it was so nice to find other parents (super rare) who felt similarly.
Because if you deny a kid a Nintendo, even though "everyone has one", it doesn't kill their social life, because they can still go over to a friend's house to play (arguably, this is better for their social life).
If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.
I grew up before smartphones and if somebody took away my very normal corded phone I would have definitely been had a much time communicating with my friends. I wouldn't have been happy about that at all. I did spend hours talking to friends perhaps even to the detriment of my studies.
What are we really trying to stop here? Are we really just trying to stop all the addicting apps? if so.. maybe we should be focusing on that at a higher level.
At least below age 12 or so, our kid's social life consists entirely of classmates that she sees 7 hours a day at school during weekdays, after school and in weekends playdates with classmates that she likes, sports, music and swimming lessons,and some time with parents in somewhere between. Where does the phone come on?
In our class we were the first to give our kid's a phone. She doesn't find it very interesting and barely spent any time on it, since she the only ones that she know with a phone number are her parents.
I’d say cell phone penetration is sitting at about 25% with my 6th graders friend cohort and that seems to hold up when I talk to my friends with kids.
I don’t know if that will hold until 8th grade but for now my kids social life seems to revolve around the neighborhood, school and his activities.
I was under the impression phones/social networks were becoming unpopular. My kid certainly has a dim view of the latter.
Assuming that's true*, it honestly isn't good reason to give your kids a smartphone. Your job description as a parent is pretty much to stop your kids from doing things they don't understand will hurt them. There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life. Like, if all the other kids were shooting up heroin it would be considered insane to say "you have to let them do it because all their friends are junkies", and I don't see it as being different for phones.
*It's also not clear that your premise is even true. Plenty of parents in the past have reported how their kids' friends adjusted just fine to not being able to use a smartphone to contact them, and that they still had healthy social lives.
There's a lot of people making claims based on paid research with agendas to sell fear. If you think you have some real empirical evidence that will standup to scrutiny, by all means share.
And everything I've ever delved deep into how the studies were conducted, what were the real conclusions drawn, the type of content being shown, etc. never leads to what the news would have you conclude. It's basically a terrible game of telephone where parents just end up getting fear mongered into limiting device time to 2 hours a day because someone said so. Utter nonsense.
> There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life.
From personal experience, being isolated as a kid can also be profoundly psychologically damaging and stunt development of normal life skills. Sure, see if the kid can get by without a smartphone for as long as possible, but if they do wind up completely excluded it's time to reevaluate the cost-benefit analysis and potential ways to mitigate smartphone overuse, not just think that the isolation is "okay" cause you're protecting them from phones.
The point of the pledge is that you take it and you encourage other parents in your school/neighbourhood to take it. So this helps solve the coordination problem:
"By signing the online pledge, you promise not to give your child a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade as long as at least 10 families total from your child’s grade and school pledge. Once 10 families have pledged to delay the smartphone, you will be notified that the pledge is active! You will receive a list of families who are delaying from your child’s grade and emails for the parents."
I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but it bears repeating: that's the whole point of this program.
Parents are playing the prisoners' dilemma here. Many (most) feel like cell phones (social media in particular) are a net negative for younger kids. But they don't want their kids to be left out / socially isolated. So it's really easy to get into a situation where we all defect because "I don't really like this but everyone else is doing it". This "wait until 8th" thing provides a framework for parent to agree to cooperate on this issue.
TBD if it actually works. I certainly like the idea that we have some control over our culture/community and don't just need to passively accept a "tragedy of the commons" on an issue like this.
Pretty much secondary school in the UK (12+). I'm guessing middle schools / high schools in the US are the same? Yes, literally every kid in secondary school has a cell phone. Kids have whatsapp groups and communicate all the time with their friend circles.
According to an Ofcom survey in 2023, 9 in 10 kids aged 11 have a smartphone in the UK.
My daughter has autism, and struggles to connect with her classmates. She gets overwhelmed in groups, and is shy talking in person sometimes.
Now that her classmates started messaging each other, she is actually being included a lot more. She has started messaging and setting up online play dates with her classmates. I was so proud when I found her playing Minecraft with a class mate while FaceTiming. She was playing with a friend!
I don’t care what anyone says, that is good for my daughter.
I haven't really read the research, but yeah, I don't think texting is bad and as you mentioned, it really is helpful to keep connected with friends. The one thing we found though is texting didn't last too long as they moved on to different apps (like Snapchat). I hope your daughter and friends can resist that change and just stick with simpler things like texting and FaceTime.
Your child is a special case. Speaking from experience, most kids get too sucked into the social aspect of phone use, to a detrimental degree. Group chats end up being the location of cyber bullying, for example.
Right but the tech creates some new forms of bullying, and they're in addition to the traditional forms of bullying. All of which still presumably exist.
For example, you can now bully people anonymously.
And you can bully people at any hour of the day or night - not just in public, in the brief periods between classes.
And with widespread camera phones you can not only make someone cry, you can video them crying, keep it forever, and send it to lots of people.
And don't forget that very fragile $300-1000 bit of electronics the kid is carrying, would be a real shame if something happened to it.
The fact that you can never escape the bullying is a huge differentiator from the before times, where coming home after school was a sanctuary (assuming you didn't come from an abusive household).
These days kids are 24/7 connected to what is going on in social media and group chats, and it never goes away.
Sure, and I'm sorry for that, but in general technology introduces severe social and learning challenges. Extreme enough to induce a measurable increase in teen suicides since the introduction of social media and mobile phones.
As someone put it, that's from a time when the Internet was a place you went to (usually a corner) and, more important, a place that you could leave whenever you wanted. The dynamic is different.
As someone who didn't like school thwt much the thought of having to deal with some of those people 24/7 fills me with dread.
8th grade may be somewhat arbitrary, but as children grow older you trust them more with things that you didn't when they were younger, teaching them responsibility and independence over time.
I don't need a website to provide some type of evidence (not sure what kind of evidence you'd be referring to) to understand that. It's parenting 101. This is just applying it to social networks (that's the issue more than the phone itself) just it would apply to any other type of social interaction (going out with friends by themselves, TV, gaming, etc.)
The entire point of this website is to advocate for the arbitrary 8th grade cutoff. Additionally, an arbitrary hard cutoff is the opposite of gradually teaching kids responsibility and independence.
Either your child has a phone or they don’t have a phone. This is one of many binary actions along a progressive line during which you are teaching them responsibility and independence.
Presumably if time spent using these things is bad, then ensuring children spend no time on them till 8th grade will be an improvement. What am I missing?
The path they took to get to this pledge feels very similar to the path anti-vaccination advocates took (ie something intuitively "feels" bad -> look for evidence to support that). If a study came out that showed evidence that having a smartphone at an early age actually improved educational outcomes, do you think these people would reverse their position? I would guess not because above all else, this is a value judgement ("These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on YouTube.").
And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with a value judgement. But trying to foist your values onto others is not something feel the need to support.
Sigh. Sometimes you don’t need 10 peer reviewed articles to just know when something is bad. Were you the guy in the 60s saying smoking was totally fine because studies? Sometimes you just know inhaling smoke everyday is probably not good for you.
Smart phones for kids is not good. It’s really simple.
Yes, you do. I fundamentally disagree with you and don’t think you have reliable evidence to back up this claim. This reads like the pseudoscientists that are convinced aspartame causes cancer.
Or a parent that's tired of the alarmism and peer pressure to parent a certain way, like abstinence pledges? The whole premise of these sorts of campaigns are based on flimsy evidence.
We had a mountain of data to show that smoking causes cancer by the 1950s, the industry just spent a lot of money on lobbying and PR to obfuscate it. Same with asbestos and most of the other examples people point to.
We don't have that data for smartphones. It's an extremely mixed picture, showing both benefits and harms. As far as we can tell, the association between smartphone use and poor mental health is strongly concentrated in a minority of people with very high usage. There's a strong probability that the causality behind this association runs in the opposite direction - troubled people spend lots of time using digital devices, because they're escaping their troubled lives.
> Smart phones for kids is not good. It’s really simple.
The shape of the computer doesn't magically make it bad: It's what kids do that's the problem.
We took our kids tablets away because they weren't disengaging. But that's because they were into Youtube, which is highly addictive. If they were just using the tablets as e-readers, it would be a different story.
I remember recently reading about a town where all the parents in the entire town agreed not to give their kids smartphones, so then none felt they were missing out.
Exactly. It seems obvious to me that the vast majority of social media is junk and I'd prefer to keep my kids from getting drawn into it for as long as possible, and I think a ton of parents feel this way. The main counter-argument I hear is that "that's where socializing happens these days, and if you keep them away from it they'll just be left out / isolated from their peers".
An initiative like this acknowledges that we have some control over our culture. We don't just need to put up with a shitty status quo because "that's the way it is".
I grew up in a town where kids used yo-yos as economic status symbols and needed adult chaperones to resolve Pokemon card trading disputes that ended up in tears. In my sophomore English class I watched two kids fight after one accused the other of wearing a fake designer sweatshirt.
You can lead a horse away from water, but you can't stop it from getting thirsty. Reckoning with disparity is what helps kids grow up and shed the solipsism of childhood - take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life. It's a catch-22, but I don't think banning everything digital is going to improve anyone's quality of life, kids or parents.
> take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life.
I grew up without a smartphone and have done just fine as a software engineer. I don’t think access to a smartphone before age 15 would correlate to better life outcomes.
Younger millennial chiming in: I'm pretty sure that 8th grade is exactly when I got my first smartphone, although social media had a fraction of the presence back then, so it's hard to draw a direct comparison to today. But I do feel like the timing worked out well enough: not having a smartphone until that point (since they didn't exist lol) turned me into a voracious reader, and the dumbphone I did have meant I was still able to text friends sporadically (T9 anyone?), but getting a smartphone was a good step towards the increased independence and social connectivity of high school. Also brought me into the world of ebook piracy to feed my reading habit, and the world of smartphone mods/jailbreaking to feed my geek streak.
This makes me think, as I've thought previously, that the generational labels seem too broad for the pace of change in information technology over the last 40 years. I read your comment as an older Millenial and thought "what?! a smartphone in 8th grade?!"
Despite being in the same "generation," someone born in the mid-80s came of age with radically different consumer technology compared to someone born just ten years later in the mid-90s. I have clear memories of trying to understand what the "Information Superhighway" was, and then getting dial-up Internet in our home for the first time. At the end of 8th grade, I convinced my dad to upgrade from 33 kbps dial-up to cable. As a sophomore in college, I remember thinking that some company would make a lot of money by putting Wi-Fi access points everywhere so we could have always-on Internet access with some sort of mobile device... Just a night-and-day difference from the experience of someone getting a smartphone in 8th grade.
> This makes me think, as I've thought previously, that the generational labels seem too broad for the pace of change in information technology over the last 40 years.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm an older millennial as well, and I didn't have a dumb phone until my senior year of college, let alone a smartphone.
My experience growing up was so much different from someone born just 10 years after me, even though we're technically in the same "generation".
Ha, maybe the labels were more useful when day-to-day technology wasn't progressing as quickly as it is now!
Your internet story is also funny to me because my dad worked at an ISP when I was a toddler. One of my earliest computer memories is when he taught me how to go into the Windows 98 graphics menu and toggle the color settings from 16-bit to 32-bit (or vice versa, can't remember now) before booting up a particular CD-ROM game, because otherwise the graphics would be put of whack. I must have been four or five.
I also remember asking why I couldn't play the games whose cool icons were always visible in the taskbar... turns out those "games" were Napster and IrfanView, lol.
Yeah, I think trying to make games work on Windows 3.1 to 9x was a very formative experience for just a narrow slice of Millenials. I've seen the definition of Millenials span all the way up to 2000 births, and I'm pretty sure the games "just worked" for a kid born in 2000.
To be fair, I've wondered if people in previous generations feel the same way. Like was the coming-of-age experience of an older Boomer, who was a teenager in 1960, much different from that of a teenager in 1980? I don't know.
My guess is the culture was a lot different between 1960 and 1980 (obviously, right) but the general workings of society weren't too far apart for the average person. You got in your car to go home and watch TV...
Also, I have a younger sibling born just after 2000 and games "just working" sounds about right. Not to mention that console gaming was really picking up around then.
Among my children, my oldest got an iphone for Christmas in 2007 when he was 17. The other four got them spread out over the following ten years but progressively younger in age. I cannot say that I see a big difference in their phone usage, grades, or social development. It seems to me that they all just got more attached to the phone the longer they had it. I am starting to see some push back from my 16-year-old after reading "Stolen Focus" a few months back and I hear that other kids her age are doing the same.
Very interesting. Was wondering, are there any differences in how independent they are at the same age? Have read that there is a possibility that the smartphone may be contributing to the development of children to be delayed by a year or two. For instance, are your younger children less interested in driving at the same age and doing things on their own.
... although, even if this is true, this could just be that kids seem to be more attached to their parents then they used to be (have read this as well).
I see the good intentions, but it's too idealistic. In many families both parents work and kids are expected to get home by themselves (such was the case for me from 3rd grade onwards). Smartphones are simply a necessity for communication and Google Maps. I can only ever see this working with upper middle class nuclear families with a stay at home parent.
Or ... we could continue doing what worked for all of us before being tethered to phones. Communicate beforehand / afterwards / using shared phones (which still exist) and learning to navigate the world using brains.
Aspirational at best I'm afraid. What happens when the other partner/parent/family member isn't responsible, smashing your plans? Or if the event has a variable end time with no safe care or phone in between? How do you deal with emergencies like school closures that now require every child to line up to use available landlines (my personal favorite experience)?
Landlines are becoming scant in my particular part of my country, YMMV. I rarely even see them in my workplace anymore.
Almost all of that can be done offline. Pen and paper still exist. Example 1 is more difficult without a phone of your own, I was able to use a pay phone back in the day. Everything else you listed can be accomplished offline, on a computer, or by asking to use the school's phone for 1 minute. I mean, if the accident happened at school, the office may very well contact you themselves.
Yes, it can be more convenient but it absolutely isn't necessary.
The parent comment is almost an advertisement for waiting to give kids a smartphone until they're older. If one truly can't imagine doing any of these without post-2010 technology, then it would be good giving kids a little bit more time building their independence from both parents and smartphones.
Why would you need Google Maps to get home from school? I have an absolutely terrible sense of direction, but even I can memorize a single route after walking it a couple of times.
I walked the mile home from school from the age of five. Why would anyone need a map? And I spent all day outside away from home from the age of about eight in the summer with of course no phone of any kind and no maps even though I was tramping for miles through fields and streets. What has changed in the last sixty years that makes maps and communication a necessity?
Grew up with a few guys who made pro teams and travel didnt help any of them or any of the other schlubs like me. Many of the best guys didnt even do travel for money or other reasons. We would have been better off playing at the park on the weekends.
In my area it's becoming very popular for schools (middle and high) to restrict phones. They put them in the pouch things. I'm a bit surprised how much the parents support it. Talking to a local journalist he said he couldn't find parents with good arguments against it. One of them was "my son runs an online business and needs access to his phone for it".
I couldn't get a cell until I had a driver's license, which I think made sense at the time. Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone.
"Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone." Might ... but more likely not. I can't understand why this irrational fear of potential social problems if not tethered to a phone is outweighing the clear evidence of actual social problems when tethered to a phone has so much traction with adults.
> Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone.
That's really the point of a program like this. A lot of parents think smartphones (mainly social media, really) are a net negative for their kids, but we have this tragedy of the commons situation where no one wants their kid to be left out / socially isolated. Having this "wait until 8th" thing is basically parents playing the prisoner's dilemma getting together and agreeing that it we'd be much happier if everyone cooperates rather than defect on this issue.
It honestly looks more like a really, really bad photoshop cutout to me (weird but consistent edge, nose issue my be a blowout). AI generators I've used tend to get lighting more or less consistent but with edges that can waffle between blurry and sharp.
Good start ... but it should actually be "Wait until 18". I did this with my son and, now at 25, he has a much more normal perspective on connectivity and social media than most his age. There was ZERO downside (for all you worrisome types who think not having a phone is bad for some reason). Thinking kids "need phones!" for safety / socialization are making that shit up entirely.
meanwhile millenials had full reign over the internet as kids cause their boomer parents didnt know shit. back when everyone did the famous A/S/L questionare from randos online lol.
It's not just about internet access , it's about the medically recognized highly addictive and predatory nature of social media. It is designed with the same principles as slot machines, to draw you in and keep you engaged for as long as possible. The internet we grew up in was much less centralized and not yet optimized for this kind of manipulation.
I think you're right, plus there was a solid wall dividing online life from "IRL" back then. When I asked and answered "A/S/L" among randos, we were all anonymous. It was an escape from the social dynamics among my peers at school, sports, church, etc.
For a while, there was some consensus that anonymity and talking to strangers was the danger. So we got real name and photo policies, and the expectation that we'd have an online presence that was an extension of our real selves. Now that every kid's online persona is indivisible from their IRL identity, and their popularity can be measured with likes and followers and inclusion / exclusion from group chats, it just allows the social dynamics among their peers to play out 24/7 on steroids with no escape.
Our school says that every single time a kid gets a notification or call, everyone gets distracted, and that's why they are not allowing any one carry phone/smart watch.
Fair point, but there are a couple of reasons why we would only apply this to kids. First, something can be harmful to children and not to adults. Second, even if smartphones are harmful to adults, for better or for worse we let adults ruin themselves. It's a necessary condition of freedom, that you have the ability to make bad choices as well as good.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 327 ms ] threadeverything is over text now, and excluding them from that was difficult
I had a dumb phone so I could stay in touch, and I could also walk home if I wanted (40min / no sidewalks / 35mph roads), but most of the time I just sat down and did homework and read books. Spent a ton of time on the computer at home.
Got through "Brothers Karamazov" and "Anna Karenina" that way -- just 1.5hr a day of focused, uninterrupted time. I absolutely never would have read them and would have spent the whole time scrolling TikTok if I could have. Hrmm.
Oh wait, that's what actually happened!
But I agree and I don't want to bd young these days anymore.
If the author at least did something creative... but nooo reading Brothers Karamazov as a kid is better than playing WoW.
I still take the kid who created something, or at least spent time with other kids. And apparently the author didnt.
Hell, that's a better use for an adult's time than playing WoW. But adults get to do whatever they want with their free time, and it would be hypocritical of me to judge.
But feel free to downvote, apparently reading the classics makes one a classy person, not a dumb snob who thinks they are better than everyone...
The fact that you think the only reason anyone would read a classic novel is to brag also displays a lack of imagination and self awareness. No, it couldn't possibly be the same curiosity you extol in other comments about tinkering with technology!
We need more people with the capability to think critically with nuance, who can focus on something for more than 5 seconds. WoW only does one of those, and really it's not focus so much as captivation. You don't learn much about the real world from it. On the other hand, I found quite a few insights into my own present day relationships while reading The Brothers Karamazov and Swann's Way.
Is it possible the world is wrong about Crime and Punishment and we just needed rvba to wake us from our delusion? Sure. Is it more likely you just didn't get it? That's where my money is.
So most kids seem to have a phone, be it smart, or dumb, from that kinda age. Certainly none of the kids wait for their parents to collect them that would be pretty inconvenient.
When our kids ask for their own phone, the answer is always an easy no. I have no problem with computers. But the internet is not your friend. Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times.
If they want to stay up late, their forced to sneak a book into their bed.
Remind me of food
Would you give your kid endless access to chips and sweets?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_grade
In case anyone else outside the US couldn’t find the actual age when scanning the site.
This is applicable to anyone, anywhere, though sure, it's targeted at a US audience.
If the authors were aware of this, they may have focused their message on, eg the children's age, which should be more universal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stage
We have P1-P7, then secondary S1 - S4, with S5 and S6 optional.
> Children start primary school aged between 4½ and 5½ depending on when the child's birthday falls.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Scotland
Others are trying to say that I should somehow automatically know that most of the world uses the similar(?) age ranges. I don’t even know what age school starts at in other parts of the UK despite sharing borders with them. Maybe I’m ignorant but it’s never been information that I needed to know or retain.
Was posting the age range of US grade 8 so controversial?
Does anyone have a basic watch/dumbphone solution for older kids that they like?
I've also done an android phone with an MDM in kiosk mode. None of those let you limit who is contacted though, so it ends up being more like a classic dumb phone in that you can't browse the web, but can dial whomever you want. Just make sure that you disable the Google SMS app and use a stripped down one (I used simple-sms).
The best way to have a dumb phone tailored to your needs is to take a cheap smartphone and make it dumb, either by using a different launcher, or a customized OS
I wish there was an easy to customize "dumb android os" that would let you pick initial applications you want to have, and then disable play store
And I have to say, it is astounding how quickly that thing got its hooks into her. I naively thought she might have been immune to it, given her habits and attitude. Boy was I wrong.
Btw, I actually don't have a child so haven't used parental controls, but just found out that they do have an app time-limit setting: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-screen-time-ip....
yeah, I have an app blocker on my iphone to block news websites/apps called Freedom. Essential these days to staying productive - although, don't think this app would work for your child, because it is not very reliable and needs to be restarted every few days.
I'm 44. I've never had social media accounts. When I was 18 or so, I had a Palm Pilot with a cellular modem cradle that let you actually go to (mostly text-based) websites. It was the first smart phone, really. Amazing for finding information, for someone who didn't even have dial-up internet until 5 years earlier. But eventually I put the Palm Pilot away. It wasn't really addicting (and it was insanely nerdy to walk around with a computer connected to the internet, in your pocket like that).
I militantly avoided owning anything beyond a flip phone again until I was 36 (2016), when I finally caved in and grudgingly bought a cheap Android phone to work on a mobile game. (For the first 6 months of development, I'd just written and tested it under emulation, but bug reports were getting too hard to reproduce). Six months after that, I found myself doom-scrolling on the damn thing every time I had a free moment.
What I noticed during my smartphone-free years of watching people play with theirs were a few things: They weren't considered nerdy. They weren't considered computers. The social awkwardness of looking at a device in public had changed into a shield for people against the social awkwardness of looking at their surroundings or acknowledging other people. People forgot how to interact and how to sit and wait without doing something with their phone. Doing something with the phone was more than passively sipping a drink or smoking a cigarette; it was a way to show other people that they didn't want to interact. Or a way to hide from interaction.
I think this has to do with the way apps are structured. The vast majority of people never needed a computer in their pocket. Computers were for information and for work. I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.
I just wanted to highlight this section of your post for anyone skimming to have more of a chance of seeing it. Excellently put.
I would add - and think it's essential - that yes it took a great amount of marketing, but also a great amount of people who could have said or done something turning a blind eye and not sounding the alarm. I'm thinking mainly of developers who were happy bringing home a fat paycheck, and governments who were happy to have more information about their populations.
Still, I think gambling can be ethical. If done right. Giving a fair shot at a 97% average payback to consenting adults is at least as good as selling them garbage tokens.
So a bit of a side-track: I did design a slot machine (Flash, online) back in 2010, that let you build up bonuses and see how many multipliers you had built up until you were ready to use them on the next spins. That was when I was running my casino. I thought it clever. A player could use them at any time.
I tried to get that slot machine design approved through the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and they told me it would be illegal. A machine couldn't have a "memory" like that, which would entice players to keep adding money to get back their built-up bonuses. I countered that the player could run the bonus feature at any time, but, apparently even that violated the rules. If the player ran out of money, they'd still need to add more to trigger the bonus they'd accrued.
Flash forward to this year, I'm in Vegas and basically every slot machine is some variation of the fireworks/dragon machine where 3 separate bonuses build up over time... but not in any clear way, and where the last part of the bonus could take forever to actually be hit. Nor can the player force their bonuses into play. I dumped $700 on a machine, $100 at a time, explaining to my partner why this type of game was illegal 10 years ago, until I gave up on the SOB.
I'm mentioning this because, as a dev of casino games, I myself would have considered that type of game to be completely unethical. I don't specifically blame the devs; I think regulatory capture by companies like Bally has a lot to do with it. We had laws that prevented the worst kinds of addictive stuff from being peddled to the public, and those have been directly attacked and chipped away at.
Or you can get an iPhone and use parental controls. My kids has a tablet and I get to decide what can be used and for how long, and nothing gets installed without my approval.
[1] https://families.google/familylink/
No way to revoke install permission. e.g. child got ahold of a parent's unlocked phone, turned off parent approval for their own phone, and then installed a social media app. We have uninstalled the app, but he can re-install without requesting permissions. We have resorted to a 1-minute (the minimum) screen time limit instead. (Only work around would be to create a whole new iCloud account for the child!)
You used to be able to delete the purchase from purchase history, but now you can only hide it, hiding it should just retrigger the approval process?
There are well known / well documented ways to circumvent screen time limits.
You can't add additional pass code / authentication for the settings app or the parental controls
No way to prevent deletion of messages and call logs (and 3rd party tools just do a remote sync on Wi-Fi, after the kids already likely deleted them)
Parental controls are often janky or laggy and sometimes just don't work at all. And often require multiple re-authentication (iOS 18 / Face ID does improve this to be fair)
If your child doesn’t use the phone in the way you want them to, you could take the phone away.
The iPhone has a lot of parental setting customization. You can disable certain built in apps, prevent installing anything from the App Store or just prevent making purchases, set screen time restrictions, and a whole bunch of other things [1].
Android has similar settings with Family Link [2].
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121
[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-parental-controls-e...
There was a Java ME version of Google Maps. I had it on my flip-phone in 2006/2007.
I doubt it still exists, though.
I don't think people failing out of college really has the same stigma for the institution. I wonder if in fact it would even help with the prestige somehow.
On the downside they kept begging for a phone so they could text their friends, which was reasonable, and texting on the Watch is a terrible experience. So we finally did give in to a phone but with locked down parental controls, so they can't install apps, etc. (though I'm finding those iOS parental controls don't work as well I had hoped; there's a huge issue with them being reset suddenly -- lots of forums of people complaining about this).
Apple parental controls are great. Except on the AppleTV. I just want PIN unlock for any apps not on an allow-list. This does not seem like much to ask. But no.
(I miss paper maps. They were actually designed to confer understanding — in particular, every street showed a name! Smartphone navigation apps and navigation websites often don’t show names any more.)
Map apps are much faster for navigation though. At least on the scale of walking a few blocks.
I will note that having her be able to call us is fantastic. There's a lot of end-of-school "hey you need to walk home today / walk over to my office / oh wait i'll pick you up" kind of coordination, which we could probably avoid with careful advance planning but it's really nice to be able to be flexible.
And also, youtube shorts / tiktok are the most addictive thing I've seen put in front of a child that age. She can browse YT shorts on her school computer at home (!!) and it's .. it's really stunning how absorbing it is for her. And not in a good way.
My only annoyance came when she turned 13, and Google decided to offer her complete freedom without parental consent. Left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about the project, which is a shame.
We told her she could stay under Family Link, or else buy her own phone and service. That seems effective.
Sorry Google, I'll decide my childrens' internet access. Not your giant advertising machine.
[1]: https://xplora.se/
I see this comment a lot and it seems to mostly highlight that people aren't investigating the very capable tools which already exist.
Essential features and nonfunctional requirements:
- Calendar, time and date, alarms and reminders
- IP67
- Ruby or gorilla glass screen (scratches OK)
- Locked-down phone, texting, messaging, and location sharing
- Ability to call 911
- Minimal apps
- Minimal animation
- Band that's somewhat difficult to undo and hypoallergenic material... silicone seems pretty neutral
- Not disassemblable without tools because the kids I know would have them in pieces in minutes.
- Neither a fashion statement nor a kid group social faux pas
If any existing models fulfill these close enough, then great. If not, then it might be worth entertaining but would need a go-to-market strategy to compete with every other smartwatch mfgr on the market with unlimited funding.
The advantage of this is that it is as smart or dumb as I allow it to be.
Now that she is a little older (8th grade) I've slowly increased the allowed apps and screen time. She is able to do really useful things with it.
So in short: you can make a smart phone dumb, but you can't make a dumb phone smart.
It also has assistive access mode, which only permits access to good stuff, mostly to simplify UI's for the elderly, et al.
Both put the burden of integration on the configuring user, who basically becomes the system UI designer with a limited and awkward palette.
A nice feature in either case would be a way to edit, package and share or sell such configurations.
Indeed, I could see Apple building out this capability as a product line architecture supporting enterprise, health, and childhood/education.
On the other hand, raising children without GPS surveillance seemed to work pretty well for many years. Is saying something like "Put on your timex and be back home by 6." no longer feasible? (Or if you want be even more old school "by sundown".)
I'm using the watch for older people. There is a sport watch, which I think has an esim. I have one of these but haven't been able to use it yet.
Feel free to ask me more over email if you want. It's on my profile page. I definitely went down the rabbit hole on finding this watch and it was a doozy.
We plugged in an old phone to a wall outlet, and just keep it locked with a pin. It allows for emergency calls. There is almost always someone home, so we don't feel the need to allow our kids to call us.
Another set of friends trusts their 11-year-old with full access.
It's amazing.
I can pay for stuff, I can make calls, I can use maps, I can hear music, store my subway card QR-code.
Literally none of the evidence on the website's own "Why" page supports their suggestion: https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait
All of the studies (bonus points for linking to news articles instead of directly to the studies) have something to do with "time spent using screens/a phone/social media", but nothing to do with age of first use.
How can anyone trust this website has any basis in reality when they wrote a whole page explaining why and none of it was applicable?
Of course parents should regulate how much time their kids spend on electronics (similar to how parents of previous generations would prevent kids from watching TV 5 hours a day) - but this website presents no evidence that giving a kid a smartphone in 8th grade rather than 5th grade would make a meaningful difference.
Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.
Certainly kids can have a social life without a phone. It’s not required. I just had a kid who didn’t get instagram until 14. They claimed that their life was ruined, but they had a healthy social life without it (and without a phone).
I think people generalize what will happen without things they think are common incorrectly. Just because phones are used for many things, it doesn’t mean those things are impossible without phones.
I do think it works better if more parents did it and it was so nice to find other parents (super rare) who felt similarly.
Isn’t “but everyone else has one” the appeal kids make to their parents about most everything? (I know I was guilty of that as a kid myself)
Why is this a new level of “denying them a social life”?
If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.
Many kids need access to group messaging to even be told that there's something going on at foo's house at 6.
What are we really trying to stop here? Are we really just trying to stop all the addicting apps? if so.. maybe we should be focusing on that at a higher level.
In our class we were the first to give our kid's a phone. She doesn't find it very interesting and barely spent any time on it, since she the only ones that she know with a phone number are her parents.
I don’t know if that will hold until 8th grade but for now my kids social life seems to revolve around the neighborhood, school and his activities.
I was under the impression phones/social networks were becoming unpopular. My kid certainly has a dim view of the latter.
*It's also not clear that your premise is even true. Plenty of parents in the past have reported how their kids' friends adjusted just fine to not being able to use a smartphone to contact them, and that they still had healthy social lives.
From personal experience, being isolated as a kid can also be profoundly psychologically damaging and stunt development of normal life skills. Sure, see if the kid can get by without a smartphone for as long as possible, but if they do wind up completely excluded it's time to reevaluate the cost-benefit analysis and potential ways to mitigate smartphone overuse, not just think that the isolation is "okay" cause you're protecting them from phones.
"By signing the online pledge, you promise not to give your child a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade as long as at least 10 families total from your child’s grade and school pledge. Once 10 families have pledged to delay the smartphone, you will be notified that the pledge is active! You will receive a list of families who are delaying from your child’s grade and emails for the parents."
The only exception to this I see is WhatsApp (which I’ve always hated for expecting all users to have a phone and try to avoid for that reason)
I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but it bears repeating: that's the whole point of this program.
Parents are playing the prisoners' dilemma here. Many (most) feel like cell phones (social media in particular) are a net negative for younger kids. But they don't want their kids to be left out / socially isolated. So it's really easy to get into a situation where we all defect because "I don't really like this but everyone else is doing it". This "wait until 8th" thing provides a framework for parent to agree to cooperate on this issue.
TBD if it actually works. I certainly like the idea that we have some control over our culture/community and don't just need to passively accept a "tragedy of the commons" on an issue like this.
> Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays.
Wow, what country is that true? Thankfully, not in the country I reside. None of the children I know have social lives that revolve around the phone.
Wherever you live, if the phone is already the central aspect of a child's social life, that is a great tragedy.
According to an Ofcom survey in 2023, 9 in 10 kids aged 11 have a smartphone in the UK.
1: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
So on the matter of re-opening schools, there was no need for it that was related to their social well-being?
My daughter has autism, and struggles to connect with her classmates. She gets overwhelmed in groups, and is shy talking in person sometimes.
Now that her classmates started messaging each other, she is actually being included a lot more. She has started messaging and setting up online play dates with her classmates. I was so proud when I found her playing Minecraft with a class mate while FaceTiming. She was playing with a friend!
I don’t care what anyone says, that is good for my daughter.
For example, you can now bully people anonymously.
And you can bully people at any hour of the day or night - not just in public, in the brief periods between classes.
And with widespread camera phones you can not only make someone cry, you can video them crying, keep it forever, and send it to lots of people.
And don't forget that very fragile $300-1000 bit of electronics the kid is carrying, would be a real shame if something happened to it.
These days kids are 24/7 connected to what is going on in social media and group chats, and it never goes away.
It would have been terrible if my parents would have banned that. But they were very progressive luckily.
As someone who didn't like school thwt much the thought of having to deal with some of those people 24/7 fills me with dread.
I don't need a website to provide some type of evidence (not sure what kind of evidence you'd be referring to) to understand that. It's parenting 101. This is just applying it to social networks (that's the issue more than the phone itself) just it would apply to any other type of social interaction (going out with friends by themselves, TV, gaming, etc.)
I'm not sure having a smartphone has at all impacted their outside time.
And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with a value judgement. But trying to foist your values onto others is not something feel the need to support.
Smart phones for kids is not good. It’s really simple.
We don't have that data for smartphones. It's an extremely mixed picture, showing both benefits and harms. As far as we can tell, the association between smartphone use and poor mental health is strongly concentrated in a minority of people with very high usage. There's a strong probability that the causality behind this association runs in the opposite direction - troubled people spend lots of time using digital devices, because they're escaping their troubled lives.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6883663/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-019-01825-4
> It's an extremely mixed picture, showing both benefits and harms
So... you're saying it's similar.
The shape of the computer doesn't magically make it bad: It's what kids do that's the problem.
We took our kids tablets away because they weren't disengaging. But that's because they were into Youtube, which is highly addictive. If they were just using the tablets as e-readers, it would be a different story.
There are also e-readers that read along with the book, which are good for very young children who are just learning basic words.
I think that could work really well
Exactly. It seems obvious to me that the vast majority of social media is junk and I'd prefer to keep my kids from getting drawn into it for as long as possible, and I think a ton of parents feel this way. The main counter-argument I hear is that "that's where socializing happens these days, and if you keep them away from it they'll just be left out / isolated from their peers".
An initiative like this acknowledges that we have some control over our culture. We don't just need to put up with a shitty status quo because "that's the way it is".
You can lead a horse away from water, but you can't stop it from getting thirsty. Reckoning with disparity is what helps kids grow up and shed the solipsism of childhood - take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life. It's a catch-22, but I don't think banning everything digital is going to improve anyone's quality of life, kids or parents.
I grew up without a smartphone and have done just fine as a software engineer. I don’t think access to a smartphone before age 15 would correlate to better life outcomes.
Despite being in the same "generation," someone born in the mid-80s came of age with radically different consumer technology compared to someone born just ten years later in the mid-90s. I have clear memories of trying to understand what the "Information Superhighway" was, and then getting dial-up Internet in our home for the first time. At the end of 8th grade, I convinced my dad to upgrade from 33 kbps dial-up to cable. As a sophomore in college, I remember thinking that some company would make a lot of money by putting Wi-Fi access points everywhere so we could have always-on Internet access with some sort of mobile device... Just a night-and-day difference from the experience of someone getting a smartphone in 8th grade.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm an older millennial as well, and I didn't have a dumb phone until my senior year of college, let alone a smartphone.
My experience growing up was so much different from someone born just 10 years after me, even though we're technically in the same "generation".
Now get off my lawn. :)
Your internet story is also funny to me because my dad worked at an ISP when I was a toddler. One of my earliest computer memories is when he taught me how to go into the Windows 98 graphics menu and toggle the color settings from 16-bit to 32-bit (or vice versa, can't remember now) before booting up a particular CD-ROM game, because otherwise the graphics would be put of whack. I must have been four or five.
I also remember asking why I couldn't play the games whose cool icons were always visible in the taskbar... turns out those "games" were Napster and IrfanView, lol.
To be fair, I've wondered if people in previous generations feel the same way. Like was the coming-of-age experience of an older Boomer, who was a teenager in 1960, much different from that of a teenager in 1980? I don't know.
Also, I have a younger sibling born just after 2000 and games "just working" sounds about right. Not to mention that console gaming was really picking up around then.
Phone calls / SMS to 5 numbers Clock enforce GPS on until battery is less than 20 No smart phone functions No data access
... although, even if this is true, this could just be that kids seem to be more attached to their parents then they used to be (have read this as well).
Landlines are becoming scant in my particular part of my country, YMMV. I rarely even see them in my workplace anymore.
- "I'd like to stay with a friend after school - they'll drive me home after dinner", "Sure, thanks for the info, have fun"
- "Fire alert, I'm fine but bored"
- "Had to help a friend with an accident, will be home 1h later approx"
- Bus didn't turn up, uses app to improvise an alternative connection
- asking teachers about details from the lessons
- getting a news-feed from school
- looking up the schedule if things change
- manage their calendar and todo-lists
- set an alarm/reminder
So basically "everything" an adult does with their phone to make their lives easier.
After that there's enough brain left to learn that social media is something that needs special attention
Yes, it can be more convenient but it absolutely isn't necessary.
source: I'm older than 30, I was there.
Our oldest at 7 goes alone to school and has no problem memorizing the path.
I couldn't get a cell until I had a driver's license, which I think made sense at the time. Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone.
That's really the point of a program like this. A lot of parents think smartphones (mainly social media, really) are a net negative for their kids, but we have this tragedy of the commons situation where no one wants their kid to be left out / socially isolated. Having this "wait until 8th" thing is basically parents playing the prisoner's dilemma getting together and agreeing that it we'd be much happier if everyone cooperates rather than defect on this issue.
It all looks like B'n'W opinions and mixing devices and services. I completely miss the "parenting" aspect. It's all about prohibition.
The Wait Until 8th pledge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 - June 2023 (244 comments)
Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284217 - March 2019 (146 comments)
For a while, there was some consensus that anonymity and talking to strangers was the danger. So we got real name and photo policies, and the expectation that we'd have an online presence that was an extension of our real selves. Now that every kid's online persona is indivisible from their IRL identity, and their popularity can be measured with likes and followers and inclusion / exclusion from group chats, it just allows the social dynamics among their peers to play out 24/7 on steroids with no escape.
Which I totally agree with.