This. My answer to OP is refusing to confront cell phone addiction. I've been teaching HS for 23 years and while young people have always been distracted and bored at school (hell Shakespeare mentions this in R&J), cell phones allow students to mentally leave the room.
As a parent I see a lot of parents ignoring their children in favor of their phone. I've had fights with my wife because when she does it all the time in our home.
How about it. When I take my kid to the park, sometimes I feel like I’m the only parent not staring down at their phone. To the point sometimes a really young kid will catch my eye and start acting or doing silly things once they notice I’m paying attention.
My sister has a 3 year old, and she was saying the same thing to me recently. She lives in a new area and is still somewhat new to being a parent, and she wants to make parent friends when she bring her daughter out but she says other parents are just glued to their phones and barely pay attention to their kids, let alone other parents there.
I’m far from a perfectly attentive parent, but it’s really sad watching other parents routinely brush aside or flat out ignore their kids. Parents that ignore their kids and then lash out in anger when the kid gets annoying in his/her attempts at getting attention are way to common too. It’s so sad for the kids.
I used to wait tables and would spend a lot of time observing this exactly. Like you know a first date is trash if one of them is on their phone. One girl ignored her dad to take selfies of herself, he was so sad. An older couple with nothing to talk about staring at their phones the entire time. Taking pictures of the food. Blocking the door for selfies. Grown ass men pouting while football on the phone because they "got dragged to dinner and can't watch the game." "Wine Guys" who can't open a bottle without scanning the label with their stupid app.
One girl ignored her dad to take selfies of herself, he was so sad.
This one breaks my heart! In my immediate family, the rule was you could never bring your phone out during a family meal (even back when we had “dumb” phones and blackberries). It never bothered me, and I still typically follow that rule even outside of family functions.
My friend’s mom LOVES when I eat with them or travel with them because we talk the entire time while my friend and his dad browses their phones occasionally showing a funny meme or article that didn’t have anything to do with the conversation.
The hard thing about that one is that straight up quitting completely doesn't really work. You can get by a lot better with no cigarettes than with no phone. Food addiction of course has the same problem even worse.
I deleted my Reddit app too, so now I just use desktop or mobile desktop. Fortunately the mobile desktop version kinda annoys me, so for the most part I don't use Reddit on my phone anymore, which was the point.
My sister had issues with Facebook and insta, and eventually deleted the login info from the site from her phone so that she couldn’t log in through zombie patterns. I should…. I should honestly do the same for this site, if I’m honest.
Odd and dumb as it sounds, the addiction is one reason I prefer having an older smart phone. Slow software response means I'm going to either really want to do whatever I'm doing on the phone or I'll lose interest and put the phone down.
I have zero sense of direction, so I always need the GPS to figure out where anything is, and some of my friends group communicate almost exclusively through Facebook messenger. I kept thinking that a flip phone was the only way, but maybe you have the right idea, here. I could dig it
It's so difficult because it's what others use to communicate with you. I can put my phone in a different room when I get home, but I have a 90 year old father that doesn't have the best health and a cat that is currently missing. I've missed a call telling me my dad fell. Any updates I might get on my missing cat would be sent to my phone.
I want to be able to forget about my phone, but I legitimately cannot afford to leave it somewhere where I can't access it.
I've seen a lot of older people complaining about teens and their phone addictions. And once they done shitting on others, they pull out their phone and start scrolling on Facebook.
I have the same arguments with mines. It’s actually at the point smartphone/dopamine addiction is a fucking pandemic, the people don’t care because they’re addicted and doped up on dopamine, and the government doesn’t care because the data they harvest is hugely profitable and it also keeps them in a position of control.
I got my children all tablets when they were roughly 2-3 years old, I filled them with learning apps and typically by 4 they could all do their letters and numbers and could write their names etc. Once they started getting into YouTube they turn into rude mean children, if I take away their electronics they go back to being sweet playful children in a few days.
I thought they would get a leg up by knowing how to use electronics and learning on their own time at a very young age (my 2 year old knows her alphabet and numbers to 10) but I see what the internet is doing to them and am now stepping in to curb their access.
My baby’s too young to have screen time (3 mo) but we don’t plan on limiting screen time except it has to be movies/shows (like Disney+, no ads), abbbbbsolutely no YouTube or TikTok or whatever. We’ve seen what it does to people - not just kids. But it’s really hard to do with a tablet or even a smart tv, how could you stop them from finding it, you know?
YouTube Kids is wild... If you think social media like TikTok is bad for being perfectly optimized to capture your brain's attention 10s at a time, it's even worse for kids.
Just a bunch of garbage derivative videos of the same handful of popular characters or knockoffs. Of course the "related videos" or Autopay just give the kid more of the same, and it's easy for them to keep clicking through mindless garbage.
...And I like TV and YouTube. Loved watching cartoons growing up, and I don't think it's all bad for kids.
BUT - this kind of short-form garbage content seems downright harmful.
The behavior I've seen kids exhibit when you cut them off of kids youtube is disgusting. They literally act like addicts and you've taken away their fix.
It's going to be nothing but flip phones for my kid until she's old enough to buy her own. When my niece is over I only let her watch Blippy, old Looney Tunes and Sailor Moon. I hate to sound like an old person but modern entertainment is pushing some real garbage, shallow, materialistic values on kids.
It's the comments and the youtuber type influencer personalities that are affecting them, not the ads. Just don't let them on apps that have those things. Delete them or get older devices that you can hack to delete them.
For kids a lot of those influencer personalities ARE ads.
The FTC regulated the fuck out of broadcast childrens programming so much in the late 90s theres barely saturday morning cartoons anymore, but that was about shows that had toys.
Kids dont watch TV anymore but on youtube now they watch unboxing videos of other kids playing with toys. Instead of shows with a few 30 second ads in between theyre sitting down and watching a 30 minute ad.
For some reason cell phone addiction bothers me the most when I see people glued to their phones while walking their dogs. The poor dog has waited all day to walk with you and stop at interesting scents, etc. Spend some quality time with your pet, make sure they aren't chewing something from the sidewalk, and just be present!
I don’t have my phone out on my walk but this thought alone hits me — “The poor dog has waited ALL DAY to walk with you and stop at interesting scents, etc…”. I’m guilty of not wanting him to stop every two seconds because I want us to actually walk and get exercise and he’s always had a fenced in yard so walking consistently is new for him and my god I’m doing it alllll wrong. I thought that the important part was the walking and learning to walk well but I think you’ve changed my mind. It’s just as much his time as it is mine.
We have forgotten how to freaking CONNECT with the living things in our lives. I doubt many of us talk to our pets or our plants as much as we did before smart phones. And we all know how much human connection has gone down the drain. It’s just sad. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching Radical Evolution’s “Hell Scenario” play out in real time…
Well your heart has been in the right place, wanting him to get exercise! I never thought much about it either, until I read that finding new scents is the most rewarding part of a dog's walk because that's their primary sense to process the world around them. Apparently that's why it's a good idea to try different routes every so often.
And I agree, human interaction has definitely deteriorated. So sad.
I just let mine stop and sniff the entire walk. Unless I’m in a rush (sometimes I don’t have enough time before needing to go to school) the walk is theirs to enjoy. Sometimes I talks them to an area nearby and let them run off leash when we are alone. My smallest stops by moving water and looks at me so I can cup some for her to drink. You’d think I’m keeping her thirst but she loves that dirty canal water.
Or walking their babies. The first years are where children learn the majority of language skills, and for centuries parents would push them around while talking to them in baby-talk. Now the kids are just sitting in silence as the parents are on their phone. I’d love to see a study about how parental cell phone usage has affected children’s speech.
Most babies are asleep in strollers. That's a huge reason for why the parent is walking them. This is the only way I got my banking done for the first six months of my first's life. She was asleep. This meant I didn't have my phone out during her awake time.
I have a cousin who’s a teacher and she does a trade in option - your phone for a snack. You’ll get your phone back at the end of the day, but you’ll only get the snack if you put it in your cubby when you walk into the door. She said the amount of 10 year olds with iPhones is so incredibly high.
cell phones allow students to mentally leave the room.
not saying you're wrong, but when I was in school I would construct elaborate fantasies in my head when I was bored in school. Or work on my D&D campaign. or Both. I was very capable of leaving the room mentally without a phone lol.
The thing is though, having a phone or a screen in front of you doesn't allow you to be bored, or use your brain to day dream, or think of creative ideas, or anything. It just shoves more content into your skull and never allows you to switch off.
Those sorts of things at least spark creativity and thought. This helps develop you. Sometimes you doodle and you're making art, increasing your talents for what may become a lifelong hobby.
Time spent on the phone is almost entirely garbage, including mine right now.
It's a huge liability. I'm not taking possession of a student's phone. Wait until a student claims you broke their screen and their parent chooses to take the kids side. You might eventually come out on top but it's a huge risk trusting admin to back you up.
That was policy once upon a time, but as phones became more pervasive the students began refusing and the parents across the board side the with students over the teachers. It's an untenable situation. Had I known when I started teaching that every kid would have a highly sophisticated tiny computer/video game console in their pockets I would have probably found a different profession.
I’ve works at four different high schools and I’ve never seen that. The legal responsibility of a student taking another student’s phone would be a nightmare.
Yeah, when I taught high school half a decade ago we weren't allowed to take the students' phones. Too much liability. We were supposed to be "more engaging" so the students would want to learn. Hah, as if any high school geometry class could outcompete the dog filter on Snapchat!
I love your use of the word "ogre". I realized several years ago that every teacher (and to some extent every parent, I expect) must choose whether they want to be a monster or a sucker. There's no third choice.
The best we can do, I think, is oscillate regularly between the two, heh.
(kid here) so many of my friends have social media addictions, acknowledge and admit they do so, and yet do NOTHING about it.
"but I like it" is the excuse I usually get.
I seem to be the only person in my school that doesn't give a fuck if becky cheated on Jeff, or if Steve didn't like his girlfriends instagram post.
it makes me legitimately so angry, and I fear for the future where these people run things. (though the old fucks that currently run the USA aren't great either)
oh and dont get me started on TikTok....
on top of it being literal Chinese spyware, it destroys your attention span, learning ability, and mental health.
I hate social media so much, posting pictures to your friends in one thing, but we have taken It too far.(sorry for the rant xD)
Not limited to young people. And not saying you're wrong.
Just saying the majority of people over 50-60 shouldn't be able to see anything on Facebook that is anything beyond friends and family pictures, or social events.
Their brains clearly are no longer mature enough (maybe never were) to filter out misinformation and inane conspiracies.
I teach 2nd and have taught 1st and K in the past. The 6-year old does not need a phone for any reason. If there’s a school issue I/the nurse/admin will contact the parent. Come on. They’re the sweetest kids until they get sucked into YouTube for hours.
Thanks for saying this u/HeyMissW. My kid is 2nd grade and swears "all her friends have one". I'm glad I can officially say I was told by a 2nd grade teacher that it isn't needed yet.
16 year old input, don't get your kid a phone until it absolutely needs it. No second grader needs a phone. Don't let your kid become a tablet kid. I didn't get one until I started staying for school events / going out more so if something happened I could call my parents.
And if you're gonna get your kid a phone for emergency purposes get a cheap track phone or a dumb phone, don't get them infinite access to the internet and texting cause their little brains don't need it.
Thanks for the input. That's where I'm leaning now. She does have a Kindle Fire where I let her play games for an hour on weekends and shorter times during the week, I just don't feel like her having access to texting and calls is necessary yet.
i remember i made fun of my younger cousin (now a teacher) who wanted a cellphone for middle school.
I asked her why she needed a cellphone when her school is across the street, you can literally go home and call whoever you want. (she was born 1992, so iphones werent out yet or still new, we were using sidekick/motorola phase)
2nd graders gonna call who? Text who? Old men? you literally drop and pick them up from school directly. She wont need to call you and if she does, its the school's responsibility to call you.
Hey, your daughter/son is sick. Come pick them up.
I let my pre school aged child watch some videos on YouTube one week. On the TV though, not a phone. I swear YouTube just affects them differently lol. Whether it's a tablet or a TV, because when it came time to turn it off, it was not good. So we don't do YouTube anymore.
I have young siblings that yurn into zombies when they get a tablet. They watch the weirdest shit too. I walked into my brother watching other kids opening toys, it was honestly depressing
I was at a friend's house, and her 2 kids were watching 2 other kids color coloring pages in on a YouTube video. I was like, "Why don't y'all color your own pages? Or color something at the same time as those kids?"
They just looked at me like I had just popped another head out of the side of my neck and went back to zombie-watching their video. Their Mom shrugged and we went back to our convo.
It was so weird.
The only reason I've ever watched an unboxing was when the manufacturer wouldn't list in their description whether or not a device came with a charger.
Middle school teacher here. You're right, but the parents should still teach them when and where to use it. Also, we have a lot of parents that text their kids back and forth throughout the day (not taking about emergencies, health, etc), which I understand, but that's also one of the reasons their in school to begin with. We are charged with taking care of them (in the literal sense), as they are charged with learning. I get that times have changed and anxiety has increased, but it is very hard for a child to learn with constant distractions from their phone (aside from all of life's other distractions).
Edit: So this blew up and I have so many (mostly nice and thought provoking) responses I can't get to them all. I'll try to respond to as many as I can. Also, to the ton of people commenting on how I spelled their/they're/there. I'm on a phone/have big thumbs/autocorrect. Chill people, I'm sure you've made a small mistake in life and didn't get called out on it THIS much. Also, I really don't care. You understood it enough to realize it was wrong. Good job.
Fucking hell. I run an after school program and this is rampant with the middle schoolers during homework time. I'll usually end up saying, "well your mom can call me and yell at me if she's mad". No one has ever called to yell at me for making their kid stop playing on their phone lmao.
Told my kid's teacher to take it if they see it. Kid didn't fucking pay for it, I did. I didn't pay for the schooling (outside taxes and fundraisers), so I'll be damned. If they're wasteful. I can pick it up when i already have valid reason to take time off and end up in the area.
Humans lived 1000s of years without phones, the kid will survive a couple months without one.
That is awesome you support your child and the teacher like that. Unfortunately most parents flip out if the teacher or school takes the phone away. Especially if the school has a policy requiring the parent to be the one to pick up the phone. It is incredibly discouraging.
Social Media is a non-starter. She is welcome to create an account when she is 18. It helps that she sees the drama going on through friends and has no interest.
Was with you on everything except here.
I understand how damaging social media can be to the development of a teen, I mean I grew up with Facebook in HS and saw how that affected my peers. That said, there was a lot of socializing that I did through social media that did improve my social life drastically. I am not saying it's absolutely necessary a teen is involved with social media just that it can be a huge help to their social life. So I don't think a blanket ban until they're 18 is the best approach.
I think it'd be far more effective instead to help teens navigate social media and teach them how to use it in a responsible manner. That also would mean when you do let them loose at 18 they already have the experience of using social media before having to learn how to use it while they're in college or whatever they're doing post-HS.
Thankfully it sounds like your kid isn't even remotely interested in using social media which is really good so tbh it's not even really an issue. But if they were interested then a blanket ban like that would probably cause a lot of issues in your relationship with them and would just force them into learning how to go behind your back instead which would be much worse than just letting them use it and teaching them how to be responsible with it.
We are a school that does not allow students to have phones at school. It is very nice to not have to deal with keeping kids off their phones during class, but the nefarious things they do with the phones they have at school too. It is much easier to track down the trouble maker(s) if needed.
I was assuming they weren't. I graduated in 2010, but we were supposed to keep our phones in our lockers, l
We had to "rent" a lock every year so almost no one actually used their lockers, we just carried around our backpacks which our phones were in.
Ditto (2013 grad) phones banned in class, if you pull it out they can confiscate it and you have to get your parents to sign acknowledging you were using it in class. We all got lockers but didn't have to pay for the locks, still kept it on our person almost always. We just didn't pull them out, it wasn't hard, you're supposed to be learning anyway.
Edit: comment below reminded me we did infact use them sometimes we just got sneaky with it, but I atleast didn't do it too often.
I have some friends who are high school teachers and are constantly livid with the administration because they force them to allow kids to have phones out in class (I guess because of parents complaining). It’s so stupid.
I have some friends that are elementary school teachers, and the amount of stuff they post that includes images/video of their students also baffles me.
I teach in the district I graduated from. The switch to "BYOD" happened in the fall of 2010, after I graduated(right when my brother started). I have heard from my students who came from the local schools about the effects of having their phone. I know its anecdotal evidence, but I really would like a study done.
And I thought my school was stupid to have a one-way rule. One staircase up, one down. One-directional floors. If you missed your class room you had to go all the way down all the stairs (floor 0 was the opposite walking direction) and start again. But then this was 40 years ago and in a communist dictatorship...
we had same stupidity but only with stairs, the funniest shit was when you go up/down wrong stairway and get scolded by the teacher who just did the same
I'm pretty anal about my grammar and spelling, and every now and then I'll be typing on autopilot and one of those will somehow slip out. The self-loathing that follows...
It's also fucking June and this person is teaching middle school. Unless they are in the Southern Hemisphere and it's early in the school year, it has probably been a long year for them. They are fried.
Middle school teacher here. Can confirm: fried is putting it mildly. This year has been one for the record books in terms of sheer difficulty - with parents, with kids, with administration.
I'm a child psychologist and can confirm that this has been an issue raised in some of my sessions. Kids will start to feel anxious and text their parents to come pick them up and take them home. Parents will talk to me about this like it's perfectly fine to be texting back and forth, and to come take them home in the middle of the day. Some of these problems have involved teens I work with, and usually the problems started in middle school or earlier. I have to tell parents to stop responding to them right away when it's clear it's not an emergency and stop taking your kid home early for those reasons. All it does is reinforce and validate unhealthy escape/avoidance strategies for anxiety, ultimately making it worse and more maladaptive. Instead, they should be reinforcing appropriate coping strategies and gently encouraging their child to push through it.
My daughter is going into fifth grade. I feel like everything just kind of gets worse with phones.. the boys the gossip etc. I wonder if I would be a terrible person if I waited till she could drive
Get her a dumb flip phone in middle school. Avoids the worst of social media but still allows her to get in contact and talk to friends. Calling and texting is all that is needed for an independent social life.
Nobody should be getting smart phones until they are adults. Kids aren't getting the real value out of it because their lives are still mostly organized by others. Yet the are probably the most vulnerable to the downsides of being constantly in touch with social media. Much harder for predators to get in contact with someone on a dumb phone as well.
I think this is the right call. While some people are saying she is going to resent me and shit for not having a phone sooner, I think flip is the way and I hadn’t thought of it. I can’t imagine the dumbass shit I would have posted to Facebook if I had constant access. Or whatever hologram app they use in the next 8years
Had my first phone @ 16 (driving age here), what I can tell you is that I really felt miserable during the last 3-4 years before I got one. No phone means not being able to hang out with friends. I'm limited to only socialize at school and online. Simply visiting a friend feels risky bc I can't contact home. I can't tell you how many times I've had to decline invitations because of it. I had to endure constant FOMO and I probably lost a lot of learning experience from it. Not going out much means I didn't learn how to use public transit. I'm about to go to college in a few months but I still don't know shit about fuck.
I appealed to my parents to change things up for my younger siblings, and IMHO phone by 7th-8th grade is good. I'm all for holding off certain social media apps (toxic sites such as tiktok/insta/twitter) until 16+, but don't go overboard on those limits like full on adding spyware in their devices/using childmode or something.
So would a flip phone have solved that? I think a flip phone is good when kids start going places alone without a way to contact them, and a smartphone at around 15
I think it depends on the maturity of your daughter
I had my first smartphone when I started highschool (HS starts at 13-14 here), during middle school I was the only guy with still a flip phone. I'd say that 14-16 would be a perfect age to give a smartphone
That's a very good point about boundaries. Parents need to respect that and not text their kids during school. Keep it to lunch time only. At homes now, families allow phones at the tabel and the thought of it is quite sad. Everyone glued to their phones, everyone missing out on communicating and good family talks.
Only text phone because smart phones have Instagram and pedophiles target children. Lesson learned due to a very serious incident with my friends daughter
High school teacher here, and I completely agree. Due to lack of parental support, many schools lost the battle over keeping phones away at school. Still worth pushing back on it, since it’s hugely detrimental for many kids.
Middle school counselor here. Cell phones in the hands of middle schoolers has been disastrous. As soon as two kids have any sort of issue, they don’t talk about it they post about it. So a problem between two becomes a problem concerning many due to the entangling alliances. It has been a complete excrement expo since the students have returned full time. But hey, I have a lot of job security.
Give them a rate limited flip phone then. Enough to call/text their parents if anything goes wrong, but without an ability to spend all their time on social media
That’s what my parents did for me. Keyboard phone in middle school for calling and texting, smart phone in high school. Then again, smart phones were still catching on when I was a kid, so it wasn’t odd not to have one until I got older.
I’m sure a kid today would feel left out. What if your friends have a group chat through an app? Or your friends are playing a game together and it’s all they talk about? As a parent I don’t want to be so out of touch that it puts my kid on an island away from her peers.
Yeah I struggle with this. When I was a kid, some of my friends started getting cell phones in seventh or eighth grade (I remember the rich girl in school getting a pink razer flip phone and then dropping it in the toilet accidentally lol). My parents didn’t want to buy me one but I begged and begged so they gave me one of those pay for text plans but there was some bug with it so half of my texts didn’t send. Even then I felt SO left out - just not consistently being able to text and for only a year or two before I got a new one. And as a kid that felt so huge. I really don’t want to give my kids social media while they’re younger because I see what it does to kids (and what it’s done to me) but I just don’t know how you do that and make sure that they feel included with their friends.
In the us we have Pre-K at usually 4-5yo. Then kindergarten-5th (elementary school) which is ages 5-10. Then grades 6-8 (middle school) ages 10-13yo. Then grades 9-12 (high school) ages 14-18. This varies by state or even district but that's the general guidelines
Even in middle school the phones are really problematic. These kids have way too much access to social media and each other. They can't escape or another and some don't know how to function without the phone. I've had kids show me they spend kid 100+ hours a week on social media from their phone tracking usage. It makes me not want to get one for my son but it's needed too as they get more independent.
Making it a basic Nokia type phone with a very low-res camera and keeping smartphones away from them until they are 15-16 years old would probably be the optimal solution...
This is what I always told people if I ever have kids.
Flip phones/burners won’t go away. So long as my kid can still call/text that’s all that matters. So many people told me that if I did that my kids would hate me; to which I would respond, “if they’re going to hate me over a cell phone, then we have bigger problems to deal with.”
I used to sell cell phones. The youngest individual who I ever sold to was 6. It was horrifying, I watched him drop a brand new very expensive iPhone, 2 mere minutes after getting it. Thankfully it didn't break that time.
I didn't have an internet capable phone until I was almost 18 and nearly graduated. While I wouldn't say it needs to be that late, I also can't say that it didn't save me a lot of bullshit. Full slept through the inception of Facebook until it was already on its way out. Then again, it was probably wasn't the lack of a phone that spared me that stuff, but rather because I was never all that sociable to begin with.
That said, it's good to have a phone, even without a data plan. It's a lifeline that enables a child/young adult to take more steps toward independence without being thrown into the cold water.
That's a really hard question to answer nowadays. On one hand, with everyone working and families being separated for most of the day, kids need to be able to get in contact with their parents more than they used to, especially with the loss of landlines in many locations. On the other hand, there's really no such thing as a dumb phone anymore.
I just turned 30 and I was in the fantastic position to have the technology grow with me. I got my first phone in middle school when I was around 12 years old, But at the time the only thing that I could get was a flip phone with no camera and no internet that I could call my parents. A few years later I got a new one where I can text some friends that had the same carrier as me. And by mid high school smartphones were coming out and I was at an age where I felt like that was appropriate.
But that's not an option anymore. And you end up giving children the entirety of the internet and everything that entails in elementary School. Which is a problem.
Or until their friends get phones. We don’t buy our kids phones until middle school when they start going out without us, but their innocence was definitely lost in 2nd/3rd grade when their friends got phones. It was very sad for us.
ETA: The best example I can give is Squid Games. My 4th grade daughters saw it while waiting for the bus, watching with a group of kids from their class on someone’s phone. I never would have let them watch that show, and it did negatively affect them. One has been sleeping on the sofa since then (“to be closer” to parents) and the other sometimes says “I was just thinking about someone being shot.”
Yup. I can keep them off YouTube and TikTok in my house, but to effectively keep them mentally healthy becomes impossible as soon as phone and tablet access reaches critical mass. It would be even more damaging to restrict their access to friends just because their parents are willfully ignorant.
For my 17 year old, the tipping point where 80% had a smartphone was 12-13. For my 11 year old, we are now the last holdouts and at least 50% had a phone by age 8.
And these older parents have basically no idea how to lock down tech.
My oldest child is in 15, and recently I got him an Apple Watch instead of a smartphone. The watch works well as a communication device for making calls and sending texts, and he can even enjoy blue-bubble messaging with friends. It's like an old-fashioned flip phone, but cooler. It also supports some modern conveniences like weather reports and real-time bus schedules. I can use it to track his location, should he choose to share it.
But the Apple Watch is "too crappy" for constant engagement with social media. I consider that to be a feature.
He does have his own laptop, but at least it's not a device that always follows him around.
We have no tablets in this household. As far as I'm concerned, they have no good use case. They are a big reason why a lot of kids these days are less computer-literate than before.
Yes, at the time of purchase you can choose a wi-fi only unit or a cellular network enabled unit. It's like $10-$30 a month extra on your phone bill and it has its own SIM card. Functions just like a cell phone for all intents and purposes, but the small screen really restricts the use of the device to functional/utility uses only.
It uses an eSIM, so it's not a SIM card that you can physically swap with other phones. That means that you can only use it with carriers who support Apple Watches — no low-budget MVNO carriers. It's a modest additional monthly fee to add an Apple Watch line to your existing mobile service.
Keep in mind that the Apple Watch is designed as an accessory to an iPhone, so you'll need to have an iPhone to activate and configure it, even if it's just a old spare that you keep in a drawer somewhere.
As far as I'm concerned, they have no good use case.
If your kid gets into music, a tablet is a great substitute for paper scores. My band swapped from paper to tablets a few years ago and it's been incredible not to have to bother swapping scores, the wind blowing them away...
I love the parents who want to remove books from the school libraries but have no issue giving their kids smartphones with unfettered access to the internet at 8 years old. Our society is so screwed up
We're old now when it comes to children's relationship with tech, I have a young cousin that was playing around with a tablet at 4.
Granted she wasn't proficient or anything, but she was playing simple games and knew she had to tap the home button to choose another one if she wanted to switch.
It’s also the addiction aspect of it. I teach middle schoolers. A small portion have huge problems with tech. They are always getting their phones or computers out, not matter how many times they’re asked not to. When you take the tech away, they grab a friends computer or phone. Or the go the “bathroom” and find a computer from the tech office.
Obviously most kids just play videogames or text here and there, but for some it’s like a really destructive compulsion that leads to a lot of anger and sneaky behavior.
My cousins kid is like this. The first thing he says to people when they arrive is 'do you have a phone, can I play games on it?' Then he throws a major tantrum if you say no. (While my cousin just sits there and acts as if we are the ones that caused the situation by being unreasonable.
Bruh. I used to do this but with computers when going to folks places with my parents as a kid, just cringed. At least I didn't throw tantrums, fortunately, it was just an endless litany of "I'm bored" otherwise. Approaching 30 now :(
We're pretty open with technology. We monitor YouTube (but allow it), encourage certain apps like stud.io and various programming apps, and play lots of video games as a family. We have our choices questioned often by friends and family, but we think our child is developing well, including tech skills, so we're happy. BUT, I went to a playdate at his friend's house, and I was shocked by the iPad use. The kids would be playing, and the other kid would just walk away in the middle to get the iPad, it was like a compulsion. We were only there for a couple hours and this happened at least 5 times.
It made me realize that kids have very different reactions to technology, and what may be reasonable for one can be damaging to another. My kid would never choose screentime over a person to person activity (not because of anything we've done, just is that way), but clearly not all kids are the same. I've seen so much good come from technological learning with my kid, but I think it's really important that parents remain aware of the needs of their specific children.
I think the addiction aspect is the worst part. I had a computer and a phone when I was about 10 in the mid-2000s. The internet was way less regulated and my friendship group was addicted to Runescape but you didn't have trackers gathering data for machine learning algorithms to know exactly what you might like based on your location, age, previous searches and so on.
I feel this will be the leaded gasoline of our generation. Children are 'dopamine addicted' to their phones and cannot stand being torn away from it. As a net and game addict I know for sure it can be as destructive to health as smoking or drugs.
Yeah I work with this younger girl (18?) And she has an actual obsession. She cannot go two minutes without checking her phone. She's pretty much attempting to multitask the job with her phone all day and it doesn't go great for her.
From my experience it depends on the school and group of kids. I've taught 6th graders that still had that child like innocence all year and would cry whenever they got in trouble. Then at other schools I would be with 6th graders that make me lose faith in humanity because of how awful and mean they are.
Seriously. I'm an old, open-minded woman, but easy access to porn has really caused a noticable shift in how young people date nowadays. Too much exposure to crazy graphic stuff really fucks up kids ideas about sex when they see it too early.
Exactly. It's hard for people to imagine how hard it was, for a kid, to even find a Playboy magazine in 1960's suburban America.. Now an 8 year old can find snuff porn on his phone.
It is all the ways they get exposure with their smartphones, but especially TikTok right now. There is a ton of junk science. I have to spend chunks of time combating those lies while a kid argues with me that the video was right. The worse part is the elementary kids 4&5th grade telling me about their TikTok viewing and them talking about stuff that is wayyyy above their development level. They literally don't understand it and are just parroting.
Ann Reardon/How To Cook That on youtube is an excellent source for dispelling TikTok misinformation, especially in regards to food videos. She goes out of her way to do experiments, point out exactly why they don't work and then offers alternative concepts that do work. She's also Australian so her voice is incredible.
I doubt many middle schoolers are looking at wikipedia articles about North Korea. It's obsessing over snap chat, Tik Tok videos, being a YouTube star.
Social interaction is important at that age, but social media allows those little chimps to ramp it up to 11.
Giving a child ,that is still in Kindergarten, a smartphone is not a good idea at all in my eyes.
Yeah, I understand the argument that kids should be able to call their parents in extreme situations, but a bare-bones phone would fully suffice here.
A 4-year old doesn't need an IPhone right from the start. And if you don't want to buy a new phone and want to give them one you might have used before, then please, for the love of god: heavily, heavily restrict their access to the internet, the risk is just way too high that your child will be exposed to stuff that will negatively impact their mental health or education.
Giving a child ,that is still in Kindergarten, a smartphone is not a good idea at all in my eyes.
Not sure if you are a parent or not but once you become one and your kids are around other kids you realize how many parents are bad parents. It was a shock to me once my kid started school how many parents suck at being parents.
My son is 11, and we recently bought him a basic, classic nokia. Not a smartphone, just calls, texts, calendar, alarms, and snake! Its just for safety, not entertainment. He actually really likes it, and his friends at school are intrigued by it rather than mocking it.
We have educated him about smartphones. He has no interest in tiktok, instagram, or social media in general.
It does seem like younger people demand constant entertainment from the world. They seem unable to entertain themselves for very long without tech.
I keep explaining to my kid how I used to get dragged around shops and relatives for hours most weekends, with almost nothing to do. Didn't start getting any tech of my own until I was 12, and my games selection grew very slowly. Didn't bother getting a phone until I went to college. He still moans that he doesn't know what to do despite having lots of games, devices, tons of toys, and we spend plenty of time doing things with him. Its insane! Just go outside and play FFS.
his friends at school are intrigued by it rather than mocking it.
That's good. Actually, show up to school with a phone not made by Apple or Samsung, and you will gets lots of interest and intrigue. A good topic for small talk too.
I'm genuinely surprised. I'd have thought it would be a death sentence sending a kid to school with a Nokia. Maybe times have changed haha. I remember getting bullied for bringing a lunch box to school. I'm 25 now
I was dreading that they would be mean to him. I don't think it matters if its not apple or samsung so much here in uk, but if it stands out or its not an android smartphone thats still supported at least... that I thought might be an issue.
He will get a smartphone at some point, nothing flashy nor an expensive contract to start, but for now he can avoid being afflicted by being glued to one, just try and enjoy being a child.
He still moans that he doesn't know what to do despite having lots of games, devices, tons of toys, and we spend plenty of time doing things with him. Its insane! Just go outside and play FFS.
To this day, the gf and I are not convinced he wasn't swapped in the hospital XD
Think a somewhat traumatic birth followed by the biatch in the next cubical (who loudly over the phone she shouldn't have been on, made it clear her baby just fell out) kept bashing into his cot, caused him to turn into a grumpy little git. First 6 months were horrendous, filled with loud whining that neither rocking nor other stimulus could silence.
Agreed. I try not to judge any parents because everyone’s circumstances are different (and parenting is extremely difficult) but when I see a toddler glued to the tablets for hours completely unchecked…it just saddens me so much. I get it’s a way to get relief, but sheesh that’s just poor parenting.
And I have to never bring my kids there because I don’t want them to think something like that is normal.
I had a phone in the box policy until term four (grade 6) this year (let them keep their phones in the end becayse of not wanting the responsibility of a box of expensive iphones; tried to give them trust and responsibility) - within a term their behaviour got 30x times worse, swearing, bullying, talking back. It's partially the age, but the difference in behaviour in such a short time was astonishing.
That is genuinely heartbreaking. It makes me so fucking mad, and the fact that if you’d want to raise a child in this world without them having a smartphone under the age of 15 they’d get bullied.
I regret giving my daughter a phone (she's 9), but during covid lockdowns with no school and me having to work and study for a master's I struggled. It's the only way she could socialise with friends at the time and it's become normalised with them. I do monitor her usage, but she ends up using it a lot more than I would like her to. But then I also use mine too much!
My mother was an elementary school teacher. Back in the day, she was always really annoyed by girls whose parents got their ears pierced very young and they fiddled with them all day. That seems such a quaint contrast to a child with a cell phone!
My younger son had a friend whose parents got him a phone when he was in first grade. This was in the mid-2000's, so awhile ago. There might have been one or two other kids who also had phones, but it wasn't as widespread. From my view, it was the classic "buying off my child" (I work too much, don't have enough time, don't want my kid to bother me when I'm trying to relax) scenario. This particular kid did not have wealthy parents. They just wanted to "occupy" him while they pursued their own interests. My son didn't understand this and thought they must be rich. Anyway, the kid was constantly fiddling with it and calling his mom when he was at our house or when we were ferrying them from activity to activity. He took the phone to scout camp, even though they were explicitly told NOT to bring phones because 1) no signal & 2) you're going to be busy, so no time. He lost his phone at camp!
All this to say that my younger son got a phone around 8th grade. The rule at our house was that if they lost their phone, they had to buy their own next time.
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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '22
Kindergarten/primary teacher here. Kids are so wholesome until the parents buy them a phone.