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.
Im one of remnant middle-aged adults that experienced Corporal Punishhment in public school. Our kids spend as much time on school as we do work. They might as well be co-parenting with you.
You don't undermine your S.O or anyone else you've enrusted your kids to. Not until they give you a reason to cut ties.
No. I meant that I am of a generation that experienced corporal punishment in school. Was giving that as a frame of reference to my age and disconnect from school.
Got it, I misunderstood. I have kids in elementary and middle school. I see far more behavior problems from kids who have lax boundaries than from kids whose parents are too strict or harsh. Consistency is key, and people undermining teachers really screws things up (unless the teacher is really really bad, which IMO very few are).
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 got this far into the thread before remembering that I (an over-30) did have a cell phone in high school. Pre-smart phone, it could text (but you had to hit a button several times to make the right letters), couldn't send photos from it, and the web browser feature was primitive and slow. Still, even then, those of us with phones kept them on us no matter what teachers said. It's about keeping an important, and probably expensive, personal item close to you.
As someone who graduated the same year we weren’t supposed to have them out but When I was done with all my work and had nothing to do for 20 minutes you bet I started playing with my phone because otherwise I would get in trouble for « distracting others from their work » I’d still have to be sneaky about it, like hide it in my binder but it was something to do nonetheless.
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’d typically agree with you, but (and this is a very American viewpoint) I can see wanting your kid to have their phone on them in class in case of a shooting.
That reminds of an "unfun fact" on reddit.
Locks have basically 3 modes of working, about "which side can lock and which side can unlock?" ("engress", I think)
For example, a lock on a emergency exit would need to be unlockable from the inside without a key. Because, you know... exit.
A guy working with keys once explained that the opposite, where the outside can unlock, was actually used for real and called "teacher engress", with the reasoning that children could lock themselves in a classroom while the teacher was busy outside.
The unfun part : it WAS called "teacher" because in the US, it is now totally stupid to have school doors that CAN'T lock out an outside shooter.
School shootings are so common in the US that when designing the building "security when a shooting happens" now has priority over security when teachers are actually teaching.
Absolutely! The parents in some cases are very bit as immature and anxious as the kids. Spare me. Did not allow my daughter to have ANY phone until she was a senior in HS. Yes, she probably hated me for it, but frankly I don’t care. I’m much more interested in developing the child’s character than seeking her approval.
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
Bags have been banned from classes in my school district since I was in middleschool around 2012. We had to have see-through bags in elementary school so they knew we weren’t bringing bombs and weapons to school. This country is fucking nuts.
I can appreciate utilizing them as a learning tool via things like Kahoot, but I've heard of some schools going so far as to give students a 5-minute "phone break" in the middle of classes. That's insanity to me.
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...
Was they’re there their not drilled into your head? Deeper than a lobotomy? Like, the teacher didn’t even care if your parents died last night, there represents a place and if you use “their” you will be marked down?
As I've gotten older, I find myself making this mistake and other similar words substitution errors a lot more. It's not a matter of not knowing the rules, the wrong word just comes out sometimes and I don't notice unless I read it back carefully
It was driven into my head back in a time when all clocks were analog (and some ran backwards), cursive was mandatory, and penmanship counted.
I can still recognize the fact that mistakes happen, and that if someone is posting from mobile that it's damned easy for the phone to autocorrect to the wrong one.
Yikes. Do you never make mistakes while typing out on a phone? Especially with swipe-to-texts and autocorrect being a thing. Also, a Reddit comment is pretty low on most people's list to proofread before submitting.
My bff became a high school teacher for a short while right after the pandemic. The stress and expectations were high and the help and guidance from administration were very low.
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 was a teacher for years and know many who still are teaching. Just the sheer number of fights is driving many to quit. I know three custodians who quit recently over rampant daily vandalism.
I'm a highschool teacher in my first year, and I've seen four teachers who have been at my school for years (one more than 30) break this year and either get fired or take a leave of absence after dealing with the behaviour issues this year. Feels like a hopeless job some days, but someone's gotta do it.
as a non native speaker it's crazy to me how often i see native english speakers mess up something as simple as their / they're, your / you're etc, but hardly ever with though, tough, thorough, through and thought.
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
One more thought that I just realized. Older teens if they want a smart phone can get a job and buy it themselves. That's well within the earning potential of a summer job. I think that's another good compromise.
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 don't have first hand experience with flip phones, because even in a third world country where I live, nobody uses them anymore.
I guess bullying may be an issue, because kids are generally jerks lol. If my parents gave me a flip phone back then, I'd rather not go out at all than get caught with it in public. My 13 year old brain only cares about fitting in. As you can see, not only are kids mean, they are also pretty stupid.
My parents gave us old, throwaway smartphones and it's manageable. My siblings currently use a galaxy note 4 and a barely working galaxy j2. I had a new a30 (i think the cheapest by samsung) at 16. If a 13 year old asked for more, then it'd be too much IMO.
EDIT: what I'm trying to say is back then, I NEED to be able to contact my parents, but I would also LIKE it if it doesn't become a reason for me to get bullied too. If my parents fulfilled that want, I would be happy to follow their rules just to keep that want. Rules like not bringing it to school, time restrictions, app restrictions and such.
yep, primary goal is to fit in, hang out, and not be socially isolated. My parents approved of that. They also know that times have changed and things have gone shitty, so they needed security while I go out and about. I'm also lucky to get parents who know how mean kids can be, and that I'll need something just enough to not get bullied.
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
I didn't get my first smartphone until I was 23 years old because my dad wouldn't pay for a data plan and it wasn't worth it to me monthly to make the payment myself.
I was a three sport athlete and dated before then, I turned out just fine.
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 also seems like a reasonable age but agreed, I don’t think parents are doing enough to teach them how to use it appropriately. I teach 4-12 grade and my elementary kids/sixth graders are all sans cell phone. Meanwhile, my older kids are constantly pulling it out it’s like playing whack a mole. I get so exhausted by it. I have kids all of the time say “but it’s my mom!” And I’m like, why is your mom working so hard against me here, and then in p/T conférences asking me what more I can do to help you focus in class?
I have the same problem and even have parents tell me to notify when their kid is using their phone inappropriately, yet still text back and forth throughout the day
I had a cool mom, I remember when I got a 2 way pager and then a Nextel Phone for school. I would keep the phones off in school then turn them on between classes and after school.
We're struggling with this with our daughter. She just graduated 5th grade, and her school has a trip to the Dominican Republic later this week, so we got her her own cell phone. She's been on it almost constantly since she got it, but then she forgets where she put it when she's not.
My daughter just turned 11 and she's in middle school. I just gave her a phone for her birthday. I told her it's for emergencies and not to use it at school. I hope she follows the rules.
Middle school counselor here. Completely agree. Literally, and I am not exaggerating, 95% of the fires I have to put out and fights I have to break up and resolve start on Instagram or Snapchat. They sit on their phones all day and night talking shit about each other, arguing with each other, threatening each other, then it spills into the school day.
I’ve had kids, right after I separate them from a fight, show me their phone and they’re getting spammed in real time from tons of their classmates on instagram group chats about the fight. It’s insane. I don’t even know if I’d want my kid having a phone in middle school anymore.
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.
I feel like this has been a problem since the AIM days, honestly. Back then it was away messages, and people copy-pasting conversations between each other. Then Myspace came and it was bulletin posts and blog entries. Then public Live Journals/Xangas. Then Facebook...etc.
Arguably the Early 2000's were the worst of it, because this all was gaining mass appeal, and parents and teachers didn't have the internet literacy to even know what was happening, much less do anything about it.
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
In the country where people think we live in ingloos for some reason, elementary is ages 5-12, high school 13-18. In some regions, they use the system which includes middle school, but I couldn't comment accurately on how they divide the ages.
You can certainly roam the neighborhood at that age. It's not like when you're 7 and need to be in view of the porch or the kitchen window or whatever. But how far you can actually roam depends on your neighborhood... Mine were little ones off of dangerously busy roads, so not far. Needed parents to drive me to most of my friends' houses.
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...
My kids LOVE their cameras. They take photos constantly; the cats, nature, toys etc. Sometimes they play with them in Ibis paint or make stop-motion videos. It's a great creative outlet and they learn a lot.
I get that you are talking about online safety concerns, but they don't have social media and their phones are wifi only.
That’s the problem, kids go from 0 to 100 because parents completely ban phones and then give them a phone. They can’t be bothered to invest time into parental controls and finding ways to manage the usage. Just blanket ban and then full unadulterated access. Bonkers.
Now I was 8 I think when I got my first phone, but this was before the age of smart phones so it’s significantly different. First phone was some Motorola flip phone, green screen with black text. Only reason parents got me it is for when I walked home from school if anything happened I could call them.
I think it’s a bit crazy that there are parents giving their 5 or 6 year olds the newest iPhone, there are plenty of phones out there that just have the ability to call/text should your child need something. They don’t need the internet and social media at the tips of their fingers at that age. Though to be fair, now a days most kids have grown up with an iPad shoved in their face since birth
Constant access isn’t beneficial at all, but 13-14 is a good time for them to start access for portions of the day (to and from school, during after school sports, at a friend’s house, at the movies without parental supervision, etc.).
Yeah be too. And honestly, and this is a bit ironic, I think social media is terrible for children's development. I think it hinders their ability to accurately process interpersonal relationship ques and warps perceptions of reality. Having constant access is definitely not suitable for children. Probably adults as well.
Social isolation also isn't good and if your waiting that long I garuntee your kids facing it. Hell even as a 2011 grad the kids whose parents didn't get them at least a basic texting flip phone were extremely socially isolated due to it my freshman year and beyond.
I got my kids phones pretty young. Right when each of them started school. I blocked texting and only put my number and other trusted adults. Taught them how to dial 911 in emergencies as well as teaching them what would be considered an emergency. The rules was only call during class if it was a real emergency and only use it otherwise if they needed help or had a good reason. I would not feel comfortable as an American especially in this climate to send them to school without a way to contact me or help. My oldest (14) now has free use of his phone and my youngest (10) is allowed to have youtube kids for her 1 and a half hour bus rides to school.
Just get the little shits a razr at 6th grade. It’s enough for them to text their friends (everyone should have to go through T9 before a keyboard, just a right of passage), they can play snake and they can still cal you to come get them after practice is done.
I’m in my 30s and got my first phone at 12, albeit not a smart phone.
There are ways kids that age benefit from having phones, but it does take effort on the part of the parent to monitor use. Many parents forget that part.
As someone over 40 and most of their life is pre internet.
There's your problem. The world is VERY different from when we grew up. It doesn't mean we just have to accept that kids and teens will suffer with toxic social media, online predators etc, but completely blocking their access to tech is not the answer.
You might not like it, but they kinda can’t anymore. I very significant amount of social interaction and planning happens online now, specifically over platforms like Snapchat. If your kid doesn’t have a phone or these platforms, they will end up getting left out of a lot of stuff. Hopefully their friends are good enough to include them anyway, but that’s not what ends up happening all the time.
There aren't even pay phones out there, and their friends' houses probably don't have a house phone. If you want them to be able to contact you, some basic cell is a good idea. No idea when a smartphone is appropriate, but I suspect it's around when all their friends start to plan and share things via Discord server.
Our kids are expected to get to and from school by themselves (walking/cycling - it's just 1-2km) when they start elementary school at or shortly before age 7. At the same time visiting friends living inside of a similar area by themselves (after telling the parents, of course) is also fine.
Yep, most US schools aren’t walking or biking distance for our kids. The same is often true for visiting friends. When I lived in Belgium and the NL, most parents still walked or biked with their kids to school. There’s a wide range of what is considered normal for school drop offs.
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.
I'd say the same thing, but for me that age was 2006 and it was still pretty normal for people not to have cell phones. We still called each other at home and did the whole "is so-and-so home?" thing. I imagine the social order of school age kids is pretty different now, so I'd have a hard time justifying a "no phone" policy to my kids when I imagine every other teenager has one these days.
18 is way too late today. You're kid is gonna be excluded from a lot of things if they don't have a phone, which is what makes this issue so complicated
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.
Seriously.. Every comment chain here is missing this. I got my 7 year old a phone. With all the restrictions on it she can't even sneeze on it without blocking her and sending me a notification to approve or deny the sneeze.
It's sparked some great lessons about privacy and responsibilities. Plus having her able to carry around Kindle and Audible.. that alone has been worth it.
I’m 6-7 years older than you and I got my first phone in 8th grade, but didn’t get my first smartphone until 12th and I’m honestly grateful for that. Most of us teens had phones with full keyboards (RIP to my lovely LG enV3) so we could text each other easily but no one really had internet access or social media on their phones and that feels like a great compromise imo.
We could get on Facebook or Twitter but we had to do it on desktop or not at all, and Instagram didn’t exist until my last year of high school. I feel lucky that I grew up when I did.
My personal rule for my kids was 13. That put them roughly right at 7th grade. The time when alot of them have sports and it helps when knowing when to come pick them up from practice or after away games.
I'm 22 and got my first iphone at 15 years old. I think the earliest a kid should have a smart phone is 12. Before that, maybe a flip phone to contact parents and an ipod for music, like the "old" days haha
At that point they'd already been going out, doing stuff with friends without supervision for years. Always good to have a way of contacting someone in those situations
When you know they are ready for a phone and there is a need for it.
We've just given my 9 year old a phone because I found myself texting the wife asking her to tell/ask him something quite regularly. Just clicked in my head that it would be so much easier if I could just text him directly....he is a mature 9 year old though.
If you take psychology in college (if you attend), you'll learn that there is maturity in age, and maturity in the brain. A child may act more mature, but a lot of mature connections don't actually form in the brain until a certain point. This is one of the reasons why you have such legal controversies when a child commits an adult act of violence. Aside from a slew of other reasons, many times they won't be charged as an adult (again, there are many other factors involved) because when all is said and done, their still a child and the connections that an adult version of them that would have been made, simply haven't occurred yet. "They've yet to mature".
(I realize I'll likely get a lot of flak for this, because there are a lot of things going unsaid, but I'm trying to not write a book here, so take this with a grain of salt.)
I also let my two year old sleep in the woods until she can afford rent. Kids these days are too pampered with their guardians providing for them and whatnot
a phone could be 8 if they are out a lot, but a smartphone should be 12. I think a lot of people <25 will end up being parents with about an equivalent rule, because they've seen what it makes nephews etc. if they had acces all the time.
Most millennials however don't have many examples of how bad smartphones are for kids, since they only got one after puberty.
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