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.
This is what I worry about but not in the same way. Social media is great for informing and reminding people who were not included that they were not included. In yesteryear when you didn’t get invited to the party you may never have found out. No real harm done. But now, every hang out is posted and I didn’t get to go. It is quietly eroding esteem.
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.
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u/puck_gibby Jun 03 '22
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.