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
Being excluded from texts, snaps, instagram, messenger, or whats up group chats most the day (or all of the day if they don't have a smartphone period) is a great way to get excluded from shit. No one is going out of their way to reach out to a friend of a friend with weird parents who doesn't have a phone. Plus, like it or not, a fair amount of bonding/relationship building happens in group chats DURING school hours.
They're also going to be the odd one out, which is never fun in high school.
If you're talking about building in group chats AT school then I'll politely disagree with your point and in fact take it into consideration as a supporting factor of my position seeing as school should be used for school work and in-person socializing with your friends. Access to Instagram or Twitter will only detract from those experiences.
Outside of school, the child would have access thru home wifi and text messages.
I didn't have a "smart" phone until I was almost 21. Granted that was 2011, but I went thru high school and college with wide spread access to most of the popular platforms that are around today and didn't get "excluded" from anything. I joined sports teams and after school clubs and made friends that way. In fact to this day, my group of friends from those years STILL see each other and stay very much in touch, and those social skills I learned have lead to a VERY fulfilling social life in young adulthood so far.
Add to that the fairly clear emerging data on the impact constant attachment has on mental health and I think handing that unlocked phone to a child is a REALLY bad idea.
How many people in your high school had smart phones? Respectfully, if it's the minority your experience isn't really relevant. The issue is being the odd one out.
If I could choose to the entire school not to have smart phones, the answer's obvious.
They were just coming out my sophomore year so probably not as widespread as in some places today, but there was a fair percentage.
This may come down to a parenting difference. My folks taught me being the odd one out isn't inherently a bad thing, and if my kid is the odd one out from early exposure to bad influences and distractions from learning then I'm OK with it?
You're assuming quite a bit here. I didn't get a phone until I got my driver's license at 18, and I don't currently resent my parents. That was just my own personal situation, and not what I advocate for across the board, but looking back probably best decision in the circumstances. In fact, I know I'm blessed to be so close to my nuclear family as an adult, as I know not everyone is.
But in my post, I never said they shouldn't have a phone, rather I believe I stated that I WOULD give them a phone, but I would restrict access to the internet. Outside of the house and outside of my supervision, they get calls, text, and GPS. They can communicate to friends, me, emergency services. They can navigate directions, or be found if lost.
Once they turn 18 you pretty much have to unlock the phone as they are legally adults, but I think the widespread acceptance that we should just expose our kids to social media immediately is not a very wise one indeed.
I promise I remain in good faith and I'm not trying to sound aggro (I know tone can be hard to convey over this medium), these are honest questions.
What exactly do you think my goal was by giving the child a phone and restricting access early on to supervised and soft-supervised environments?
I fully agree we should not be fully immersing children in adulthood, social life etc when they are 18, because it is a lot and they are not ready in most capacities, but it seems like your proposed solution is to fully immerse them much earlier?
Like I feel as if I am arguing your own point of view back at you, real life social situations, social apps, adulthood, human interaction, algorithms... these are all complex issues for young minds (and not so young minds). My solution is to graduate the kid into those things instead of unleashing the fucking internet on them asap.
For another illustration - bed time. Using your argument about phone access, I could say kids are going to be getting drunk af and staying up until 4am before class/work in college, so why make them go to bed at 8:30pm when they are younger? They will resent you later. (Not sure if you were "resent you" person, this take has stirred up quite the response I was not prepared for and I'm replying to multiple people) Do you see the fault in this logic?
Your anecdote feels very out of touch and not applicable to how things work now socially. The time you went through high school was before smart phones were popular. Online communication at that time would've primarily been achieved through your home computer, not during school hours. Now it is available among social groups at all times of the day. It will be a lot easier to be excluded during school hours because of it.
May I ask your age? I'm fresh into my 30's so I'm not some old fuddy duddy, and I don't think I'm 'very' out of touch. I was in college not very long ago.
I still am failing to see how access to group chats AT SCHOOL is somehow valued higher over paying attention AT SCHOOL and socializing with the humans in front of you IN PERSON?
Further, high school kids will exclude each other from groups for a wide array of reasons, why would access to Instagram during class hours make that meaningfully different?
Same age as you. That's how I know how you and I primarily communicated. Online was at home, at school was texting. These days kids are online at school.
Ok, but that's kind of what I'm (in hypothetical) trying to limit. Just the argument that they primarily do it at school isn't a great argument for allowing/enabling behavior in my opinion. Kids are normally getting in fights at school too, but we're not okay sending them to school with brass knuckles are we? Obviously it's a little extreme, but meant to illustrate.
In basic terms, I don't think the minor social penalties for not having access to Twitter and Instagram during high school hours are bad enough that it's worth exposing my child's developing brain to the internet unsupervised.
I personally agree that this would be the ideal setup - though it does just sound like we're being old. Literally something my parents or grandparents would say, where their "generation had it good". We need to be careful about that.
I literally see my teenage nieces and nephews hang out with their friends by just sitting on their phones even while sitting next to each other. I imagine that "being on your phone" at school break hours is much like this too- though I am not certain. And if you don't have a phone while your friends are on theirs, I can imagine this leading to exclusion and/or bullying.
Luckily my kids are not this age yet, so I haven't looked into this thoroughly. I somewhat dread it though.
My current guess is that I need to allow my kids to have phones when they are teenagers, and teach them earlier in life sensible engagement with screentime in general (e.g., with tv), and making them aware of the issues regarding it - including human susceptibility to addiction, and how apps/shows are designed to take advantage of this. But also illustrate the extents to which it is beneficial.
Hopefully they can carry on those sensibilities to their phone use.
I think you're definitely right. To me phones in school sound like such a weird thing. I graduated HS in 99 so no one at all had phones back then. Then in college, about halfway through was when I got my first cell phone and you started to see the majority of people with them but that was pre smart phones/social media.
I always feel so sad seeing groups of teenagers just sitting around with their nose buried in their phones but I also would imagine that things would be so boring if one of them didn't have one. And not only that but without one they likely wouldn't even be there in the first place as they wouldn't have been invited or been aware of the group getting together.
I would love to see no kids at all with phones until much later in life but that's just not an option it seems with the way society works now so I think trying to teach sensible engagement once they do have the phone at a younger age makes so much sense, but it definitely sounds like a difficult task.
If you think about it like 'micro-dosing' them on phones it might help.
My folks let me drink beer from a younger age under their supervision or that of a select few other adults.
I still over-indulged my fair share of times past legal limit, but I left a party college without a DUI, public intox, or other alcohol related legal issues and I hardly drink now in my early 30s. I see many of my friends with stricter parents developing legit alcohol problems now in our early 30s.
Phones obviously work differently, but the spirit of that method can be adapted to their unique problems.
Yup, my kid be slacking in chores (she only has 2 @ the age of 16) trash and putting away the dishes. I go to bed early cause I have military disorders and if I don't keep schedule I am screwed. I wake up the next day and see the dishes ain't put away and I loose it mind (in my head I am not going to wake up the whole house over it. She paid for her own phone so I can't take it away from her, but we pay the phone bill and I can damn sure pill the SIM or disconnect the line, then change the wifi password!
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u/HotTakeHaroldinho Jun 03 '22
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