It feels like there's been a generation divide where younger kids are not as insistent on smartphones as the older kids were. Maybe it was covid. But also there's a lot of negative sentiment even amongst kids about smartphones - that they are addictive, encourage anti-social behaviors, and enable bullying. "Brain-rot".
Our local school district banned phones during school hours just this last year and there has been an overwhelming positive sentiment from faculty and kids.
We don't otherwise do things like track screen time. Our kids have videogames and computers and tablets. But we're providing a dumbphone in late grade school and so far there are no protests to get anything else.
There's been a palpable shift in peers (and myself) post-pandemic with regards to phones and social media in particular. A lot more emphasis being placed on being present in person and a lot more skepticism across the board towards phones/social media. Peers are starting to have kids and almost none of them are posting pictures of their kids and when it's come up in conversation they're doing everything they can to delay ipads/smartphones.
Even as someone who enjoys taking videos at concerts, I really like the vibe at shows that have a no-photo/no-video policy. It increases audience engagement, and it stops the phenomenon where everyone has their phone held high in the air, blocking the view during popular songs.
But at some point I started a ritual of recording of the performer coming out, picking up their instruments, and the first 20-30 seconds of the opening song. Then I put my phone away for the rest of the concert.
These videos are dear to me. They capture the feeling of the concert more than any longer random moment from before. I have a small library of them and I love to rewatch.
I wouldn't mind a concert enforcing those rules at all, though I appreciate that I've found a way to immortalize the moment in a way that coincidentally helps me feel comfortable putting away my phone for the rest of the night.
It was really nice to not have phones being waved about everywhere.
I don't think many really watch those videos back anyway with the shaky video and tinny sound.
Does anyone have a basic watch/dumbphone solution for older kids that they like?
The best way to have a dumb phone tailored to your needs is to take a cheap smartphone and make it dumb, either by using a different launcher, or a customized OS
I wish there was an easy to customize "dumb android os" that would let you pick initial applications you want to have, and then disable play store
And I have to say, it is astounding how quickly that thing got its hooks into her. I naively thought she might have been immune to it, given her habits and attitude. Boy was I wrong.
I'm 44. I've never had social media accounts. When I was 18 or so, I had a Palm Pilot with a cellular modem cradle that let you actually go to (mostly text-based) websites. It was the first smart phone, really. Amazing for finding information, for someone who didn't even have dial-up internet until 5 years earlier. But eventually I put the Palm Pilot away. It wasn't really addicting (and it was insanely nerdy to walk around with a computer connected to the internet, in your pocket like that).
I militantly avoided owning anything beyond a flip phone again until I was 36 (2016), when I finally caved in and grudgingly bought a cheap Android phone to work on a mobile game. (For the first 6 months of development, I'd just written and tested it under emulation, but bug reports were getting too hard to reproduce). Six months after that, I found myself doom-scrolling on the damn thing every time I had a free moment.
What I noticed during my smartphone-free years of watching people play with theirs were a few things: They weren't considered nerdy. They weren't considered computers. The social awkwardness of looking at a device in public had changed into a shield for people against the social awkwardness of looking at their surroundings or acknowledging other people. People forgot how to interact and how to sit and wait without doing something with their phone. Doing something with the phone was more than passively sipping a drink or smoking a cigarette; it was a way to show other people that they didn't want to interact. Or a way to hide from interaction.
I think this has to do with the way apps are structured. The vast majority of people never needed a computer in their pocket. Computers were for information and for work. I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.
I just wanted to highlight this section of your post for anyone skimming to have more of a chance of seeing it. Excellently put.
I would add - and think it's essential - that yes it took a great amount of marketing, but also a great amount of people who could have said or done something turning a blind eye and not sounding the alarm. I'm thinking mainly of developers who were happy bringing home a fat paycheck, and governments who were happy to have more information about their populations.
Btw, I actually don't have a child so haven't used parental controls, but just found out that they do have an app time-limit setting: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-screen-time-ip....
yeah, I have an app blocker on my iphone to block news websites/apps called Freedom. Essential these days to staying productive - although, don't think this app would work for your child, because it is not very reliable and needs to be restarted every few days.
The iPhone has a lot of parental setting customization. You can disable certain built in apps, prevent installing anything from the App Store or just prevent making purchases, set screen time restrictions, and a whole bunch of other things [1].
Android has similar settings with Family Link [2].
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121
[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-parental-controls-e...
Or you can get an iPhone and use parental controls. My kids has a tablet and I get to decide what can be used and for how long, and nothing gets installed without my approval.
No way to revoke install permission. e.g. child got ahold of a parent's unlocked phone, turned off parent approval for their own phone, and then installed a social media app. We have uninstalled the app, but he can re-install without requesting permissions. We have resorted to a 1-minute (the minimum) screen time limit instead. (Only work around would be to create a whole new iCloud account for the child!)
You used to be able to delete the purchase from purchase history, but now you can only hide it, hiding it should just retrigger the approval process?
There are well known / well documented ways to circumvent screen time limits.
You can't add additional pass code / authentication for the settings app or the parental controls
No way to prevent deletion of messages and call logs (and 3rd party tools just do a remote sync on Wi-Fi, after the kids already likely deleted them)
Parental controls are often janky or laggy and sometimes just don't work at all. And often require multiple re-authentication (iOS 18 / Face ID does improve this to be fair)
If your child doesn’t use the phone in the way you want them to, you could take the phone away.
There was a Java ME version of Google Maps. I had it on my flip-phone in 2006/2007.
I doubt it still exists, though.
We plugged in an old phone to a wall outlet, and just keep it locked with a pin. It allows for emergency calls. There is almost always someone home, so we don't feel the need to allow our kids to call us.
Another set of friends trusts their 11-year-old with full access.
I'm using the watch for older people. There is a sport watch, which I think has an esim. I have one of these but haven't been able to use it yet.
Feel free to ask me more over email if you want. It's on my profile page. I definitely went down the rabbit hole on finding this watch and it was a doozy.
The advantage of this is that it is as smart or dumb as I allow it to be.
Now that she is a little older (8th grade) I've slowly increased the allowed apps and screen time. She is able to do really useful things with it.
So in short: you can make a smart phone dumb, but you can't make a dumb phone smart.
I've also done an android phone with an MDM in kiosk mode. None of those let you limit who is contacted though, so it ends up being more like a classic dumb phone in that you can't browse the web, but can dial whomever you want. Just make sure that you disable the Google SMS app and use a stripped down one (I used simple-sms).
Essential features and nonfunctional requirements:
- Calendar, time and date, alarms and reminders
- IP67
- Ruby or gorilla glass screen (scratches OK)
- Locked-down phone, texting, messaging, and location sharing
- Ability to call 911
- Minimal apps
- Minimal animation
- Band that's somewhat difficult to undo and hypoallergenic material... silicone seems pretty neutral
- Not disassemblable without tools because the kids I know would have them in pieces in minutes.
- Neither a fashion statement nor a kid group social faux pas
If any existing models fulfill these close enough, then great. If not, then it might be worth entertaining but would need a go-to-market strategy to compete with every other smartwatch mfgr on the market with unlimited funding.
On the other hand, raising children without GPS surveillance seemed to work pretty well for many years. Is saying something like "Put on your timex and be back home by 6." no longer feasible? (Or if you want be even more old school "by sundown".)
It also has assistive access mode, which only permits access to good stuff, mostly to simplify UI's for the elderly, et al.
Both put the burden of integration on the configuring user, who basically becomes the system UI designer with a limited and awkward palette.
A nice feature in either case would be a way to edit, package and share or sell such configurations.
Indeed, I could see Apple building out this capability as a product line architecture supporting enterprise, health, and childhood/education.
(I miss paper maps. They were actually designed to confer understanding — in particular, every street showed a name! Smartphone navigation apps and navigation websites often don’t show names any more.)
Map apps are much faster for navigation though. At least on the scale of walking a few blocks.
My only annoyance came when she turned 13, and Google decided to offer her complete freedom without parental consent. Left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about the project, which is a shame.
We told her she could stay under Family Link, or else buy her own phone and service. That seems effective.
Sorry Google, I'll decide my childrens' internet access. Not your giant advertising machine.
[1]: https://xplora.se/
On the downside they kept begging for a phone so they could text their friends, which was reasonable, and texting on the Watch is a terrible experience. So we finally did give in to a phone but with locked down parental controls, so they can't install apps, etc. (though I'm finding those iOS parental controls don't work as well I had hoped; there's a huge issue with them being reset suddenly -- lots of forums of people complaining about this).
Apple parental controls are great. Except on the AppleTV. I just want PIN unlock for any apps not on an allow-list. This does not seem like much to ask. But no.
I will note that having her be able to call us is fantastic. There's a lot of end-of-school "hey you need to walk home today / walk over to my office / oh wait i'll pick you up" kind of coordination, which we could probably avoid with careful advance planning but it's really nice to be able to be flexible.
And also, youtube shorts / tiktok are the most addictive thing I've seen put in front of a child that age. She can browse YT shorts on her school computer at home (!!) and it's .. it's really stunning how absorbing it is for her. And not in a good way.
I see this comment a lot and it seems to mostly highlight that people aren't investigating the very capable tools which already exist.
I don't think people failing out of college really has the same stigma for the institution. I wonder if in fact it would even help with the prestige somehow.
Literally none of the evidence on the website's own "Why" page supports their suggestion: https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait
All of the studies (bonus points for linking to news articles instead of directly to the studies) have something to do with "time spent using screens/a phone/social media", but nothing to do with age of first use.
How can anyone trust this website has any basis in reality when they wrote a whole page explaining why and none of it was applicable?
Of course parents should regulate how much time their kids spend on electronics (similar to how parents of previous generations would prevent kids from watching TV 5 hours a day) - but this website presents no evidence that giving a kid a smartphone in 8th grade rather than 5th grade would make a meaningful difference.
Smart phones for kids is not good. It’s really simple.
We don't have that data for smartphones. It's an extremely mixed picture, showing both benefits and harms. As far as we can tell, the association between smartphone use and poor mental health is strongly concentrated in a minority of people with very high usage. There's a strong probability that the causality behind this association runs in the opposite direction - troubled people spend lots of time using digital devices, because they're escaping their troubled lives.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6883663/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-019-01825-4
The shape of the computer doesn't magically make it bad: It's what kids do that's the problem.
We took our kids tablets away because they weren't disengaging. But that's because they were into Youtube, which is highly addictive. If they were just using the tablets as e-readers, it would be a different story.
My daughter has autism, and struggles to connect with her classmates. She gets overwhelmed in groups, and is shy talking in person sometimes.
Now that her classmates started messaging each other, she is actually being included a lot more. She has started messaging and setting up online play dates with her classmates. I was so proud when I found her playing Minecraft with a class mate while FaceTiming. She was playing with a friend!
I don’t care what anyone says, that is good for my daughter.
For example, you can now bully people anonymously.
And you can bully people at any hour of the day or night - not just in public, in the brief periods between classes.
And with widespread camera phones you can not only make someone cry, you can video them crying, keep it forever, and send it to lots of people.
And don't forget that very fragile $300-1000 bit of electronics the kid is carrying, would be a real shame if something happened to it.
It would have been terrible if my parents would have banned that. But they were very progressive luckily.
As someone who didn't like school thwt much the thought of having to deal with some of those people 24/7 fills me with dread.
Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.
I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but it bears repeating: that's the whole point of this program.
Parents are playing the prisoners' dilemma here. Many (most) feel like cell phones (social media in particular) are a net negative for younger kids. But they don't want their kids to be left out / socially isolated. So it's really easy to get into a situation where we all defect because "I don't really like this but everyone else is doing it". This "wait until 8th" thing provides a framework for parent to agree to cooperate on this issue.
TBD if it actually works. I certainly like the idea that we have some control over our culture/community and don't just need to passively accept a "tragedy of the commons" on an issue like this.
*It's also not clear that your premise is even true. Plenty of parents in the past have reported how their kids' friends adjusted just fine to not being able to use a smartphone to contact them, and that they still had healthy social lives.
From personal experience, being isolated as a kid can also be profoundly psychologically damaging and stunt development of normal life skills. Sure, see if the kid can get by without a smartphone for as long as possible, but if they do wind up completely excluded it's time to reevaluate the cost-benefit analysis and potential ways to mitigate smartphone overuse, not just think that the isolation is "okay" cause you're protecting them from phones.
Certainly kids can have a social life without a phone. It’s not required. I just had a kid who didn’t get instagram until 14. They claimed that their life was ruined, but they had a healthy social life without it (and without a phone).
I think people generalize what will happen without things they think are common incorrectly. Just because phones are used for many things, it doesn’t mean those things are impossible without phones.
I do think it works better if more parents did it and it was so nice to find other parents (super rare) who felt similarly.
"By signing the online pledge, you promise not to give your child a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade as long as at least 10 families total from your child’s grade and school pledge. Once 10 families have pledged to delay the smartphone, you will be notified that the pledge is active! You will receive a list of families who are delaying from your child’s grade and emails for the parents."
I don’t know if that will hold until 8th grade but for now my kids social life seems to revolve around the neighborhood, school and his activities.
I was under the impression phones/social networks were becoming unpopular. My kid certainly has a dim view of the latter.
Isn’t “but everyone else has one” the appeal kids make to their parents about most everything? (I know I was guilty of that as a kid myself)
Why is this a new level of “denying them a social life”?
If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.
Many kids need access to group messaging to even be told that there's something going on at foo's house at 6.
What are we really trying to stop here? Are we really just trying to stop all the addicting apps? if so.. maybe we should be focusing on that at a higher level.
In our class we were the first to give our kid's a phone. She doesn't find it very interesting and barely spent any time on it, since she the only ones that she know with a phone number are her parents.
> Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays.
Wow, what country is that true? Thankfully, not in the country I reside. None of the children I know have social lives that revolve around the phone.
Wherever you live, if the phone is already the central aspect of a child's social life, that is a great tragedy.
According to an Ofcom survey in 2023, 9 in 10 kids aged 11 have a smartphone in the UK.
1: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
The only exception to this I see is WhatsApp (which I’ve always hated for expecting all users to have a phone and try to avoid for that reason)
So on the matter of re-opening schools, there was no need for it that was related to their social well-being?
I don't need a website to provide some type of evidence (not sure what kind of evidence you'd be referring to) to understand that. It's parenting 101. This is just applying it to social networks (that's the issue more than the phone itself) just it would apply to any other type of social interaction (going out with friends by themselves, TV, gaming, etc.)
I'm not sure having a smartphone has at all impacted their outside time.
And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with a value judgement. But trying to foist your values onto others is not something feel the need to support.
For context, students in eighth grade (US) are usually 13–14 years old.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_grade
In case anyone else outside the US couldn’t find the actual age when scanning the site.
We have P1-P7, then secondary S1 - S4, with S5 and S6 optional.
> Children start primary school aged between 4½ and 5½ depending on when the child's birthday falls.
Others are trying to say that I should somehow automatically know that most of the world uses the similar(?) age ranges. I don’t even know what age school starts at in other parts of the UK despite sharing borders with them. Maybe I’m ignorant but it’s never been information that I needed to know or retain.
Was posting the age range of US grade 8 so controversial?
This is applicable to anyone, anywhere, though sure, it's targeted at a US audience.
If the authors were aware of this, they may have focused their message on, eg the children's age, which should be more universal.
I have had almost unrestricted access to a computer since the age of 9, and to a smartphone since the age of 12, and I can definitely say that I wouldn't be the person I am right now without that access.
It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their kids access to the devices necessary for that spirit to thrive on the other.
I've known several kids in my age group whose access to technology was severely restricted, and I strongly believe that all of them were significantly worse off and have had serious mental health consequences because of that. Not to mention that the restrictions didn't actually accomplish much in most cases, and, if anything, caused a form of Streisand effect when it came to e.g. explicit content or talking to (older) strangers online.
Unrestricted (and even more importantly, unmonitored) access to tech provides an "escape hatch" against abusive families. Yes, it may have somewhat of a bad effect on some kids, but for the kids that do need it, it's life changing to an extend that's hard to overstate.
English-speaking countries have always seemed more uptight about this though. I live in eastern EU, and we have never really done the whole "kids shouldn't have access to porn / swearing" thing much either, to the point of not having a word for "explicit" in my language, and using the word "censored" instead.
Smartphones these days aren't tools that promote creativity and curiosity; they are passive consumption devices. They promote brain-rot and short attention spans, extremely hostile to curiosity and tinkering, promote walled-gardens and siloed ecosystems as they are designed to funnel you unto the specific add-ridden attention strip-mining facilities they call "Social Media" ala facebook, instagram, tiktok, and all that crap.
I would feel more at ease sendingy kids to a red light district.
As someone who grew up during the beginnings of the web, and started playing with programming when I was about 7, I'd agree that access to technology is important. As a parent that has the responsibility of making sure my kids develop good habits and stay safe, I believe that access to the internet should be restricted and monitored.
When I was young devices weren't connected, so you could fiddle and not get yourself into too much trouble.
My concern isn't letting my kids loose on the computer, its letting them loose on the internet.
I would liken it to letting your kids go to a night club. theyre likely to be exposed to inappropriate content.
Ultimately these are tools, I wouldn't stop my young child using a knife, and in fact encourage them to learn how to use it safely, that doesn't mean Ill let my 5 year old keep a pen knife in their pocket.
Some of my lifelong friendships were made over the Internet, sometimes at a very young age (9~10yo), and we still talk to this day. I started posting on forums back when I was 7. Some of my friends got into their careers in similar ways - for example, by playing sysadmin when they were kids, then teenagers.
I don't know. I have mixed feelings about this. I think not allowing smartphones to be used in class is more reasonable.
I had a dumb phone so I could stay in touch, and I could also walk home if I wanted (40min / no sidewalks / 35mph roads), but most of the time I just sat down and did homework and read books. Spent a ton of time on the computer at home.
Got through "Brothers Karamazov" and "Anna Karenina" that way -- just 1.5hr a day of focused, uninterrupted time. I absolutely never would have read them and would have spent the whole time scrolling TikTok if I could have. Hrmm.
So most kids seem to have a phone, be it smart, or dumb, from that kinda age. Certainly none of the kids wait for their parents to collect them that would be pretty inconvenient.
Oh wait, that's what actually happened!
But I agree and I don't want to bd young these days anymore.
If the author at least did something creative... but nooo reading Brothers Karamazov as a kid is better than playing WoW.
I still take the kid who created something, or at least spent time with other kids. And apparently the author didnt.
Hell, that's a better use for an adult's time than playing WoW. But adults get to do whatever they want with their free time, and it would be hypocritical of me to judge.
But feel free to downvote, apparently reading the classics makes one a classy person, not a dumb snob who thinks they are better than everyone...
The fact that you think the only reason anyone would read a classic novel is to brag also displays a lack of imagination and self awareness. No, it couldn't possibly be the same curiosity you extol in other comments about tinkering with technology!
We need more people with the capability to think critically with nuance, who can focus on something for more than 5 seconds. WoW only does one of those, and really it's not focus so much as captivation. You don't learn much about the real world from it. On the other hand, I found quite a few insights into my own present day relationships while reading The Brothers Karamazov and Swann's Way.
Is it possible the world is wrong about Crime and Punishment and we just needed rvba to wake us from our delusion? Sure. Is it more likely you just didn't get it? That's where my money is.
The social media/internet landscape as it exists today will probably be the smoking of this generation – everyone is doing it and many will die prematurely (due to stress, depression, lack of motivation and purpose, addiction), or waste so many years of their life consuming product that it will be a pretty good equivalent for dying early. And while banning the equivalent of cigarettes for kids a damn good idea, we definitely need to quit scrolling ourselves into a premature grave, too.
Why are we consuming it? Participating in the popular internet today shouldn't be "wait until 8th", but "wait a moment, you don't want this in your life, and the people around you don't want to deal with you involving them into it second-hand either".
Running a contrarian campaign is hard, especially given all of the status , social pressure and marketing surrounding smartphones.
What I said may have come off as ridicule. This campaign is an important effort. I argue that we should have more such efforts, bigger efforts, and even alternative efforts to prevent people’s addiction to social media.
This is helicopter parenting. Specifically, the way that the pledge requires that kids share all passwords and only install approved apps.
Kids need a degree of independence that they've lost in how structured modern day youth has become. An important part of growing up is being exposed to people who have different ideas and beliefs than parents and extended family, and making decisions and having real consequences.
I think it's more important to talk to children about what they encounter in their day-to-day lives, and find out about their struggles. It's important to remind children that they can turn off their smartphone, or delete an account on a social media site, if it doesn't bring them joy. As parents, it's our duty to tell children that they have the choice, but not make that choice for them.
The list goes on. In my opinion, we shouldn’t focus on taking smartphones away, thus limiting the options to do something even further, but instead focus on creating compelling, affordable alternatives, and teach kids to use their smartphones responsibly.
They could be something else, but there is no business model that can compete with addiction.
I agree that kids need more real world experience. Mindlessly scrolling TikTok and playing repetitive games with compulsion loops designed by psychologists to maximize addiction isn’t real world experience.
I think a big problem with it is that people don’t realize how addictive this stuff can be or how manipulative and insidious it is. They’re not prepared for it and they get blindsided when it takes over their lives or their kids lives. Infinite scroll alone is incredibly addictive. Add other tactics and our stupid ape dopamine system is no match.
It might get better once we culturally assimilate this knowledge and realize that this stuff is more psychologically manipulative than we think it ought to be. We need to look at apps that use addiction patterns the way we look at drugs.
We think: It’s just a screen! It’s not like opioids or meth or something. How can a screen take over someone’s life?
The average TikTok user spends three hours on the app per day. Average. That means half spend more. That’s insane. Not to single out TikTok. It’s just one example.
We seem to romanticize the past as if before smartphones kids would spent their time reading Aristotle and doing calisthenics.
No one had a smartphone when I was a kid and instead I spent hours a day playing Nintendo or watching trash TV.
On the other hand, it wasn't that long ago that people could go to the grocery store and push a shopping cart without looking at their phone the whole time.
I think these are just the problems of a society of abundance.
Drugs are actually a great comparison. We keep pretending that we've "banned" drugs. Yet despite the endless fortunes spent, civil liberties curbed and countless lives ruined by incarceration, drugs remain universally available, increasingly potent and very, very cheap. At a certain point we have to accept that a failed approach has failed and dig deep for the courage to try something different.
It's amazing.
I can pay for stuff, I can make calls, I can use maps, I can hear music, store my subway card QR-code.
Despite being in the same "generation," someone born in the mid-80s came of age with radically different consumer technology compared to someone born just ten years later in the mid-90s. I have clear memories of trying to understand what the "Information Superhighway" was, and then getting dial-up Internet in our home for the first time. At the end of 8th grade, I convinced my dad to upgrade from 33 kbps dial-up to cable. As a sophomore in college, I remember thinking that some company would make a lot of money by putting Wi-Fi access points everywhere so we could have always-on Internet access with some sort of mobile device... Just a night-and-day difference from the experience of someone getting a smartphone in 8th grade.
Your internet story is also funny to me because my dad worked at an ISP when I was a toddler. One of my earliest computer memories is when he taught me how to go into the Windows 98 graphics menu and toggle the color settings from 16-bit to 32-bit (or vice versa, can't remember now) before booting up a particular CD-ROM game, because otherwise the graphics would be put of whack. I must have been four or five.
I also remember asking why I couldn't play the games whose cool icons were always visible in the taskbar... turns out those "games" were Napster and IrfanView, lol.
To be fair, I've wondered if people in previous generations feel the same way. Like was the coming-of-age experience of an older Boomer, who was a teenager in 1960, much different from that of a teenager in 1980? I don't know.
Also, I have a younger sibling born just after 2000 and games "just working" sounds about right. Not to mention that console gaming was really picking up around then.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm an older millennial as well, and I didn't have a dumb phone until my senior year of college, let alone a smartphone.
My experience growing up was so much different from someone born just 10 years after me, even though we're technically in the same "generation".
That said, I think for many kids that social pressure or network effect is quite a motivator to get social media accounts. Say all their friends have one and they have a group, where they usually organize. Or say they are interested in someone and wants their contact info, but they only give them their social media details. For many people traditional ways of communication are somehow not their way any longer. I am talking about e-mail, phone calls, SMS, letters, and whatever else.
It is a sad fact, that most people become supporters of the big tech data sharks, even if unknowingly, by creating peer pressure. I wish you and your son can both stay strong in your resolves and that your environment is not too excluding.
When our kids ask for their own phone, the answer is always an easy no. I have no problem with computers. But the internet is not your friend. Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times.
If they want to stay up late, their forced to sneak a book into their bed.
Remind me of food
Would you give your kid endless access to chips and sweets?
I couldn't get a cell until I had a driver's license, which I think made sense at the time. Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone.
That's really the point of a program like this. A lot of parents think smartphones (mainly social media, really) are a net negative for their kids, but we have this tragedy of the commons situation where no one wants their kid to be left out / socially isolated. Having this "wait until 8th" thing is basically parents playing the prisoner's dilemma getting together and agreeing that it we'd be much happier if everyone cooperates rather than defect on this issue.
While I believe small children shouldn't carry smartphones, it's currently our only way to monitor their health when they're outside our immediate range, such as in daycare.
My child is quite small and not yet interested in the phone, but I expect that will change eventually. We've established ground rules: the phone can’t be used for watching videos or playing games and is intended solely as a medical device. However, maintaining that restriction may become challenging as she grows.
Additionally, it allows for remote monitoring of glucose levels. For example, during winter, when the child is bundled up in overalls, daycare staff can check the values without needing to undress her in freezing temperatures.
Recently, many insulin pumps, although not ours, have also evolved so that the algorithm controlling the pump operates via a smartphone. This means having the phone nearby is not just very useful; it's essential.
everything is over text now, and excluding them from that was difficult
The Wait Until 8th pledge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 - June 2023 (244 comments)
Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284217 - March 2019 (146 comments)
... although, even if this is true, this could just be that kids seem to be more attached to their parents then they used to be (have read this as well).
Which I totally agree with.
Quite popular in my 9 year old's class, where the kids are generally "free range" (Scandinavia), and nobody wants to get them a phone.
So far it works out.
Dumb / kosher phones seem like another idea but have the disadvantage of being another thing to loose and break rather than something that's strapped to them.
Another thing is to role-model and reinforce smartphone etiquette by not pulling them out to waste time when around other people.
I applaud keeping smartphone, social media, screen, and computer privileges minimum age as high and restricted as possible for as long as possible.
It's extremely weird to assume that the specific age matters. This is always a bad idea and where it is necessary for practical reasons (e.g. licensing laws) that causes friction
I assumed this site was about waiting until they are eight and I thought huh, well, that's probably not a big problem for most kids and maybe if you don't think about it too hard that's an OK rule. But now I find it means high school age which is entirely crazy.
Phone calls / SMS to 5 numbers Clock enforce GPS on until battery is less than 20 No smart phone functions No data access
I think the possession of a device isn't the risk itself.
https://fortune.com/well/article/rules-for-curbing-kid-smart...
We've raised the bar even higher than 8th.
Our kid won't have a phone before they are driving.
We have a landline for when they're at home, but there's no reason to rush.
They can wait.
So can we.
So I guess that's a +1 for the idea.
Reminds me of "Every single person who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying".
Jokes aside: "more than 7 hours a day" is a _quite little more_ than the 0 hours the site is asking for. Also I'd guess it might make a difference whether the kids are using a drawing app, tiktok, learning a foreign language, reading an eBook, playing a shooter, gambling, …
Personally I'd make it dependent on the child's maturity. I was very mature at young age and my parents would let me travel on the train to other cities.
I'm 40, so got a phone at 17. I had rubbish internet in my teens, and anyway, didn't really 'discover' it. So I've never grew up in the connected world.
My eldest is now 7.
It seems to me secondary school is about the age for a mobile.
And at this point its basically supervised education
Our oldest at 7 goes alone to school and has no problem memorizing the path.
- "I'd like to stay with a friend after school - they'll drive me home after dinner", "Sure, thanks for the info, have fun"
- "Fire alert, I'm fine but bored"
- "Had to help a friend with an accident, will be home 1h later approx"
- Bus didn't turn up, uses app to improvise an alternative connection
- asking teachers about details from the lessons
- getting a news-feed from school
- looking up the schedule if things change
- manage their calendar and todo-lists
- set an alarm/reminder
So basically "everything" an adult does with their phone to make their lives easier.
After that there's enough brain left to learn that social media is something that needs special attention
source: I'm older than 30, I was there.
Yes, it can be more convenient but it absolutely isn't necessary.
Landlines are becoming scant in my particular part of my country, YMMV. I rarely even see them in my workplace anymore.
I think that could work really well
Exactly. It seems obvious to me that the vast majority of social media is junk and I'd prefer to keep my kids from getting drawn into it for as long as possible, and I think a ton of parents feel this way. The main counter-argument I hear is that "that's where socializing happens these days, and if you keep them away from it they'll just be left out / isolated from their peers".
An initiative like this acknowledges that we have some control over our culture. We don't just need to put up with a shitty status quo because "that's the way it is".
You can lead a horse away from water, but you can't stop it from getting thirsty. Reckoning with disparity is what helps kids grow up and shed the solipsism of childhood - take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life. It's a catch-22, but I don't think banning everything digital is going to improve anyone's quality of life, kids or parents.
I grew up without a smartphone and have done just fine as a software engineer. I don’t think access to a smartphone before age 15 would correlate to better life outcomes.
Despite everything points to the necessity of keeping kids away from the Internet.
It all looks like B'n'W opinions and mixing devices and services. I completely miss the "parenting" aspect. It's all about prohibition.
I mostly wish there were empowered options parents & children could negotiate & navigate on their own. But all we get is cloudified software, that we don't have direct view of or insight to.
There are many wonderful things for kids - even very young kids - to do on the internet, in collaboration / supervision / concert with a caring adult.
My now 9yo has been playing games like Monument Valley, Lost Sounds, Dragonbox, and the SNES randomizers since he was three (maybe two for some of them). And I have no doubt that these have been enormous boosts to his cognitive and behavioral development, and have given him (and so many kids his age) super powers compared to us.
It's one thing to ward off social media and FPSs; it's another entirely to suggest that refraining from use of a phone or computer is likely to lead to better outcomes.
Teaching responsible use of technology is, in my opinion, one of my duties as a parent. That includes how to responsibly use a phone, ideally with the goal of improving my kids life.
I don't allow social media (which, I think is really the core of this issue), but I do allow other things like games (in moderation, with approval), communication (with approved contacts), as a dictionary and thesaurus, as an encyclopedia, etc.
Probably tons of people here know how to code since they've learned on their own.
Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone. Also kids have a lot of time that could be used to learn stuff. And even playing games is... not that bad.
But I guess kids should learn chinese or what is the current fad now or torment the kid with 50 extraculliculars.
I grew up in the 90's and my parents were strict, particularly compared to a lot of my peers. Things like watching television was heavily restricted. I remember making similar arguments to my parent's deaf ears "I won't fit in, all the kids at school will be talking about what they watched on TV last night, I'll be a loser" etc.
My experience was that most of the kids didn't care that I couldn't understand their Simpson's references or whatever. If anything they were sympathetic, I would get a lot of "man your parents really suck" and then kids would shrug and move on.
I did resent my parents growing up. Looking back I think they were pretty clear examples of "tiger parent" stereotype. I felt immense pressure and stress to achieve good grades and it honestly felt like nothing I did was enough to make my parents happy. I get along with my parents now as an adult but as a teen my home life felt very unhappy at times. I can remember the relief I felt when I left home to live on my own.
So I think it is more likely your child will resent you, then them being ostracized by their peers.
That is supposition, not reality, and there are parents here who have shared their experience with kids having a healthy social life without a phone. More importantly, a very important role of parents is to make good decisions for their kids when the kids are still too immature to do that. "But all my friends are doing it" is literal child reasoning and should not be the only factor in parenting decisions.
And there are others who have shared their experiences of responsibly teaching their kids how to coexist with technology. There's probably a lot more that aren't willing to say so, because they'll be roasted in the comments for being a "bad parent".
I don't let my kids have unfettered access to social media. But I let them have a smartphone. And I took the time initially, and continually, to have conversations about having a healthy relationship with technology.
Somehow this debate is always completely lacking in any sort of middle ground or nuance.
I think it's more important to talk about the services they use than what device they're on.
And most problematic services already have an age limit. It's the parents' damn job to make sure their kids are prepared for the usage of those services.
I'm more worried about the youtube-consumption on the PC than chatting with class-mates about school-related questions via smartphone.
Never met that guy who drank every day at university or that opressed girl who fucked 50 people in the first year?
Sheltered and not parented kids end like that. Breaking the chain syndrome.
For a while, there was some consensus that anonymity and talking to strangers was the danger. So we got real name and photo policies, and the expectation that we'd have an online presence that was an extension of our real selves. Now that every kid's online persona is indivisible from their IRL identity, and their popularity can be measured with likes and followers and inclusion / exclusion from group chats, it just allows the social dynamics among their peers to play out 24/7 on steroids with no escape.
> … because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.
Sorry, but I do not agree with the equivalence of a device and one of its possible usages.
My kids got their first smartphone at the ages of 5-6. (dramatic pause)
When I was younger me and my siblings got a camera, a Game Boy, a watch, a walkman, a calculator, a stopwatch and small handheld battery-driven games. Later a tamagotchi and whatever was trending. Also we were taught to use the phone-booth in case of an "emergency". While you do not have to agree that all of us needed all of this, nobody would've said to "wait until the age of 13" with all of this.
The phone I gave my kids were retired Android smartphones with Lineage OS installed. Almost all Google Apps removed or disarmed. I preinstalled Apps like: a calculator, camera, a secure messenger (Threema), clock, navigation (OSMAnd), a few educational games, a paint/drawing app, a calendar and added the most important contacts (Parents, siblings, grandparents) to the address book. We added more apps over time when we felt they might benefit from them.
We agreed upon usage duration and modalities. We mostly moved their TV-time towards their phones. We explained how to ask before taking a photo of a person.
What happened? My Kids started to get interested in how to read/write, used the navigation software during road-trips to find the next possible stop to have a break or try to find POIs along the road and wait them to pass by. They played with the calculator, started to learn English (non-native if that wasn't obvious, yet), started to "program" robots, send me "good nights" when I was late at work. Call me if they spontaneously decided to stay with a friend after school. Take photos during their holidays, listen to audiobooks during road-trips. Play with the torchlight in the tent.
The older one is now 12. She got access to our family calender and contact list, so she can plan her appointments with friends around ours, manage her ToDo-lists, make stop-motion videos, research all sorts of stuff on wikipedia, gain a very good understanding of how those devices work. Learn to take care of expensive gears and how it matters to have control over their own data and that backups are important. She learns how to manage her data plan by moving audiobooks for offline-usage. Also she helps her grandparents with all sorts of technical problems they have with their phones.
Yes, it's more work to teach a kid how to work with all this stuff than just throw an iPhone at them when they turn 13 and say "whoa, finally old enough to figure this all out." What could go wrong. Sorry, that I'm a bit salty on this topic (and I sometimes might not find the right words due to the language barrier), but just saying that a smartphone is bad because parents do not care for what their kids are doing with the device just feels plain wrong to me.
Another middle ground would be to insert no SIM card (my kids only had access via WiFi at first) or to disable mobile data.
Maybe my kids are special, but so far it was enough agree upon rules about what they are allowed to do. As soon as they break the rules they will loose some of their benefits. No rule works for everyone, but simple "no" to a technology that has so many upsides for our family life is also nothing for me.
Edit: also "selling a locked-down phone" is exactly NOT a solution. Parents will have to learn the up and downs of this technology and apply an individual solution to their situation.
"Wait until 8th!"
"Oh, you mean their 8th birthday?"
"No, 8th grade!"
"Oh, so wait until they're in 8th grade, got it!"
"No no, until the end of the 8th grade, when they graduate middle school!"
"Oh, so it's really wait until 9th"
Just seems like this would be the beginning of every conversation and lead to a non-unified approach. They should emphasize it being like an intro to high-school gift or something.
† obscure trivial point of US law for fer'ners, US elections are held on "the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November" which puts them anywhere from Nov 2 to Nov 8, so that's why "wait till the 8th" is an election trigger. (I don't keep track of the date of the election this year, I just need to know it's going to be on Tuesday)
pointing it out because it's always the first Tuesday unless that 1 out of 7 where you have to wait a week -1 for the first Monday.
I think the reasoning is something like "we need to have a full business day in November before we have an election, that will give us a chance to fix problems or something"... not sure if under the old county/shire system months made a difference or something.
"Wait Until 9th" would have definitely helped a lot. "Wait until 14" might be even clearer. Or even "wait until high school".
Where did you get this idea?
People put something on the internet and they want attention and engagement. Then people use click bait to get people to look at something because they are curious or confused instead of knowing what it is from the title.
Not sure what this means.
not selling you a device or service to help you in advertised ways
Again, click bait means getting you to click on something in ways other than telling you what the article is about. Anything published on the internet wants readers. I don't know where you got the idea that 'clickbait' only applies to direct advertisements, but you should move past that.
This is clickbait.
it’s like a movement with a catchy name so it sticks
No, it's a title with no information, because we're talking about the title.
You seem to be stuck with clickbait but at the same time you don’t understand what clickbait is.
No, you seem to not understand what clickbait is because you think it has to do with selling something directly, which is bizarre and not backed up by anything other than you claiming it.
An intentionally sensationalized, vague or misleading headline
https://copyposse.com/blog/clickbait-or-catchy-hook-how-to-w...
Explain to me how "Wait Until 8th" isn't intentionally vague. If you knew nothing else, what would the title tell you? Nothing. That's vague. There could be more information in the title but there isn't. That's intentional.
Matter of fact the internet started speedrunning censorship and monopolization post 9/11 without much of a fight and I think this triggered the default in people to just shrug and seek other ways to access and share data.
It's as ridiculous as suggesting Bittorrent is harmful for kids because of its unrestricted limitless amount of data. What's more harmful is preventing discovering adaptation and self-balancing on their own in the face of endless entertainment wish diminishing value.
There's just so many things outside internet and smartphones that even adults struggle to balance, the last thing I think kids need are adults taking away that trial by fire and allowing themselves to develop their own sense of moderation.
The reward of watching porn on the family computer was sneaking down the stairs at 3am, hoping no one heard the dialup tone, finding the right website, and waiting for the pixels to load.
Later, that moved into bedroom and with faster internet, and the result was slightly less pixelated boobs. And it was just out there, to be watched.
The internet today is not there to be observed. It's to be consumed, and then to stalk you even after you've left. It's not even at your fingertips anymore; it's in your bed, at full resolution, recommending you products that you actively ignore but passively absorb.
At that young impressionable age, the passive inputs are definitely the ones to monitor
The smartphone that is always on, always fighting for your attention, and always in your pocket has proven to be harmful to the development of most children.
> What's more harmful is preventing discovering adaptation and self-balancing on their own in the face of endless entertainment wish diminishing value.
I really wish kids would still learn self-balancing on their own. But the odds are stacked against them in the current age. TikTok and Instagram have gotten too good at this, backed by teams of scientists and ML models working with passion to fight their self-control.
That having access to (some) of those things was overall harmless doesn't seem to be a settled question.
With smartphones, the thing that stands out to me is a survey they did of parents. For those who gave their kids a smartphone before they turned 16, literally every parent regretted the decision (and some of them gave them the phone willingly).
Granted, N was probably not huge in that study, but it's a rare study that has no variance.
Afaik theres pretty strong evidence of the negative effects of short form content on kids, and how addictive it is. We don't let kids eat as much candy as they want because we know they wont self regulate, I dont see how limiting online media consumption is any different.
Tubgirl, Goatse, LemonParty, Ebaumsworld, Rotten.com, LiveLeak had some of the most fucked up shit 90s teenage me could find and consume. Parental controls on electronics were an afterthought nor just didnt exist much then.
Its on parents to get involved if they want their kids to live in a safety bubble or like, you know, just have a conversation with them.
Honestly the 90s internet was peak internet imo, it was so pure and awesome. AOL, AIM, IRC, all the good times had. Captchas didnt even exist yet.
And you do mention this that kids should learn to get a sense of moderation, but like other addictive things (hard drugs, alcohol and actually porn is supposed to be restricted), we keep them away from kids until they're at an age when they can handle it better.
also, I personally think spending an entire day watching tiktok is just so wasteful, feel like you've lost a 100k brain cells by the end of it, blah!
But to each their own.
Tldr:Seeing shock content is like eating a spoon of salt. The mind has defence mechanisms for it. You consume it, you are disgusted, and you never want to do it again. Consuming social media is like eating fast food