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Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

theguardian.com

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Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#41

Post by slics »

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet.

Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com

For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You ask them to brush their teeth, they bring their toothbrush in the living room just to watch TV. Phone for a teenager it’s the worst thing a parent can do (outside of the emergency reasons)

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#42

Post by not_a_cop75 »

The article once again shows that Twitter has instead of being peaceful and cooperative, opted to take the would be side of a Jerry Springer show and instigate a greater fight and argument. If there is ever a WWIII, Twitter will be proud to have been part of the argument/misunderstanding that started it. No other service exists that primarily connects people so they can trash talk each other. It might as well be described in their business plan as much as they do it.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#43

Post by viraptor »

slics wrote: post #41

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet. Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You…

How do you plan to handle the social interactions? I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only. Not a criticism of the idea - just curious what's your approach here.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#44

Post by impostir »

slics wrote: post #41

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet. Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You…

That's pretty much what my parents did, and I have mixed feelings about it. I do think it was good up to high school age. I would have said some dumb things when I was twelve I would probably regret today. But, as a teenager, it felt like just another way my parents were trying to control me. I would say that if you block phones, you have to counterbalance it with some other way your teenager can have agency. It doesn't matter too much what it is, just let your teenager have some freedom.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#45

Post by yodon »

slics wrote: post #41

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet. Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You…

The social ostracism and inability to interact with their peers will not strengthen your children socially nor given them a value system for dealing with the challenges of the culture around them. It will simply delay when they have to grapple with it from a time in their lives when mistakes are understood and expected by the world to a time when the world will expect them to already be experienced with how to manage it. A rule like you describe is not for the benefit of your children. It is a crutch designed to help you avoid the hard work of having to teach proper values around difficult things. Charting a path through social media is part of parenting. You haven't found a secret hack that makes it easy. You have created a fantasy that you can simply get away with not doing so.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#46

Post by NullPrefix »

viraptor wrote: post #43
slics wrote: post #41

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet. Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You…

How do you plan to handle the social interactions? I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only. Not a criticism of the idea - just curious what's your approach here.

>I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only

Isn't that the intention?

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#47

Post by viraptor »

NullPrefix wrote: post #46
viraptor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you plan to handle the social interactions? I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only. Not a criticism of the idea - just curious what's your approach here.

>I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only Isn't that the intention?

I read the intention as "limit the social media distraction", not as "make it harder to do things with other humans". There's lots of social activities you're either involved in via an online group, or you won't know what's going on. For example, planning for a canoe club I was a part of existed only on IM / FB group. FB is still available non-mobile, but WhatsApp is not.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#48

Post by beatgammit »

llamathrowaway wrote: post #30
serpix wrote: post #7

She caused a fire because she got distracted with Social Media. As a parent I would also confiscate electronics and probably consider therapy at that point.

This is assuming the story is real, not just some marketing campaign: 1. Therapy requires mutual trust to work. Administrating therapy at this point, after turning the child into an adversary by taking away electronics as a form of punishment, would make the child think that the therapy sessions are no more than another form of punishment. Nothing useful can come out of the therapy if the child perceives the therapis…

Exactly, which is why I'm a little concerned about the knee jerk reaction to promote mental health as a solution to problems we have in society (mass shootings, CP, suicide, etc).

As you said, you need the patient to want to change in order for progress to be made, and mixing punishment and therapy makes that nearly impossible.

What we need is a fundamental shift in how we view mental illness and discipline. Instead of just punishing people for doing something wrong, we should be looking at why the mistake was made and try to work with the individual to fix that and use punishment only if more effective methods don't work.

Maybe we need psychologists to work with parents/communities so parents know how to approach deviant behavior in a constructive way. I firmly believe that if parenting is done well, people will be better equipped to deal with problems later in life.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#49

Post by beatgammit »

As a parent of young children, this honestly terrifies me. I know how addictive social media can be, and I'm trying to teach my kids how to set their own boundaries, but I don't know how to properly respond to problems caused by addiction. I don't believe in involuntary confiscation, but I may resort to that if my child loses my trust, and once I take something away, I lose whatever trust they have in me.

Does anyone have any good resources for dealing with this type of problem constructively? I know building trust in the first place is important, I just don't know much about what works with older children/teenagers. My current approach would be to treat them like an adult and have them come up with their own disciplinary measures.

Re: Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone

#50

Post by tfandango »

slics wrote: post #41

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet. Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You…

They will create accounts on their friends phones, all of the apps have multi-user features now. I know what you are saying, but I eventually gave in and made some rules around everything, like unexpectedly asking for the phone to take a look at things, putting it in my room at night, etc. They (at least my kid) aren't diligent enough to cover up enough that you won't find out if anything is going on. Of course she then dropped it in the toilet.
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