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I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

lof.flounder.online

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Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#71

Post by Freak_NL »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65
reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

Smoking. Smoke, everywhere.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#73

Post by Gigachad »

hans1729 wrote: post #44
zo1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine line and you have to go with some of it safely . However, there are items that are 100% toxic and as parents we need to decide what those are. Things like rap/hip-hop music as an example, or TikTok. There are some things that just can't be consumed safely by impressionable minds. When they're older they can get into them if they so wish, but my hope is that their brains by that point would at least be mat…

This is sarcasm, right? A music genre is categorically toxic? What? They will see TikToks anyway, at latest on the devices of their peers. The only sane course of action is to teach them how to deal with it, not to ignore the consequences of every control-freak-parent we've seen in the last 40 years and cosplay a fantasy-world where those things simply don't exist.

A lot of it is fine. Most of it is safe if you just treat it as music with no depth. But the culture and people behind it massively glorify crime and violence. So being actually in to hip hop and the people behind it is dangerous for children.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#74

Post by lrvick »

raverbashing wrote: post #23
jaspax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't want your kid to be that kid who doesn't have a smartphone Why not? If you think that smartphone usage is harmful to your child, then you absolutely are justified in letting them be "that kid". Being moderately socially constrained is actually a perfectly fine thing if the alternative is worse. > Being socially excluded was the bane of my life in school, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a contributin…

"Smartphones are harmful" are the new "videogames cause violence" (a bit justifiable, but blown out of proportion) And on average most people will use it, so a kid that can use better than it is already on top of the pack

"Smartphones are harmful" is the new "Smoking is harmful".

Smoking and football were once both pretty much required if you wanted to be popular, but time eventually revealed the interests of the cool kids often ended with lung cancer and brain damage.

Teach a kid to build computers, write software, design and solder their electronics. They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#75

Post by 2000UltraDeluxe »

lrvick wrote: post #61
2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays. Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles. The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents a…

If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work. Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since…

It's not about figuring out how to do it in other ways that doesn't include Facebook servers. It's just that all the pupils are already on those platforms, as are the teachers, and asking everyone to switch to other platforms is simply inconvenient.

Most people simply don't care enough, and that includes most teenagers. People want convenience, and as little interference as possible. I'm not saying it's a good thing; on the contrary I suspect it will be outright disruptive for society in a generation's time or so. Still, people _like_ their dopamine fixes. Most enjoy being hooked to TikTok, and having a real-life attention-span beaten by goldfish.

We, as a society, missed that the hopelessly incompetent and oblivios people in Wall-E was a warning and not a manual.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#76

Post by maccard »

lrvick wrote: post #61
2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays. Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles. The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents a…

If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work. Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since…

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

Honest question, how many teachers do you interact with? I don't have kids, but I've got a few friends who are teachers, and most of their coworkers are completely tech illiterate. Getting them to use email rather than whatsapp would be hard enough, but setting up and running a matrix server is completely out of the question.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#77

Post by em500 »

There is no problem giving phones to kids as soon as they can read: just disable all data (including wifi!). There are plenty of useful (translators, scientific calculators, maps/compass), informative (ebooks, kiwix) and entertainment apps (music/video), and even games that don't require permanent data access. Communication (ostensibly the main reason parents are giving them phones) works fine with just voice and SMS.

It also helps a lot that (1) AFAIK pretty much all primary schools (I expect things will be very different in middle school (>12 years), but we still have a few years to revise and refine our strategy.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#78

Post by lukeholder »

I got my 13yo son an Apple Watch with an eSim that is set up under my iPhone. It allows us to call and text together as family, and for him to communicate with friends via imessage and other authorized chat apps. He doesn't miss the social inclusion (invites to a birthday party etc) but also it has minimal addictive apps like tiktok, snapchat, insta. I can set access controls for it with Apples' parental tools.

Oh and the eSim plan is super cheap $79/year for unlimited calls and text.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#79

Post by lrvick »

reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

I have encountered multiple Gen Z people recently fascinated with retro gaming, cassette tapes, records, and 80s/90s tv/movies who expressed similar. Some are able to see their phones as addictive and are starting to look for what life was like before them.

It gives me hope.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#80

Post by lelanthran »

lrvick wrote: post #69
lelanthran wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious about this peer group in which failure to have a cellphone results in "complete and utter exclusion". Well the article in question has the kids blocked from google search. Such a radical block will almost certainly block everything else that their friends are using. So, sure, they may not need their own phone, but at ages 10-13, blocking the child from all popular tech makes them more or less unable to…

When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would…

> When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet.

Right, and that was before all the kids were on facebook, or twitter, or whatever.

You're talking about a time when the only online-networking being done, was being done on a desktop computer. IME, less than 1 out of every 100 children in 2000 were actually using desktop computer.

We are now in a time were 95/100 children are using some sort of portable personal computer that is with them all the time.

> I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in.

Which was perfectly possible when almost none of the kids were on computers. Now they all are.

> Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.

I'm afraid you're not a good example: you appear to lack some important skills wrt to the world as it is.

Think about it this way - there are people who didn't bother putting up with the hardship of a reduced social network, and they ended up more successful than you.

I don't think you have any interaction with children. I do.

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