The Wait Until 8th pledge
waituntil8th.org
The Wait Until 8th pledge
1–10 of 254 posts
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#2'Wait until 8th.. grade, before giving phones to kids.'
I do wish there were more controls. Phones that only have like 4 used a day, rather than just being screen time counters, maybe?
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#3Yeah, how about no. Parent your kids to balance their screen time, and please keep them off social media as long as possible (or very supervised).
But pledges like this are ridiculous, and remind me of how parents in the 80s thought the C64 or NES was going to rot kids brains, just like TV in the 70s.
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#4The fact that parents even consider giving kids phones before 8th grade is baffling to me. Growing up, I got a dumb cellphone around that age and it feels like an appropriate time. The internet is just too wild to let anyone younger than at least 13 go near it imo. What's especially unfortunate about it is that I get the sense most parents that hand out phones earlier could have just gotten their kid some handheld gaming system (there's even new ones on the market and retro recreations these days!) instead and managed to solve the exact same "problem" with basically none of the psychological and developmental risks.
Comes with the huge typical disclaimer that I am not a parent in this environment so obviously I don't know how real the pressure feels.
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#5Yeah, how about no. Parent your kids to balance their screen time, and please keep them off social media as long as possible (or very supervised). But pledges like this are ridiculous, and remind me of how parents in the 80s thought the C64 or NES was going to rot kids brains, just like TV in the 70s.
no to before 8th? or no to after?
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#6For the rest of the world, could anyone share what age a child would typically be when they enter the 8th grade?
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#7Yeah, how about no. Parent your kids to balance their screen time, and please keep them off social media as long as possible (or very supervised). But pledges like this are ridiculous, and remind me of how parents in the 80s thought the C64 or NES was going to rot kids brains, just like TV in the 70s.
Balancing screen time seems doable and makes sense but the social media bit seems basically impossible.
I have yet to encounter a kid with a smart phone that wasn't using it to view stuff on tiktok or youtube.
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#8For the rest of the world, could anyone share what age a child would typically be when they enter the 8th grade?
For US grades, add 5 to the grade to get a reasonable age. 1st grade is ~6; 12th grade is ~17.
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#9Yeah, how about no. Parent your kids to balance their screen time, and please keep them off social media as long as possible (or very supervised). But pledges like this are ridiculous, and remind me of how parents in the 80s thought the C64 or NES was going to rot kids brains, just like TV in the 70s.
no to before 8th? or no to after?
"No to waiting" seems the most likely.
Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge
#10Bah, it's just a tool, and important one for safety and avoiding unnecessary distress. It's up to parents to take care of technological limits and discipline, but it's not not an all or nothing deal. Especially during pandemic, how else were kids supposed to have any connection to peers? And without pandemic, what's wrong with cousins playing Minecraft while many hundreds of miles away from each other.