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The Wait Until 8th pledge

waituntil8th.org

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Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#31

Post by andai »

briga wrote: post #27

My 5-year old nephew has access to a smart phone along with social media accounts on the major platforms. Is it healthy? Probably not. Neither was my generation binging on TV and video games. But it also gives them access to an absurd wealth of information richer than any library I had growing up. How can a kid's mind not be absolutely entranced by that sort of thing? Telling a kid that they can't have a phone when t…

The people who built this stuff don't let their own kids touch it. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know?

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#32

Post by voidhorse »

briga wrote: post #27

My 5-year old nephew has access to a smart phone along with social media accounts on the major platforms. Is it healthy? Probably not. Neither was my generation binging on TV and video games. But it also gives them access to an absurd wealth of information richer than any library I had growing up. How can a kid's mind not be absolutely entranced by that sort of thing? Telling a kid that they can't have a phone when t…

This view seems a bit rosy and willfully ignorant of the actual current state of the internet. I think it will spoil most of the batch but the lucky few will come out better for it.

Those kids that do have a desire for encyclopedic knowledge may be well served by a smart phone.

However, most kids do not have that desire to begin with, and even those that do face problems. Unlike a traditional library, the internet is an ocean full of some information of so-so quality and much of abysmally low quality. A local library will not typically house the latest unedited, unhinged screed of the resident neo-nazi, and if it did, a well-educated librarian could help put it in appropriate context and help reaffirm the community's values. Learning from the internet outside of maybe learning about tech itself (and even the info quality there is in rapid decline imo) is mostly like learning from an encyclopedia authored by conspiracy theorists and village idiots.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#33

Post by andai »

jamesdepp wrote: post #26

I could get behind this, but only if my kids had open access to the internet via some other device. Phones are addicting and can be harmful (esp to younger teens), but it is crucial that young people have access to the resources the web can offer. It opens up opportunities and allows teens to find support resources when their family/school isn’t enough (LGBTQ+ kids in states like Florida come to mind). The biggest re…

[flagged]

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#34

Post by leonidasv »

Spivak wrote: post #23
rottencupcakes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about not giving them computers is it? This is about not giving them smart phones.

And smart phones are the tools for that. That kind of chatting happens in group texts, iMessage, Snap, and IG. Someone who is using their phone to talk to their IRL friends is doing better than sitting on their laptop, playing video games, or watching tv. Phones are evil is how millennials become "back in my day" people apparently. Fascinating to watch it in real time.

I have the same feeling. Smartphones are amazing tools when properly used and all of them come with extensive parental controls to counteract the bad usage patterns nowadays.

Keeping teenagers away from Internet and mobile apps will only turn them into digital illiterates as the time passes. Teenage is the time to make mistakes and learn with them, and that applies to all the digital junk too.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#35

Post by djaouen »

I don’t think this is useful. Just put restrictions on certain websites (perhaps at the router level) and let them explore. Imagine if your parents told you not to touch books until 8th grade? Why do that to a curious child?

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#36

Post by tivert »

djaouen wrote: post #35

I don’t think this is useful. Just put restrictions on certain websites (perhaps at the router level) and let them explore. Imagine if your parents told you not to touch books until 8th grade? Why do that to a curious child?

> I don’t think this is useful. Just put restrictions on certain websites (perhaps at the router level) and let them explore. Imagine if your parents told you not to touch books until 8th grade? Why do that to a curious child?

You misunderstand. This is about smartphones, not the web or internet in general.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#37

Post by leonidasv »

wpietri wrote: post #18
parasubvert wrote: post #3

Yeah, 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.

Is this something you are currently doing? Or more a theory? I know one parent, a software developer, whose kid goes to a school that strongly encouraged this and so they signed up for it. It seems to work fine for them. In contrast, I know other parents who have given their kids phones and it is quite hard to completely monitor their usage of it. Around the house, parents develop a background sense for where their k…

> it is quite hard to completely monitor their usage of it

I disagree.

Google Parent Link[0] and YouTube parental controls[1] are very advanced. But most parents just don't care setting it up and them complains they don't know what their kids are watching online.

[0] https://families.google/familylink/

[1] https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172308?hl=en#...

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#38

Post by azinman2 »

tivert wrote: post #36
djaouen wrote: post #35

I don’t think this is useful. Just put restrictions on certain websites (perhaps at the router level) and let them explore. Imagine if your parents told you not to touch books until 8th grade? Why do that to a curious child?

> I don’t think this is useful. Just put restrictions on certain websites (perhaps at the router level) and let them explore. Imagine if your parents told you not to touch books until 8th grade? Why do that to a curious child? You misunderstand. This is about smartphones, not the web or internet in general.

And it’s about your own personal device

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#39

Post by JADev62096 »

briga wrote: post #27

My 5-year old nephew has access to a smart phone along with social media accounts on the major platforms. Is it healthy? Probably not. Neither was my generation binging on TV and video games. But it also gives them access to an absurd wealth of information richer than any library I had growing up. How can a kid's mind not be absolutely entranced by that sort of thing? Telling a kid that they can't have a phone when t…

It's not a given that the parents are addicted to phones. It's also not clear that access to large amounts of information driven by selection pressure of algorithms is automatically a good thing: some of these informational memes drive children to do harmful things (for example, the tide pod challenge).

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#40

Post by gls2ro »

flangola7 wrote: post #24
larusso wrote: post #19

The headline caught my eye because my birthday is on the 8th ;) But to the topic. I have 3 kids and only my daughter (over ten) has a phone. We gave her an old iPhone and I disabled everything from internet to blocking foreign numbers. She has books and music access and can write to her friends. I‘m really against opening the internet at her age because I see one not the point why she would need it at that age and be…

>zombie“ kids walking around only having conversations in little chunks between smartphone breaks As an adult this is me and my friends, I don't see a problem with it. It's not like we're ignoring each other. I'm not sure why everyone is so hostile to kids having internet. I grew up watching YouTube and browsing Reddit on my phone too, that hasn't hurt me any.

Kids brain and adult brain are different. The same goes for body - this is why some medicine cannot be taken by kids.

As an example (I am not a doctor) the neocortex is not fully developed until maybe 20s.

Thus what works for you as an adult is not 100% sure to be working for children.

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