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The Wait Until 8th pledge

waituntil8th.org

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Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#71

Post by npunt »

teeray wrote: post #45

> These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on You Tube. I feel like this rhetoric also existed when I was in middle school, well before smartphones. The villain then was TV and violent video games, and there were simil…

It also may not have been wrong then. Being outdoors and playing with others is great for kids, watching TV is... mixed. Same w video games. Definitely dosage dependent. And it's pretty clear social media is not good for kids.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#72

Post by elzbardico »

This is the easy way out of the problem, but I am afraid, not the correct one.

My kid has had his own tablet since 6, his own PC since 8, and his own cellular since 9.

So far he hasn't turned into a domestic terrorist, and neither is he selling heroin for crypto on the dark web. Also, he has specific times when he can use his devices аnd limits on how much time.

All modern OSes have some sort of parental controls built-in, and when the native controls are not enough to your liking there are plenty of third-party software in the market.

Technology is what allows my kid to connect and play with his friend from the former place where we lived, is also the source where he learned about black holes and watched the Space-X and China's Shenzou launches. Yeah, there's quite a big amount of trash on the web, just like we had on TV.

But the solution is not pretending it is not there and hoping they won't become absolutely fascinated at the magic age of 14.

We are supposed to parent. Part of the parenting stuff means supervising and guiding in all environments your kid has contact with, including screens.

If your kid is addicted to screens, it is on you. Just delaying their first contact to the age of 13/14 won't magically guarantee they will be able to navigate it responsibly. This is just magical thinking born out of laziness.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#73

Post by r2vcap »

Giving a smartphone to a child is creating a lot of problems. In Korea, many parents play YouTube videos to their whining children, and many wonder if this is contributing to the rise in ADHD in children. Parents and the government must make a decision before a bigger social problem arises.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#74

Post by Thorrez »

teeray wrote: post #45

> These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on You Tube. I feel like this rhetoric also existed when I was in middle school, well before smartphones. The villain then was TV and violent video games, and there were simil…

There was a study posted here recently showing that the earlier a person is given access to a cell phone, the worse the person's mental health is as an adult: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948332

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#75

Post by lynx23 »

tempestn wrote: post #69
lynx23 wrote: post #62

Ah, so you need to "bind together" to be able to make decisions these days? How is this going to go down with your kids? At first, you say no? If they ask enough, you explain "you know, there is this church of parents which has decided that no kid is supposed to get a smartphone that early. Sorry kids, we can not do anything about it, it is the curch of parents decision" OK, so you can only hope your kid is rather du…

The point is that it would suck to be the one kid in grade 6 or 7 that doesn't have a phone. If parents collaborate on waiting until a healthy age - ideally if it becomes a societal norm - then kids don't need to feel left out.

I understand the urge to create pseudo-laws, and outlaw the thing you dont like just a little bit, on your own, as a group. I am just not a fan of Prohibition Culture. It never really did anything good except feeding the underground.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#76

Post by MattGaiser »

lynx23 wrote: post #62

Ah, so you need to "bind together" to be able to make decisions these days? How is this going to go down with your kids? At first, you say no? If they ask enough, you explain "you know, there is this church of parents which has decided that no kid is supposed to get a smartphone that early. Sorry kids, we can not do anything about it, it is the curch of parents decision" OK, so you can only hope your kid is rather du…

The choices which make the most sense depend on the choices of those around you. For example, I always get the laptop all my colleagues use at work because then troubleshooting development problems is easier.

If you are the sole kid without a smartphone or without social media in a class, it is very easy to get excluded, as plenty of things will be organized on social media. I don't know how one could have functioned at university without Facebook when I attended, as it was how everything from sharing study materials to clubs to finding rentals to even conference applications was organized.

A school with a large proportion of kids without smartphones is going to organize social communication differently. Event notifications will be organized differently. Teachers won't expect that the kids will download particular learning apps to access results.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#77

Post by krzyk »

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…

Does your 5-year old nephew reads?

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#78

Post by flangola7 »

nunuvit wrote: post #46
flangola7 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Parents usually don't want others, especially companies, spending all their time trying to get their kids addicted to stuff, influencing their minds, and changing their behavior. There's a lot that can go wrong with letting random assholes parent your kids more than you.

Yeah and Facebook will turn them into mindless validation seekers, video games will turn them into serial killers, and TV will turn their brains into mush - all things our parents told us which were also completely paranoid and untrue.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#79

Post by voidhorse »

elzbardico wrote: post #72

This is the easy way out of the problem, but I am afraid, not the correct one. My kid has had his own tablet since 6, his own PC since 8, and his own cellular since 9. So far he hasn't turned into a domestic terrorist, and neither is he selling heroin for crypto on the dark web. Also, he has specific times when he can use his devices аnd limits on how much time. All modern OSes have some sort of parental controls bui…

But the parents are too addicted to screens to parent.

Jokes aside, it doesn't help that many parents are not great with technology (not everyone out there posts on HN) so that even relatively straightforward settings changes like placing usage constraints on your OS may not be clear to parents. I bet many parents don't even know the extent to which they can do that, let alone how.

The general point is, our overall management of consumer technology in society is a complete mess thanks to the fact that its solely driven by profit seeking.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#80

Post by elzbardico »

leonidasv wrote: post #37
wpietri wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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#...

The thing is that a lot of people nowadays are not really ready to invest time in their kids.

Not setting up parental controls on their kids' devices is just a symptom of that.

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