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The Wait Until 8th pledge

waituntil8th.org

111–120 of 254 posts

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#111
Mom read books and always had her nose in a book and volunteered in libraries. She also did a good deal of physical housework, which was mostly hidden from my view and distasteful to me. As kids, she absolutely relied on the TV to electronically babysit me and my sister and keep us distracted so Mom is not bothered by annoying offspring seeking love and attention.

Dad was a radio fan and an office dweller. I never saw him at work, but he worked at a desk when he wasn't on site, and he was a brainy scientist. He had a den where he worked at a desk, or he would hide behind the newspaper in the living room and try to pretend he was ignoring us, because God forbid he give his approval or attention to anything his son should do to please him.

And so from an early age, I had a vague sense of vocation and purpose. I would grow up to work on computers in an office. I would not need any sort of physical education and I would not need to go outdoors, play a sport, or have an active hobby. So this shaped my attitude at school, where I always had my nose in a book, then in computer screens. I absolutely protested against physical education; I found it increasingly distasteful, difficult, and it was downright traumatic before I entered high school.

So I was always destined for screen addiction. Blame my parents, blame the media companies, blame my schoolteachers, but the forces at work were just too powerful for anyone to counteract.

If you try to address "screen time" as an isolated thing, or blame "social media" for social/mental ills, you will be tilting at windmills. Be holistic about mental health. Seek environments and philosophies which promote virtuous living across the board. Temperance, Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and all the rest. Love your children, care for them, value them, and they will thank you later.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#112
post #73

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.

If everyone has ADHD, is it really a disorder anymore? I say this because I have ADHD. Diagnosed very late, because it never bothered me… I just used it to my advantage all my life and I never understood how people can spend years in the same place with the same job. That, to me, sounds like the real sickness. I learned more about it since and of course there’s a spectrum to it, but still. ADHD is no doubt the #1 fac…

ADHD isn't a "sickness". It's a neurodevelopmental condition. And not "everyone" has it.

I was the youngest person in the UK to be diagnosed in the '90s. Was medicated with Ritalin until I was 10, at which point I abruptly stopped taking it as my dosage was wrong as my weight and height pre-puberty were all over the place and was incapable of conveying this.

20 years on after stopping the Ritalin, realizing that the drugs worked and that normal people don't struggle with socializing or organizing their personal life, it fucking sucks. The waiting list for titration is very long in the UK, and going private doesn't speed anything along as the NHS now just refer to private providers for it.

Been trying to get help since last August.

I used to say the same thing about ADHD being why I have the life I do, but with age comes the realization that my life isn't my work, that's such a small part of it, and my personal life is fucked in terms of social aspects.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#113

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'm pretty sure cause and effect run the other way. The world has changed in a lot of ways and the internet gives people a constructive outlet to fill the void. Average number of children per household has dropped steadily…

I don't even buy that it's less safe to play outside, but parents refuse to let their kids do it and those that do have occasionally faced problems with police and child services for doing what parents have allowed their kids to do for generations. It's no surprise kids are turning to screens when they aren't allowed to walk to school let alone ride a bike with friends or go to a park on their own. I also agree that our society has made parents less available. Just to get by every adult in a household is forced to work long hours away from home. We need to find a balance between latchkey kids and helicopter parenting, and making it once again feasible to support a family on a single income would go a long way. Right now, people can work 40 hours a week without even being able to support just themselves!

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#114
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex tried that with my daughter. She was mortified by the dumb phone and would not take it with her or keep it charged. I cannot say that I blame her, it was just there so her mom could reach out to her whenever she liked. No benefit to the kid. I got her a smart phone at age 12, going into 6th grade. She has to take the bus to school from my place. Sometimes she misses the bus and walks 2 miles home - sometimes wi…

Giving a child a smartphone is coming from a place of tremendous privilege. Phone plans aren’t cheap, phones aren’t cheap (at least phones that are usable aren’t). It’s baffling to me that you solved your problem by giving your child an incredibly addicting device that most child development experts compare to hard drugs.

Are you seriously trying to suggest that it's equivalently risky giving a 10 year old a phone or heroin?

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#115

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'm pretty sure cause and effect run the other way. The world has changed in a lot of ways and the internet gives people a constructive outlet to fill the void. Average number of children per household has dropped steadily…

I don't even buy that it's less safe to play outside, but parents refuse to let their kids do it and those that do have occasionally faced problems with police and child services for doing what parents have allowed their kids to do for generations. It's no surprise kids are turning to screens when they aren't allowed to walk to school let alone ride a bike with friends or go to a park on their own. I also agree that…

It can be less safe in part because there are fewer eyes on the street. If everyone has a lot of kids and a lot of those kids are outside together playing stick ball or whatever, it's much less likely one of them will be molested, kidnapped, etc.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#116
post #105

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…

That's cool you, a tech-savvy HN poster, has managed to wield technology to find a high-reward/low-risk way to parent using devices, but perhaps your 'correct' solution may not work in all contexts for all people. Perhaps you just have a kid who has the right temperament to handle devices when young. Perhaps you work few enough hours or have the resources necessary to parent in a way to make this work. Perhaps the ki…

well, I am not telling everyone should do the same as me. I just don't want someone telling me that I should not do it.

Because that's the final goal of such movements: start with "voluntary pledges", move into social stigmatization of dissidents, capture organizational rule, and then, finally, the law. The same script as the prohibition. It is an inexorable and fairly predictable movement, probably a cultural heritage from Calvinism.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#117

Hard disagree. My first phone was an iPod Touch in Grade 4, and by Grade 5 I had already jailbroken it with one of my friends. By Grade 6, I built my own computer, got a phone with data, and by Grade 7 was running Linux on my desktop computer, which I used in Grade 8 to compile an Android ROM from source. I'm now an intern for an Android app development company. If I didn't get a phone until Grade 8, not only would I…

Lots of geeks were into technology before phones. If you were born 20 years earlier it would have been PCs, 40 years earlier it would have been commodore, 60 years earlier it would have been radio.

What got you a job is not your exposure to phones, but your curiosity of how things work.

The difference between the aforementioned and phones is the constant connectivity and parasitic engineering designed to make technology as addicting as possible. Will people who grow up with phones as young kids be doomed? No. Will those same people be more likely to have mental health issues? The science say “probably”.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also: our generation saw a dramatic increase in obesity. Correlation is not causation. But some correlations are just too obvious to ignore.

Children across the globe has been watching TV and playing video games. Still, many countries hasn't seen US level obesity problems. The more likely and obvious contributor to obesity is food.

Food and the environment, since there are lab animals who have been on strictly controlled diets and routines for decades which have recently been observed getting fatter.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#119

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…

You can give your child access to technology, allow them to play with their friends, watch space launches etc. without handing them over to corporations who are only interested in exploiting and manipulating them. It's great that your kid isn't a terrorist. It's a shame, that at age 6 there's already a collection of dossiers being stuffed with data about your child which will follow them for their entire life. It's a…

Smart Phones are computers, in a different form factor. Giving you kid an smartphone doesn't mean you need to give him access to facebook, twitter, instagram or tiktok.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#120
> If your child’s pledge does become active (10 or more pledges for your child’s grade), Wait Until 8th will notify you. You will receive via email a list of families who are waiting from your child’s grade along with each other’s names and emails to connect you with each other. This helps you to support one another.

So do they send follow-up emails as more people from your kid's school sign up? I assume they aren't spamming you every time one more parent signs up. Maybe it would be best to just email a link to a gdoc that is subsequently updated as more parents sign up?

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