101–110 of 263 posts
Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?
or your kid might turn out like me. you don't think there are ways a clever 11, 12, 13 year old can get a phone, and hide it from you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My teacher would have ripped the gameboy out of my hand and confiscated it for the rest of the school year. Teachers do not that have that kind of freedom today. Also, if your argument is "gameboy existed". People just did not use it as much. Today smartphone usage in class is rampant. Also gameboy games were not anywhere near as addicting as games and social media are today.
> My teacher would have ripped the gameboy out of my hand and confiscated it for the rest of the school year. Teachers do not that have that kind of freedom today. Well, how are teachers supposed to enforce a ban on smartphones, then?
Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?
Depends on your goals. If your goal is for your kids to not have access to smartphone apps, dangers and distractions, I fear it'll fail spectacularly. If your goal is to build self reliance and problem solving skills, you may succeed in unintended ways. I was born in 1979. I touched my first computer probably at age 6. I programmed in GWbasic when I was 10 or so, started turbo Pascal and oracle db lessons when I was…
And sorry to inform you, but you’re damn special.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I guess at some point teachers gave up trying to enforce the rules. Or the idea of being away from your phone for hours at a time became strange to everyone. Or maybe teachers thought they could incorporate phones into lesson plans. I can speak from experience in teaching, and being married to a teacher who both have seem the implementation of smartphones and the consequences thereof. It's not the students, it's not…
I grew up in a rural area and I was running off into the woods behind my house with my siblings at like age 4 or 5, no supervision required. The idea that a kid can't play in the woods by themselves is weird to me. Parents are definitely getting to helicoptering, I saw a group of 18 year olds decide they wanted to get pizza while at someone's house, and then decide to all call their parents to ask if it were okay (no…
It's the attitude that kids can't make mistakes, no matter what, and that any mistakes are a direct reflection on the parents. It's exhausting.
I want my kid to mess up. I want him to fall out of a tree and break his arm. I want him to grow up and drive somewhere three states over with his friends and break down and need me to come get him.
That's part of growing up.
Now for the part that I'm not sure isn't just me being a grumpy old man -
I'm honestly afraid we're raising a generation that doesn't have proper coping skills and won't be able to effectively function in society. My proof is that college students today will remove themselves from opportunities that are too stressful - which includes just needing to call people on the phone. I have seen massively competent, not socially anxious teens turn down amazing opportunities because they had to speak to someone they don't know on the phone.
It's amazing.
Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?
It's like prohibition, the forbidden fruit. Denial will only increase the want. It's better to teach moderation early than it is to try to curb the want for 7+ years. My kid has had an iPad from age 1 or so, with kiosk mode enabled and a baby game that made funny noises when they slapped the screen. They got a phone at age 7, just before starting first grade. No Youtube, no TikTok and screen time enforced per categor…
Sadly, babies which are underexposed to stimuli often display developmental delays compared to peers.
Going against HN's usual anti-smartphone thing, I think this is incredibly dumb. Luckily no one really cares much about what UNESCO calls for. Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to pu…
Sorry this was just bragging, but from what I've seen this applies equally to all the kids at her school.
Going against HN's usual anti-smartphone thing, I think this is incredibly dumb. Luckily no one really cares much about what UNESCO calls for. Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to pu…
Except that far too many parents don't do this. I don't think its because they don't care, but rather they care more about their child "fitting in". This is why our local middle school is full of 12-year-olds with iPhones. The thing is a status symbol and a Pandora's box that you cannot shut once its open.
Look - the plain and simple of it is that mental health among teenagers is plummeting, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that smartphones are the culprit. Schools can't solve social problems. But they can at least not encourage them.
How about teaching kids self control and concentration?
How resisting the temptation of using a phone AT SCHOOL, a place where most kids don't want to be, will be rewarded so they can learn the benefits of self control?
It makes no sense!
It is already hard for most kinds understand that school is good for them to make it more difficult already and force them ignore the temptation of the phone.
Really, most people who talk about exercising self control or improving it have never had to had self control in the firt place.
Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?
As someone who didn't have a phone until 12 or 13, please do, BUT make sure you do it right. I use my phone for maybe 5 minutes a day excluding essential stuff, have 0 social media, and have no interest in increasing either number. If you just hold it over their head, they'll go find some other kid whose parents' entire parenting philosophy is "give iPad". You should make sure to explain to them why you're restrictin…
I don't think there is 1 rule that would be simply the best solution for every single kid out there. Understand your kids, how they approach learning, stimuli, how they react, how much patience they have (and encourage the good bits obviously). And adapt approach correspondingly, continuously.
But yeah giving small kids phones is a recipe for disaster, even static glowing screen is often more interesting to them than colorful books. Also, lead by example, kids want to mimmick their parents for quite long (usually puberty is stopping this). Same situation here btw (kids, 2 and 3 years old) and we talk about it a lot. We see around us some failures of unrestricted access to computers and phones, but without time machine its hard to say how things would be different without them