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Wait Until 8th

waituntil8th.org

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Re: Wait Until 8th

#51

Post by hollerith »

rvba wrote: post #45
empathy_m wrote: post #3

After high school ended (2:30pm) most days I used to have some kind of club activity (2:30pm-3:30pm) and then hang out in the cafeteria or by the front of the school, waiting for a parent to pick me up on the way home from work (5pm). I had a dumb phone so I could stay in touch, and I could also walk home if I wanted (40min / no sidewalks / 35mph roads), but most of the time I just sat down and did homework and read…

[flagged]

"Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated."

Re: Wait Until 8th

#52

Post by insane_dreamer »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #15

I'm going to post the same comment I did last year when this showed up on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 ), as checking the website it still seems to be true: Literally none of the evidence on the website's own "Why" page supports their suggestion: https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait All of the studies (bonus points for linking to news articles instead of directly to the studies) have something…

8th grade may be somewhat arbitrary, but as children grow older you trust them more with things that you didn't when they were younger, teaching them responsibility and independence over time.

I don't need a website to provide some type of evidence (not sure what kind of evidence you'd be referring to) to understand that. It's parenting 101. This is just applying it to social networks (that's the issue more than the phone itself) just it would apply to any other type of social interaction (going out with friends by themselves, TV, gaming, etc.)

Re: Wait Until 8th

#53

Post by PHGamer »

meanwhile millenials had full reign over the internet as kids cause their boomer parents didnt know shit. back when everyone did the famous A/S/L questionare from randos online lol.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#54

Post by davidclark »

nvarsj wrote: post #26
jb1991 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not the phone itself that matters, it's what the kids do on it. Phone can be good to communicate with parents, bad for nearly anything else at a young age.

Kids entire social lives run on their phones. Covid accelerated this and pushed down the age for where this was true. Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.

This counterpoint feels like it needs just as much scrutiny as the position it’s refuting.

Isn’t “but everyone else has one” the appeal kids make to their parents about most everything? (I know I was guilty of that as a kid myself)

Why is this a new level of “denying them a social life”?

Re: Wait Until 8th

#55

Post by adriand »

lairv wrote: post #36
zetazzed wrote: post #13

I'm still surprised the "dumb phone for kids" and "dumb watch with basic comms" markets are so underdeveloped (from my perspective). I would love my kids to have (a) gps tracking, (b) ability to send texts/calls to like 5 predefined numbers, (c) tell the time, and nothing else. But watches all seem to have games or weird gamified fitness trackers (Google's new fitbit for kids). Or they are super kid-ish, like bright…

Everyone has a different threshold for what they want from a dumb phone, some wants Google Maps, some think Youtube is ok, Google Chrome etc. which makes it hard to have a one true dumb phone. If you give access to the play store it's no longer a dumb phone The best way to have a dumb phone tailored to your needs is to take a cheap smartphone and make it dumb, either by using a different launcher, or a customized OS…

It’s true. My daughter didn’t have a phone until 9th grade, which she just started. She had talked about getting a dumb phone because she wasn’t very into the smartphone thing, which I was supportive of. However she now takes public transit to high school, and really wanted the Transit app so she could easily navigate in the city. So, an iPhone is where we landed.

And I have to say, it is astounding how quickly that thing got its hooks into her. I naively thought she might have been immune to it, given her habits and attitude. Boy was I wrong.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#56

Post by em500 »

nvarsj wrote: post #26
jb1991 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not the phone itself that matters, it's what the kids do on it. Phone can be good to communicate with parents, bad for nearly anything else at a young age.

Kids entire social lives run on their phones. Covid accelerated this and pushed down the age for where this was true. Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.

At least below age 12 or so, our kid's social life consists entirely of classmates that she sees 7 hours a day at school during weekdays, after school and in weekends playdates with classmates that she likes, sports, music and swimming lessons,and some time with parents in somewhere between. Where does the phone come on?

In our class we were the first to give our kid's a phone. She doesn't find it very interesting and barely spent any time on it, since she the only ones that she know with a phone number are her parents.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#57

Post by chris_wot »

thebruce87m wrote: post #9

> Students in eighth grade are usually 13–14 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_grade In case anyone else outside the US couldn’t find the actual age when scanning the site.

This is clearly aimed at Americans only.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#59

Post by 50208 »

michaelfm1211 wrote: post #27

I see the good intentions, but it's too idealistic. In many families both parents work and kids are expected to get home by themselves (such was the case for me from 3rd grade onwards). Smartphones are simply a necessity for communication and Google Maps. I can only ever see this working with upper middle class nuclear families with a stay at home parent.

Or ... we could continue doing what worked for all of us before being tethered to phones. Communicate beforehand / afterwards / using shared phones (which still exist) and learning to navigate the world using brains.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#60

Post by dgacmu »

zetazzed wrote: post #13

I'm still surprised the "dumb phone for kids" and "dumb watch with basic comms" markets are so underdeveloped (from my perspective). I would love my kids to have (a) gps tracking, (b) ability to send texts/calls to like 5 predefined numbers, (c) tell the time, and nothing else. But watches all seem to have games or weird gamified fitness trackers (Google's new fitbit for kids). Or they are super kid-ish, like bright…

We've used both gabb and an apple watch and they both work decently well. The apple watch has a few too many features by default but it's not as engrossing as a smartphone. The gabb watch was great overall. We switched from gabb -> apple at the end of 6th grade because we felt like our daughter had reached a point of being able to ignore the distractions of the watch in most settings and for the most part that's worked out well. We upgraded specifically to allow texting/IM'ing friends, which may or may not be within what some people want happening.

I will note that having her be able to call us is fantastic. There's a lot of end-of-school "hey you need to walk home today / walk over to my office / oh wait i'll pick you up" kind of coordination, which we could probably avoid with careful advance planning but it's really nice to be able to be flexible.

And also, youtube shorts / tiktok are the most addictive thing I've seen put in front of a child that age. She can browse YT shorts on her school computer at home (!!) and it's .. it's really stunning how absorbing it is for her. And not in a good way.

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