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Wait Until 8th

waituntil8th.org

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Re: Wait Until 8th

#81

Post by dash2 »

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…

Presumably if time spent using these things is bad, then ensuring children spend no time on them till 8th grade will be an improvement. What am I missing?

Re: Wait Until 8th

#82

Post by trump2025 »

IMHO, this feels like another wave of nannyism that follows after a new technology matures. Being a 90s kid, discovering porn, violence, warez were all normal part of growing up that I don't think has had any negative impact nor do the puritan panic about pornography.

Matter of fact the internet started speedrunning censorship and monopolization post 9/11 without much of a fight and I think this triggered the default in people to just shrug and seek other ways to access and share data.

It's as ridiculous as suggesting Bittorrent is harmful for kids because of its unrestricted limitless amount of data. What's more harmful is preventing discovering adaptation and self-balancing on their own in the face of endless entertainment wish diminishing value.

There's just so many things outside internet and smartphones that even adults struggle to balance, the last thing I think kids need are adults taking away that trial by fire and allowing themselves to develop their own sense of moderation.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#83

Post by warner25 »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #22

Younger millennial chiming in: I'm pretty sure that 8th grade is exactly when I got my first smartphone, although social media had a fraction of the presence back then, so it's hard to draw a direct comparison to today. But I do feel like the timing worked out well enough: not having a smartphone until that point (since they didn't exist lol) turned me into a voracious reader, and the dumbphone I did have meant I was…

This makes me think, as I've thought previously, that the generational labels seem too broad for the pace of change in information technology over the last 40 years. I read your comment as an older Millenial and thought "what?! a smartphone in 8th grade?!"

Despite being in the same "generation," someone born in the mid-80s came of age with radically different consumer technology compared to someone born just ten years later in the mid-90s. I have clear memories of trying to understand what the "Information Superhighway" was, and then getting dial-up Internet in our home for the first time. At the end of 8th grade, I convinced my dad to upgrade from 33 kbps dial-up to cable. As a sophomore in college, I remember thinking that some company would make a lot of money by putting Wi-Fi access points everywhere so we could have always-on Internet access with some sort of mobile device... Just a night-and-day difference from the experience of someone getting a smartphone in 8th grade.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#84

Post by parsimo2010 »

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…

Either Android or iPhones can be customized. The parent has to take the time to sit down and set it up.

The iPhone has a lot of parental setting customization. You can disable certain built in apps, prevent installing anything from the App Store or just prevent making purchases, set screen time restrictions, and a whole bunch of other things [1].

Android has similar settings with Family Link [2].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121

[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-parental-controls-e...

Re: Wait Until 8th

#85

Post by kelnos »

davidclark wrote: post #54
nvarsj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”?

Because if you deny a kid a Nintendo, even though "everyone has one", it doesn't kill their social life, because they can still go over to a friend's house to play (arguably, this is better for their social life).

If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#86

Post by jb1991 »

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.

> Kids entire social lives run on their phones.

> Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays.

Wow, what country is that true? Thankfully, not in the country I reside. None of the children I know have social lives that revolve around the phone.

Wherever you live, if the phone is already the central aspect of a child's social life, that is a great tragedy.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#87

Post by bigstrat2003 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #64

If we've built something harmful here, why are we only protecting the kids from it? There's got to be a way to handle this more directly.

Fair point, but there are a couple of reasons why we would only apply this to kids. First, something can be harmful to children and not to adults. Second, even if smartphones are harmful to adults, for better or for worse we let adults ruin themselves. It's a necessary condition of freedom, that you have the ability to make bad choices as well as good.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#88

Post by rvba »

hollerith wrote: post #51
rvba wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

More like snobism: reading classic books for the sake of being able to brag about them. As if that made someone a better person.

If the author at least did something creative... but nooo reading Brothers Karamazov as a kid is better than playing WoW.

I still take the kid who created something, or at least spent time with other kids. And apparently the author didnt.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#89

Post by kelnos »

chris_wot wrote: post #57
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.

Well, "Wait for 8th or whatever the similarly-aged grade level is in your area" doesn't sound quite as punchy.

This is applicable to anyone, anywhere, though sure, it's targeted at a US audience.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#90

Post by NBJack »

50208 wrote: post #59
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.

Aspirational at best I'm afraid. What happens when the other partner/parent/family member isn't responsible, smashing your plans? Or if the event has a variable end time with no safe care or phone in between? How do you deal with emergencies like school closures that now require every child to line up to use available landlines (my personal favorite experience)?

Landlines are becoming scant in my particular part of my country, YMMV. I rarely even see them in my workplace anymore.

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