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Wait Until 8th

waituntil8th.org

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Re: Wait Until 8th

#201

Post by grugagag »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #147
diputsmonro wrote: post #72

I know the site clarifies it, but the headline messaging on this is meaninglessly confusing. "Wait until 8th!" "Oh, you mean their 8th birthday?" "No, 8th grade!" "Oh, so wait until they're in 8th grade, got it!" "No no, until the end of the 8th grade, when they graduate middle school!" "Oh, so it's really wait until 9th" Just seems like this would be the beginning of every conversation and lead to a non-unified appr…

It's supposed to be vague and confusing, it's part of the clickbait.

Clickbait is always to sell you something, this is the opposite. But I think the ambiguity helps, it’s not a specific cutoff date that is important but delaying the inevitable. Smartphone use at that age could bad, I’m thinking scammers paradise type of bad but with a different context. Middleschoolers aren’t scams targets but are perfect for being primed with nefarious things, think crypto and nfts, porn, gambling, addictive gaming and bad culture. I turned a blind eye on memes for a long time just because people do and like silly things but I’ve seen some disturbing memes out there. My kid is definitely not getting a smartphone till he understands some things.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#202

Post by standardUser »

api wrote: post #200
standardUser wrote: post #198

I don't think American society has been served well by our tradition of trying to confine children to a pretend kid's world and excluding them from the actual world their going to have to contend with. Our drinking culture is awful, our children are routinely barred from "adult" spaces which keeps them away from adult culture and socialization, we treat nudity and sex like some kind of crime to the point where we're…

This is more like trying to keep cigarettes away from little kids. Phones are little pocket dopamine hit machines that feed short attention span slop. They could be something else, but there is no business model that can compete with addiction. I agree that kids need more real world experience. Mindlessly scrolling TikTok and playing repetitive games with compulsion loops designed by psychologists to maximize addicti…

Or sugar. Or TV. Or video games. Modern technology may be more insidious but it's not the first threat of this type. Adults have been ranting and raving about kids relationships with media and technology and drugs and food and sex for a very, very long time.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#203

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #202
api wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more like trying to keep cigarettes away from little kids. Phones are little pocket dopamine hit machines that feed short attention span slop. They could be something else, but there is no business model that can compete with addiction. I agree that kids need more real world experience. Mindlessly scrolling TikTok and playing repetitive games with compulsion loops designed by psychologists to maximize addicti…

Or sugar. Or TV. Or video games. Modern technology may be more insidious but it's not the first threat of this type. Adults have been ranting and raving about kids relationships with media and technology and drugs and food and sex for a very, very long time.

[deleted]

Re: Wait Until 8th

#204

Post by autumnstwilight »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #73
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.

Assuming that's true*, it honestly isn't good reason to give your kids a smartphone. Your job description as a parent is pretty much to stop your kids from doing things they don't understand will hurt them. There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life. Like, if all the other kids were shooting up he…

> There's (imo) plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids, and therefore it's a parent's job to crack down on it even if it costs them in their social life.

From personal experience, being isolated as a kid can also be profoundly psychologically damaging and stunt development of normal life skills. Sure, see if the kid can get by without a smartphone for as long as possible, but if they do wind up completely excluded it's time to reevaluate the cost-benefit analysis and potential ways to mitigate smartphone overuse, not just think that the isolation is "okay" cause you're protecting them from phones.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#205

Post by api »

standardUser wrote: post #202
api wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more like trying to keep cigarettes away from little kids. Phones are little pocket dopamine hit machines that feed short attention span slop. They could be something else, but there is no business model that can compete with addiction. I agree that kids need more real world experience. Mindlessly scrolling TikTok and playing repetitive games with compulsion loops designed by psychologists to maximize addicti…

Or sugar. Or TV. Or video games. Modern technology may be more insidious but it's not the first threat of this type. Adults have been ranting and raving about kids relationships with media and technology and drugs and food and sex for a very, very long time.

It’s getting worse not better. We are creating an entire society that is wall to wall addiction that starts at birth.

I think a big problem with it is that people don’t realize how addictive this stuff can be or how manipulative and insidious it is. They’re not prepared for it and they get blindsided when it takes over their lives or their kids lives. Infinite scroll alone is incredibly addictive. Add other tactics and our stupid ape dopamine system is no match.

It might get better once we culturally assimilate this knowledge and realize that this stuff is more psychologically manipulative than we think it ought to be. We need to look at apps that use addiction patterns the way we look at drugs.

We think: It’s just a screen! It’s not like opioids or meth or something. How can a screen take over someone’s life?

The average TikTok user spends three hours on the app per day. Average. That means half spend more. That’s insane. Not to single out TikTok. It’s just one example.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#206

Post by standardUser »

g8oz wrote: post #199

Researcher Jonathan Haidt advocates for children not having a smartphone until age 16. https://fortune.com/well/article/rules-for-curbing-kid-smart...

What an insulting and futile approach. You'd think a trained psychologist would know better than to think kids wouldn't a) find this laughable b) develop a severe and justified resentment and c) find a way around their comparatively less-tech-minded parents' arbitrary restrictions. I don't know his background, but it reeks of a person who "studies" kids instead of actually working with them.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#207

Post by op00to »

legitster wrote: post #121

Parent here. This is a LOT easier today than it was 5-10 years ago. It feels like there's been a generation divide where younger kids are not as insistent on smartphones as the older kids were. Maybe it was covid. But also there's a lot of negative sentiment even amongst kids about smartphones - that they are addictive, encourage anti-social behaviors, and enable bullying. "Brain-rot". Our local school district banne…

My kid is cool wearing a cellular smart watch. He’s not allowed to wear it during school, but can keep it in his backpack.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#208

Post by standardUser »

api wrote: post #205
standardUser wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or sugar. Or TV. Or video games. Modern technology may be more insidious but it's not the first threat of this type. Adults have been ranting and raving about kids relationships with media and technology and drugs and food and sex for a very, very long time.

It’s getting worse not better. We are creating an entire society that is wall to wall addiction that starts at birth. I think a big problem with it is that people don’t realize how addictive this stuff can be or how manipulative and insidious it is. They’re not prepared for it and they get blindsided when it takes over their lives or their kids lives. Infinite scroll alone is incredibly addictive. Add other tactics a…

Every generation says it's getting worse. They might all be right. I'm certainly not denying a problem. I'm arguing that that solution, to keep trying to create a walled-off fantasy world for kids to keep them safe, has been proven worse than ineffective over a very long period of time.

Drugs are actually a great comparison. We keep pretending that we've "banned" drugs. Yet despite the endless fortunes spent, civil liberties curbed and countless lives ruined by incarceration, drugs remain universally available, increasingly potent and very, very cheap. At a certain point we have to accept that a failed approach has failed and dig deep for the courage to try something different.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#209

Post by CyberDildonics »

grugagag wrote: post #201
CyberDildonics wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supposed to be vague and confusing, it's part of the clickbait.

Clickbait is always to sell you something, this is the opposite. But I think the ambiguity helps, it’s not a specific cutoff date that is important but delaying the inevitable. Smartphone use at that age could bad, I’m thinking scammers paradise type of bad but with a different context. Middleschoolers aren’t scams targets but are perfect for being primed with nefarious things, think crypto and nfts, porn, gambling,…

Clickbait is always to sell you something,

Where did you get this idea?

People put something on the internet and they want attention and engagement. Then people use click bait to get people to look at something because they are curious or confused instead of knowing what it is from the title.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#210

Post by tialaramex »

It's weird to not give people access to the Network, which so far as I can tell is the core idea here.

It's extremely weird to assume that the specific age matters. This is always a bad idea and where it is necessary for practical reasons (e.g. licensing laws) that causes friction

I assumed this site was about waiting until they are eight and I thought huh, well, that's probably not a big problem for most kids and maybe if you don't think about it too hard that's an OK rule. But now I find it means high school age which is entirely crazy.

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