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Wait Until 8th

waituntil8th.org

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Re: Wait Until 8th

#241

Post by gavindean90 »

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…

My dad routinely spends way more than three hours per day watching television.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#242

Post by shaklee3 »

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…

This is exactly what the Fitbit Ace LTE does. So far it's been great since my daughter has no desire to ask anything else on it besides increase physical activity to get prizes

Re: Wait Until 8th

#243

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Neither parent nor child has control over the device. That we let these valent swirling forces in someday is semi surprising.

I mostly wish there were empowered options parents & children could negotiate & navigate on their own. But all we get is cloudified software, that we don't have direct view of or insight to.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#244

Post by maxbond »

amluto wrote: post #233
maxbond wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would submit map functionality to the list as well. I think it would be healthy for a kid old enough to tell time to experiment with navigating, maybe following along on their map on drives.

This problem was quite well solved by a kids learning their way around using their eyes and good paper map. (I miss paper maps. They were actually designed to confer understanding — in particular, every street showed a name! Smartphone navigation apps and navigation websites often don’t show names any more.)

I agree that spending time with a really good map is like reading a book and confers more understanding than a map app. Map apps are pretty crumby, presumably because they're crammed into a screen. Paper maps are still a thing, I was at a book store the other day with a really big paper map section. In particular I enjoy geologic maps; they add depth and history to the landscape around you.

Map apps are much faster for navigation though. At least on the scale of walking a few blocks.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#245

Post by duck »

cortesoft wrote: post #160
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.

Why is texting friends bad? My daughter has autism, and struggles to connect with her classmates. She gets overwhelmed in groups, and is shy talking in person sometimes. Now that her classmates started messaging each other, she is actually being included a lot more. She has started messaging and setting up online play dates with her classmates. I was so proud when I found her playing Minecraft with a class mate while…

I haven't really read the research, but yeah, I don't think texting is bad and as you mentioned, it really is helpful to keep connected with friends. The one thing we found though is texting didn't last too long as they moved on to different apps (like Snapchat). I hope your daughter and friends can resist that change and just stick with simpler things like texting and FaceTime.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#246

Post by noduerme »

adriand wrote: post #55
lairv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a real addiction, no matter how resistant you are.

I'm 44. I've never had social media accounts. When I was 18 or so, I had a Palm Pilot with a cellular modem cradle that let you actually go to (mostly text-based) websites. It was the first smart phone, really. Amazing for finding information, for someone who didn't even have dial-up internet until 5 years earlier. But eventually I put the Palm Pilot away. It wasn't really addicting (and it was insanely nerdy to walk around with a computer connected to the internet, in your pocket like that).

I militantly avoided owning anything beyond a flip phone again until I was 36 (2016), when I finally caved in and grudgingly bought a cheap Android phone to work on a mobile game. (For the first 6 months of development, I'd just written and tested it under emulation, but bug reports were getting too hard to reproduce). Six months after that, I found myself doom-scrolling on the damn thing every time I had a free moment.

What I noticed during my smartphone-free years of watching people play with theirs were a few things: They weren't considered nerdy. They weren't considered computers. The social awkwardness of looking at a device in public had changed into a shield for people against the social awkwardness of looking at their surroundings or acknowledging other people. People forgot how to interact and how to sit and wait without doing something with their phone. Doing something with the phone was more than passively sipping a drink or smoking a cigarette; it was a way to show other people that they didn't want to interact. Or a way to hide from interaction.

I think this has to do with the way apps are structured. The vast majority of people never needed a computer in their pocket. Computers were for information and for work. I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#247

Post by w10-1 »

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…

The iPhone has restricted access mode, to limit access to bad stuff, typically used for child gateways.

It also has assistive access mode, which only permits access to good stuff, mostly to simplify UI's for the elderly, et al.

Both put the burden of integration on the configuring user, who basically becomes the system UI designer with a limited and awkward palette.

A nice feature in either case would be a way to edit, package and share or sell such configurations.

Indeed, I could see Apple building out this capability as a product line architecture supporting enterprise, health, and childhood/education.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#248

Post by m463 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #188
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…

I think the problem is it's not a defensible business because there's little barrier to entry to create an Android watch with less features. Every carrier has their own dumb, minimal smart watches, but I'm sure most of them suck because the product management is probably outsourced. Essential features and nonfunctional requirements: - Calendar, time and date, alarms and reminders - IP67 - Ruby or gorilla glass screen…

lol, I know someone who got his kid a "dumb" flip phone figuring that would solve things. Pretty soon, his kid was showing me how it was android underneath and all the apps he had sideloaded.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#249

Post by silisili »

asveikau wrote: post #240
silisili wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta agree here. The only apps that aren't blocked are the phone itself, messages, and a few games. Doesn't even have a browser on it much less social media. It's really been fantastic in letting her have a phone for communication, and technically she can text her friends if they want to, but no social media. It's pretty close to a dumb phone really. The location tracking alone is worth it, to me. My only annoyance…

Thanks for the warning, I guess I'll need to watch out for that in a few years.

It was scummy, because naturally it will always cause tension. I feel the right way would have been to approach us. Instead they approach the child who will always click freedom. They also sent us parents an email letting us know she's free to do as she wishes and we're SOL.

We told her she could stay under Family Link, or else buy her own phone and service. That seems effective.

Sorry Google, I'll decide my childrens' internet access. Not your giant advertising machine.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#250

Post by massive »

As a father of a young child with diabetes, I have mixed feelings about this issue.

While I believe small children shouldn't carry smartphones, it's currently our only way to monitor their health when they're outside our immediate range, such as in daycare.

My child is quite small and not yet interested in the phone, but I expect that will change eventually. We've established ground rules: the phone can’t be used for watching videos or playing games and is intended solely as a medical device. However, maintaining that restriction may become challenging as she grows.

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