261–270 of 351 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is really dropping the ball here, there are serious issues with parental controls on iOS. No way to revoke install permission. e.g. child got ahold of a parent's unlocked phone, turned off parent approval for their own phone, and then installed a social media app. We have uninstalled the app, but he can re-install without requesting permissions. We have resorted to a 1-minute (the minimum) screen time limit ins…
Your comment reads a bit silly to me. It’s like your child has control over this situation instead of you, and you’re trying your hardest to negotiate a good position for yourself. If your child doesn’t use the phone in the way you want them to, you could take the phone away.
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…
Smart watches were banned in our kids primary school as some of them have cameras and were used to take inappropriate photos. We have finally decided for an analog watch and no tracking as we live in a safe neighborhood and they know most of the neighbors.
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…
Smart phones for kids is not good. It’s really simple.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this really that US specific? Ages 6-7 seems to be pretty common for first grade¹, which gives you 13-14 for eighth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_stage
In Scotland, the first year of school is Primary 1 We have P1-P7, then secondary S1 - S4, with S5 and S6 optional. > Children start primary school aged between 4½ and 5½ depending on when the child's birthday falls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Scotland
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…
I'm 26, so now a decade removed from the relevant age bracket here, but was one of the first waves to hit high school with a majority of students having smartphones. There's been a palpable shift in peers (and myself) post-pandemic with regards to phones and social media in particular. A lot more emphasis being placed on being present in person and a lot more skepticism across the board towards phones/social media. P…
Personally I'd make it dependent on the child's maturity. I was very mature at young age and my parents would let me travel on the train to other cities.
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…
It would have been terrible if my parents would have banned that. But they were very progressive luckily.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Your child is a special case. Speaking from experience, most kids get too sucked into the social aspect of phone use, to a detrimental degree. Group chats end up being the location of cyber bullying, for example.