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Wait Until 8th

waituntil8th.org

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Re: Wait Until 8th

#291

Post by probably_wrong »

wkat4242 wrote: post #269
cortesoft wrote: post #160

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…

Yeah for me too. When I was young I was very active in chatboxes on local BBSes. There was no internet yet for normal people. It would have been terrible if my parents would have banned that. But they were very progressive luckily.

As someone put it, that's from a time when the Internet was a place you went to (usually a corner) and, more important, a place that you could leave whenever you wanted. The dynamic is different.

As someone who didn't like school thwt much the thought of having to deal with some of those people 24/7 fills me with dread.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#292

Post by miki123211 »

As somebody who grew up right when the smartphone wave was starting, I feel extremely uneasy about ideas like this one.

I have had almost unrestricted access to a computer since the age of 9, and to a smartphone since the age of 12, and I can definitely say that I wouldn't be the person I am right now without that access.

It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their kids access to the devices necessary for that spirit to thrive on the other.

I've known several kids in my age group whose access to technology was severely restricted, and I strongly believe that all of them were significantly worse off and have had serious mental health consequences because of that. Not to mention that the restrictions didn't actually accomplish much in most cases, and, if anything, caused a form of Streisand effect when it came to e.g. explicit content or talking to (older) strangers online.

Unrestricted (and even more importantly, unmonitored) access to tech provides an "escape hatch" against abusive families. Yes, it may have somewhat of a bad effect on some kids, but for the kids that do need it, it's life changing to an extend that's hard to overstate.

English-speaking countries have always seemed more uptight about this though. I live in eastern EU, and we have never really done the whole "kids shouldn't have access to porn / swearing" thing much either, to the point of not having a word for "explicit" in my language, and using the word "censored" instead.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#293

Post by pflenker »

switch007 wrote: post #21
kardianos wrote: post #4

We have a house phone, which is normally in the unihertz "student mode" which prevents installing apps and only allowing use of some apps. When our kids ask for their own phone, the answer is always an easy no. I have no problem with computers. But the internet is not your friend. Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times. If they want to stay up late, their forced to sneak a book into thei…

> Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times. Remind me of food Would you give your kid endless access to chips and sweets?

No to both - but it’s important to teach kids self-moderating, both when it comes to food and to internet stuff. Withholding either is in my opinion solving it short-term while leaving kids unprepared for dealing with these things themselves.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#294

Post by benj111 »

So what would parents suggest?

I'm 40, so got a phone at 17. I had rubbish internet in my teens, and anyway, didn't really 'discover' it. So I've never grew up in the connected world.

My eldest is now 7.

It seems to me secondary school is about the age for a mobile.

And at this point its basically supervised education

Re: Wait Until 8th

#295

Post by BirAdam »

My son is in high school. He has a smartphone. He doesn’t have social media accounts. I was just honest with him about how such companies make money, how they actively encourage addiction, etc. He chose, like me, to not have accounts with those companies. I am not sure why people believe that they cannot explain things to their children. My son was in middle school when we had this chat.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#296

Post by ninalanyon »

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.

I walked the mile home from school from the age of five. Why would anyone need a map? And I spent all day outside away from home from the age of about eight in the summer with of course no phone of any kind and no maps even though I was tramping for miles through fields and streets. What has changed in the last sixty years that makes maps and communication a necessity?

Re: Wait Until 8th

#297

Post by hndamien »

My goal is to see if I can get my kids all the way through highschool with just an Apple smart watch and an iPad for home and school stuff where it is required. It seems completely doable.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#298

Post by emseetech »

trogdor wrote: post #212
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…

I am 38 years old. I attend concerts very frequently, and - though it’s uncommon - some shows don’t allow photos or videos, at the artist’s request. And it’s enforced by venue staff. Even as someone who enjoys taking videos at concerts, I really like the vibe at shows that have a no-photo/no-video policy. It increases audience engagement, and it stops the phenomenon where everyone has their phone held high in the air…

I used to take video at concerts, a lot of it. And I rarely if ever went back and watched it in any meaningful capacity. It became dead space on my phone.

But at some point I started a ritual of recording of the performer coming out, picking up their instruments, and the first 20-30 seconds of the opening song. Then I put my phone away for the rest of the concert.

These videos are dear to me. They capture the feeling of the concert more than any longer random moment from before. I have a small library of them and I love to rewatch.

I wouldn't mind a concert enforcing those rules at all, though I appreciate that I've found a way to immortalize the moment in a way that coincidentally helps me feel comfortable putting away my phone for the rest of the night.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#299

Post by benj111 »

miki123211 wrote: post #292

As somebody who grew up right when the smartphone wave was starting, I feel extremely uneasy about ideas like this one. I have had almost unrestricted access to a computer since the age of 9, and to a smartphone since the age of 12, and I can definitely say that I wouldn't be the person I am right now without that access. It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their…

> It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their kids access to the devices necessary for that spirit to thrive on the other.

When I was young devices weren't connected, so you could fiddle and not get yourself into too much trouble.

My concern isn't letting my kids loose on the computer, its letting them loose on the internet.

I would liken it to letting your kids go to a night club. theyre likely to be exposed to inappropriate content.

Ultimately these are tools, I wouldn't stop my young child using a knife, and in fact encourage them to learn how to use it safely, that doesn't mean Ill let my 5 year old keep a pen knife in their pocket.

Re: Wait Until 8th

#300

Post by sourcepluck »

noduerme wrote: post #246
adriand wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> 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.

I just wanted to highlight this section of your post for anyone skimming to have more of a chance of seeing it. Excellently put.

I would add - and think it's essential - that yes it took a great amount of marketing, but also a great amount of people who could have said or done something turning a blind eye and not sounding the alarm. I'm thinking mainly of developers who were happy bringing home a fat paycheck, and governments who were happy to have more information about their populations.

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