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Comment by ejb999 | Hacker News Reader

If my kid was spending 8+ hours a day on the computer, it would tell me they don't have enough to do - and should have a job.

Stop buying things for 18 year olds - including clothes and other necessities other than the absolute basics (assuming they live at home) - 8 hours per day free time means they have enough free time to get a job and pay their own way.

As a parent of 4 successful kids - all now grown - leaving them wanting more than you provide them for free - that they then have to work and pay for themselves, can do wonders.

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This. As someone who has 3 adult children all out of the house now, I would take this a step further and say we have an obligation as parents to teach our young adult children how to be self sufficient. Learning how to find a job and stay employed, pay rent and bills etc are all life skills that we should be teaching our kids as they mature. If they don't have plans to continue with school then they should be working. It is a mistake to let kids stay dependent on you for the long term when they should be starting their own careers and/or finding their place in the world.

I had a neighbor years ago who passed away suddenly and he had two adult kids living with him in their early-mid 20s that weren't working or going to school. After a few months the bank foreclosed on their house and kicked the kids out. They had no money and no place to live, I'm not sure what ended up happening to them. Give your kids a fighting chance in the world people by helping them become functional adults.

I don't plan to let mine have their own cell phones (we'll probably get a dumbphone for them to share when they go out places or for their friends to call them, as they get a bit older) until they can pay for the phone and plan themselves. If they stop paying for the plan, I'll lock the MAC out of our wifi. Can't pay for it, not ready for it. 8 year olds shouldn't have a smartphone.

[EDIT] Just to back up your "if you can't pay for it, you don't get it" approach, that is. Strong agreement. Risky perks like Internet access must be earned. As for video games, the Switch is nice because you can easily physically remove it to somewhere else without having to unplug a bunch of stuff. Switch isn't there = no video games right now. Switch is there = video games are OK. Zero monitoring required.

This was my plan too, but when they hit middle school and are literally the only kid without a phone, and it is the difference between being invited places vs not, it just doesn't work.

Depends a lot on the school. Locally, in public schools, half or more of kids have their own smartphone by fourth grade. The situation at at least some private schools is very different. Low rates of ownership up until 8th grade or so. Helps that some of the private schools haven't gone batshit insane and started letting kids carry their phones around with them all day, like, inexplicably, all of the public schools have.

>haven't gone batshit insane and started letting kids carry their phones around with them all day

Would you expand on why this is "batshit insane"?

Phones are one of the most ubiquitous pieces of tech on the planet, have several very beneficial uses, make it easier to connect and stay in touch with friends, etc. Teaching kids how to use the technology responsibly and appropriately at an early age seems the exact opposite of "batshit insane" to me.

> Teaching kids how to use the technology responsibly and appropriately at an early age seems the exact opposite of "batshit insane" to me.

They do not and cannot realistically do this. Meanwhile, it's like they're letting them walk around with gameboys that can also be (and constantly are) used to clandestinely bully people and take creepy photos and share them and shit. It's plainly insane.

[EDIT] Further, they're at school. How much "stay[ing] in touch with their friends" do they need to do?! They're either in class, so shouldn't be fucking around on their phones (the problem: they do, a lot, and at least around here most admin won't take their phones away or ban them from having phones at school for it) or they're between classes or at lunch or whatever and can just talk to their friends.

>They do not and cannot realistically do this

I guess we disagree on the fundamentals. I believe kids can be taught how to interact with technology responsibly. In fact, my whole goal as a parent is to teach my kid how to responsibly navigate through life (which has increasing amounts of technology that they must eventually learn how to interact with).

Sometimes they need a bit more hand-holding (e.g. parental controls on a phone so it isn't a gameboy) until we can properly discuss something and settle on appropriate boundries. Other times they surprise me with how responsible they are. But if you're starting from a position of "kids can't learn to use a phone responsibly", I'm not sure what to say.

> I believe kids can be taught how to interact with technology responsibly.

A school cannot do this while doing all the other stuff they have to do, and you don't get to teach your kids' peers not to do horrible things with their devices.

AFAI am concerned teaching them responsible use would include teaching them that a smartphone has no place in school. Shit, they never let us carry dumb phones and it was only near the end we could even keep them in our lockers, and that was the right decision. I don't think they let our predecessors carry Electronic Football around at school, either, and that was also the right call, despite those devices posing ~no danger and being about 1% as disruptive as a smartphone.

Many middle schools have uniforms for a similar reasons. "Learning to dress appropriately" is not considered to be more important than avoiding its distractions.

"kids can't learn to use a phone responsibly"

Isn't the responsible use of a phone during school to turn the phone off?

I graduated from a relatively affluent public high school in 2006, and a significant number of students had cell phones in school. It was common for teachers to take student's phones - most of which could only text/call - if they used them during class.

> Teaching kids how to use the technology responsibly and appropriately at an early age seems the exact opposite of "batshit insane" to me.

Giving them unrestricted access to phones is not how you do this. That’s like saying that for every kid who wants to eat ice cream for dinner every night, that you’d give them an unlimited supply and “eventually” they’ll figure out why that’s not good (after they’re already morbidly obese and have diabetes).

The starting point for a limitation is that they have to be forced into the limit (by the parents setting and enforcing the rules), which mentally creates a baseline of what’s acceptable vs not. Then you can progress into something that’s less restrictive over time, which is where the shifting of responsibility happens.

I think most of what is available on the internet is too toxic to be given freely to teenagers. Specially social media

Lol— I had a friend whose parents took this approach. The parents eventually gave in because they got tired of never being able to reach their son through failed attempts to call friends (like me) in an effort to reach him.

Also big difference between an 8 year old and 15 year old (still not really working age but definitely socializing independently age).

Hence the shared dumbphone to take places. If we have to, we'll get one for each. No personal smartphones until they can pay for it themselves, at which point I reckon that's proof enough that they're responsible enough for it until they prove otherwise.

[EDIT] Also:

> Also big difference between an 8 year old and 15 year old (still not really working age but definitely socializing independently age).

I started my first job at 15, as did tons of my classmates. Is that no longer a fairly ordinary age for a first job? Has it changed that much changed in a bit over two decades?

AFAIK nothings really changed, but 14 has been on the fringe of legal employment age in most scenarios for a long time and is regulated. 16+ is fair game, plus depending on location there is the whole issue about how they get to work.

Is your goal to socially stunt all of your kids? Because that's what happens when they go for years being the only ones in their peer groups with substantially less ability to communicate with each other.

Here’s a data point from someone whose parents kept technology away from me as a pre-teen/teenager as some sort of character building I-know-best exercise:

They’re not a part of my life.

Really?

My parents did some pretty messed up things to try to get me to be a better behaved kid, the ‘70s and ‘80s were a different time, and I have no resentment against them because they tried their (probably misguided) best.

As kids go I was admittedly pretty difficult but the army straightened me out when I basically had the choice of joining at 17 or, who knows, didn’t see any other options at the time.

> the ‘70s and ‘80s were a different time

You are correct.

I think the issue requires a bit more nuance and understanding than "Get a Job". If there are core issues underlying the symptom of "my kid is on the computer", getting a job might make those issues worse. Not to mention that many jobs ARE online. Your kid could actually be hustling too hard and neglecting their personal life and suffering for it.

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