Parents in Ireland town to voluntarily ban smartphones for kids as old as 13
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
This solves the problem of kids being ostracized because their parents limited their screen time or didn't buy them a phone until they were too old.
As I read it it's not about transforming kids into luddite. I don't see where it's explained that, say, a 10 years old cannot play Fortnite at home or that a 8 y/o cannot play Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch.
It's specifically about preventing kids from wasting their lives on that inferior piece of mediocre turd that a smartphone is.
TBH this tackles some of the worst attention traps for kids, but I consider screen time in general for kids as huge waste of time and their life, it doesn't matter how big screen is. Of course there is educational purpose, but it may not be easy keeping the device purely to that.
Life is about completely different things, if kids won't learn that early, they will face many struggles later. They can waste their life in front of their screens once they reach adulthood as much as they like, lets not mess them up even beforehand.
We don't build computers to be used socially. I've seen... demos? Someone makes a table with touch input recognizing the entire space and installs an app that encourages collaborative investigation. This is a far cry from an app. If I were to go through a list of all tech developments in the last 10 years, I can't imagine more than 2 or 3 that did something to improve IO-level collaboration. We have LOTS of collaboration software, but none of it is on the human-interface level. You start with everyone having their own device.
Big screens are good IMO. The bigger the better, take the entire wall. One room should have 1 screen. It should be so big and unignorable that people stop taking the personal screen they carry in their pocket.
I know all the shows that my other family members watch. I don't love 'em, but I can have a conversation about a character (and we do!). On the other hand, I have no accurate sense what TikToks they watch. Yet, those TikTocks have been dramatically more impactful of people's views on various subjects from politics, to cleaning, to finance, to mental health. But there's no opportunity to say "hey, that's false".
They can technically install another app and add random people as contacts, but it would be very hard to do that without our knowledge.
I would however encourage laptops and desktops which require them to be offline periodically when they venture into the real world.
Citizens looked around and saw a vacuum of righteous leadership on this issue. Notice that it always takes a leader (the principal in this case) and then people who actively and vocally follow (the health minister) to allow the social space for Laura Bourne to feel like they aren’t alone in doing the right thing.
This process is exactly what we need to be doing for all things. Everyone needs to be involved and yes it takes time and effort.
> Stanford Medicine researchers did not find a connection between the age children acquired their first cell phone and their sleep patterns, depression symptoms or grades.
Once a child of that age has a smartphone, they pretty much have _unfettered_ access to everything the internet has, or they will quickly find a way to. It only takes one peer (e.g. with older brothers) to turn the whole barrel rotten.
As a parent already coming under pressure with an 11 year old, I'm not going to just blindly trust that one Stanford study, and instead listen to fellow parents, their experience and ideas, and above all wait for as long as possible before bowing to the inevitable.
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-h...
Or having digital drugs is the future now and healthy is the thing of the past?
I’d argue that the analogy to drugs here is really an analogy to addiction, and there’s no magic involved in addiction: just exploitation of reward pathways leading to maladaptive behaviors.
And we don’t see an increasing percentage of people walking across busy and dangerous intersections, driving on highways at high speed, walking through dangerous neighborhoods, etc. while looking down at a deck of cards, oblivious to the world around them.
1. It's a great idea. Good luck to the Irish.
2. Anecdotally, the kids without smartphones really are much more socially connected, better problem solvers, less lazy, more respectful of others, and more focused. They exercise more, they hike more, they build more.
3. Most of the technical complaints are easily solved. Communication can be done excellently with dumb phones (or smart watches that have a phone built in). Education tasks can be solved with a desktop computer. eInk book readers without an internet connection is fine and encourages reading.
If that is too hard, a large tablet is a good compromise - annoying enough not to be impulsive (especially if you use a separate modem) but otherwise with all the benefits of a phone.
4. There is a strong tendency in our community for the kids to learn programming. Not sure if that is related, but the lack of smartphones is clearly not an impediment.
5. That said, there are things you miss, and it is a price to pay. For me as an adult, probably the lack of WhatsApp is the biggest issue. However, the price is WELL worth it.
It looks like it is simply a case of caring for your kids. Smartphones are an easy solution for parents, give them one and it keep your kid occupied while you are doing your stuff. Having your kids "socially connected" typically involve getting them into clubs and the like. For hiking, they probably need someone to get them to the hiking place and at a younger age, accompany them. Even more complicated now that leaving your kids live their live outside without constant physical supervision is more and more frowned upon.
That's the American approach. In Europe it's more like saying to your kid: "I'm busy, go play outside".
The "frowned upon" part is why you really need to be picky about where you live. Having kids spend time with friends roaming the neighbourhood without morons calling cops or child services is a priceless benefit to them.
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sOSes=10&sOSversions=1...
I honestly don't care if its instagram or tiktok or snapchat or whatever app, or its generative ai app that generates the most personalized and addictive content possible.
We have gotten more 'surveillance' kind of control, monitor where the kids are, which app they are using and for how long, when they go to sleep, when they wake up etc.
We can limit which app is used how long, but not what content is consumed, you are what you eat, watch toxic and depressing shit and become toxic and depressed person. The same way a parent can make sure they are buying the right nutrients for their kids, they should be able to make sure they are consuming valuable content. Instead this is left to an extremely greedy algorithm with the only goal of extracting as much attention as it can from the user.
The reality is that the recommendation algorithm, the company developing it, the content creators and everyone in that chain, has completely different goals (usually: how to get more money) than the parents of the child, or the child consuming the content.
It's an interesting parallel, because after a certain age you really can't control everything a child eats. At some point they can make their own decisions, and you have to hope you've explained well enough that eating garbage for every meal will make you feel lousy. It's similar to technology/social media.
"lots of Instagram = bad because subtle effects on your psyche" is much harder to understand, never mind explain. Never mind it's of course not quite that simple either.
The kid that hits puberty is going to figure out a way to watch porn on their phone if they have a phone. The phone has to practically be useless for them to not figure this out.
Parents are just in denial because the whole subject is so uncomfortable.
I suspect you'll see many more cities across the globe follow suit over the coming decades.
There is absolutely no reason a child younger than that age "needs" a phone. At best they are potential conveniences.
But they are basically guaranteed to be harmful to some degree. Easy net benefit to these kids.
I predict these children will have more social issues in adulthood and thrive less well than those who had smartphones when they were younger.
As if banning phones until 13 is really going to have that kind of impact. Come on. Those poor kids, can't get on TikTok.
When did you first get access to a computer? How has that affected your subsequent life and career?
People thinking that an electronic device is good for a kid and it's just a matter of self control or parenting has a fairly strong biais and never spent time with a kid or forgot what is it to be one.
First one being, is your kid feeling safe enough with you to discuss any topics? I know I couldn't. I have seen way too many kids having already social media pressure, including my own kid with a fairly low level of screen time across the board (I'd say 4h-8h a week maximum including a movie on Sunday morning, depending if she wants to play around with python or some GT7) this allows also some interesting discussions.
I fully believe that, for the previous generation's internet.
Most adults seem to forget all their memories of their childhood, particularly if they become parents at which point they forget everything instantly.
I'm not sure why this is, what this phenomenon is called (if it has a name), and I would sincerely appreciate a scientific explanation if there is one. I still remember my childhood from about 4 years old onward as a guy in his mid 30s, so I simply can't relate to it.
Today children have unrestricted access to God knows what is on the internet and social media. This is not a recipe for success. Parents need to get involved.
[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/sapien-smartphone-repor...
My physical and mental health has declined significantly since I've been 'always online'. Learning new skills in an age of endless distractions is harder too, despite the amount of educational resources online that should make it easier.
When I got hooked on WoW in my 30s, it was very obvious that there were a lot of students sacrificing their education to their gaming habits. And this was before social media really took off, with its 24/7 narcissism and tribal warfare.
And no I did not have access to my parent's bar to drink vodka and brandy whenever I felt like as a 12 year old to "prepare me to real world".
But to answer the question: patterns of socialization that their peers will follow. How to work around surveillance and filtering. How (and why) to jailbreak locked hardware.
Stuff you can't even know you're missing out, because you don't know what you don't know
Maybe calling someone without a heads up is considered rude, or ending sentences with a period is considered passive aggressive, maybe responding to someone right away is considered desperate or using certain words is okay IRL but not online
I agree that kids having smartphones is not good, but isolating an individual or small group from ostensibly the rest of the world in inconsistent ways that may interact in even worse ways is something you should be careful with, you might just be marking them for life
Trouble is, you’re way too old to understand the implications of not being in touch with your social group. If everyone else is in the loop but you’re not, your dead, socially. If you’re especially unlucky, you’ll be treated as the weirdo outcast with Luddite parents. You cannot imagine how mean kids are. This problem is bigger than you think. Having to live through years of shaming and being alone causes trouble later in life.
Funnily enough, though I grew up in the ’90s–’00s with parents who disliked TV and popular movies and heavily restricted media consumption in the household, nobody at school ever made fun of the fact that I’d never seen Friends or The Matrix. Later when I was in college I often saw people who’d grown up with access to popular media saying they’d feel socially deprived if they didn’t watch the latest new show. Personally I didn’t feel deprived, either at the time or in retrospect, even though today I greatly enjoy catching up on movies I never watched. I think there’s something to the idea that some restriction, particularly in childhood, can be healthy.
This might not being the kid that didn't watch popular stuff, this might be making a kid alien to an enviroment they will have to deal with for the rest of their life; They might adapt well, or maybe they'll develop a "mark", an "accent" of sorts, which distinguishes them from the rest of the group
I agree that restriction or adversity might be healthy, but paraphrasing House "Then why stop there? Poke a stick in her eye, imagine how healthy they'll be then"
If I had a time machine, maybe I’d give my seventh‐grade self white socks and boxer shorts and see if that made any difference.
Path A: you’re shown the meme; “lmfao, nice” — now you’ve broken ice or strengthened a bond
Path B: “nah” — “whatever”
——
Don’t send your kids to a run of the mill public school — which is infested with children of asshats, jackasses, and assholes. Don’t live in in that sort of community. If you can help it, these will be some of the biggest factors in how your kid turns out.
I’ve been to a lot of schools. Kids from parents that just don’t give a shit will turn out like them: vampires, parasites, and people that generally drag others down for their own benefit (unless they’re lucky and get out).
Mean kids come from mean families. Usually people are mean because they don’t have the resources to fill whatever hole they have in them — and have to use maladaptions to get their fix. I.e. money problems and never taught the skills or given the resources to ease them.
I.e. send your kid to a private school that is recommended by people you trust. Just like you would a dentist, or a mechanic, and so on.
Easier said than done, but not an unsolvable problem.
This is so obvious to me(from reading, observation and my own experience in public school) that I don't understand why smart, educated people don't realize this.
No way I'm going to send my kids to the cesspool that is public school if I can help it. People can call me and my family privileged all they want. What should I do, downgrade my child's education and life because it's not fair I have the resources others don't?
There are mean kids, and kind kids, and good schools and bad schools. There's a variety of experience here to take into account.
There are good families and bad families.
There are... variables. Yes, being a social outcast is hard. I would argue that being a social outcast involves _a lot more_ than not having access to the latest memes. That's where the misunderstanding lies.
No matter the other variables, that is a pretty common theme for teens nowadays, no matter the community they live in or school they go to.
Somehow they are nowhere nearly as mentally screwed up as their own children
Here is evidence for screen time being dose dependent after more than 1 hour, but it is old so none of the kids in that study had grown up with smartphones https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283687526_Dose-resp...
This is a summary article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012622/ you will find the dose dependt point is the first paragraph under the heading "Key Points".
The US might be different, the amount of stuff a school board, for one single school, HOAs or city councils can legislate is just mind boggling sometimes.
I graduated college in 2018. Some of my classmates weren’t allowed to use “screens” growing up, and you could tell instantly. They struggled to use google to do basic research, struggled to collaborate in group projects, and were generally a burden to others, constantly needing help with technology.
Smartphones don't teach you anything technical in the slightest, most of them are extremely dumbed down black boxes engineered specifically so the lowest common denominator won't get lost on them.
They'll still have access to laptops & computers and whatnot at home, but kids just don't need smartphones that early on, or at least not ones with unlimited bandwith and access to putrid entities like tiktok and instagram.
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
My nephew could competently use a phone (use apps, update settings, understand installing things, etc) when he was 6. A 13 year old will be able to catch up in a week.
I spent a while working in tech support for small to medium businesses, and boy, did those people have trouble to understand the basic interaction with their computers. Instead of learning the paradigms and applying them to general situations, they would memorise where on the screen to click, in which order.
You’re uncharitable view of generation Z is pretty much proven wrong if that is your assumption on what you can do on Instagram, though. Looks like a classic „my generation was the last good one, everyone else born after is stupid and lazy!“
> what you can do on Instagram,
Lol. Err what can you do on Instagram that is a demonstration of deep technical understanding?
Excluding people who are technical, whether by hobby or profession, everyone I know between 35 and 50 or so at least loosely understands things like the difference between a website and a locally executing program, the difference between local and cloud storage, the tradeoff between iOS-style walled gardens and relative openness of Android or PC (whichever side their own personal preferences happen to fall on), the difference between SMS and iMessage, and so on.
People under 30 -- again, excluding programmers, obviously there is no shortage of talented and knowledgeable young people in the industry -- overwhelmingly don't seem to be even capable of understanding any of these things.
While this is a case of were there should be a dedicated machine, until that appears, the phone is a decent middle man machine.
Silly we have to throw all kids mental health and attention spans down the toilet just to satisfy some fringe cases like this that all existed before smartphones.
I hope a few places that overreact this way will make it more popular to provide restricted tech experience rather than a full ban.
Kids - specially young ones cannot self regulate against billion dollars corporations that build features to keep people hooked
So please tell me a concrete applicable way that we can apply today to protect them.
I will not accept as solutions because is not applicable today by parents: - retricting social media account (the ones over 7-8 years old will find ways to say yes to a screen that asks for age) - saying Facebook or Tiktok should fix it - they will not - saying we should give them restricted phones - does not work practically - family should educate them - that works individually but it does not work society wise
So how do you protect the kids from this as a society?
I'm not sure why you dismiss that one. Whitelisting apps works - that's the whole idea behind kiosk devices. There are guides available, but basically you enable only the allowed apps, uninstall webview, lock the account.
Yes, it's not trivial and not everyone will want to do it. (It's available though https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340?hl=en#zip...) That's exactly why I wrote the last paragraph. Full access was one extreme. The ban is another extreme. (And is not exactly easy to implement either)
Once enough places overreact with the complete bans, the lockdown mode will get better documented, more popular, known by schools, finally (hopefully) easily available from the installation screen.
> because is not applicable today by parents
That's ok. This problem will still exist in a couple of years and this will be a bit easier to do each month. It was actually impossible to implement a few years ago, but we made progress.
Point being, humans are highly adaptive creatures. You have to cut the source.
As I type this, I realize this is exactly what a lot of us have been saying should be done for adults too. And why is it that all social media either moves towards this nebulous endless feed or actively pushes it. Very telling.
That's basically an instant messenger which supports groups.
They haven’t bottomed out yet, they still have Teams.
Everything wrong with for profit social networks with algorithms designed to suck you in and share the worst of humanity.
Concrete plans: - Will you give parents those free phones? - Will you control entering the schools by type of phones? - Will this be a list of 2-3 phones allowed? Is this an intervention in the economy that other companies will do? - What kind of timeline will be needed to implement this?
I do agree we should start implementing long-term solutions. But as a parent, I want a solution now, these years :) for the current generation
I'm not sure why you're putting all those requirements on an idea that can be self enforced in a community. We're commenting on an article where a community implemented a phone ban (not even covering everyone if I understand correctly)
> Is this an intervention in the economy that other companies will do?
Relevant companies already did most of it. Don't wait for the industry to rescue you.
Search for "(your phone type) parental control" and you'll find how to do that right now. Write it down in simple words. Tell other parents. It starts with you.
I talk with parents of kids a bit older like 10 and it is very hard to keep these limits when most of their colleagues don't have these limits.
I agree with you that what we do now is that we are trying to educate other parents about this. But it is hard and the years are passing.
I think access to mobile phones for kids is a big problem and indeed there is no simple solution.
I don't say we should do what the article is describing but I empathise with the parents that want a total ban of mobile phones for kids. It is simpler to enforce and explain this rule than explain everyday why my colleague has access why don't I? And try to explain that without also expressing a judgement on those kids or their families.
So here is a situation: the kids that have access to mobile phones and games at home goes to kindergarten and they play there only with other kids that know those games. They talk about levels and characters from those games. They don't have mobile phones at kindergarten but the fact they use it at home already creates two groups of children: those with access to mobile phones and those without access. And this is kindergarten/pre-school (4-5 years old)
Data allowance. Not just mobile data, Wi-Fi as well.
You can blow through 1GB of TikTok in an evening, but the same 1GB gives you more text than you can consume within a month.
Gradually increase it the same way you would with money.
I allow restricted access to my kid: no mobile phone access, limited time to watch cartoon, no tv, limited access to laptop only for scratch for example, limited access to some educational videos about nature... He can use command line or repl to play for example with math questions... While also getting used with keyboard, mouse... Trying to find a good balance.
But unless I plan to keep him at home he goes to community and socialize and I have to explain why we don't do this or why we don't do that and to explain why others are playing games or have phones. And I do explain.
But I am also concerned about the social groups they are all growing. The majority are not like this. So he will live in a society maybe with people hooked on screens. Maybe he will find a bubble maybe not.
thou im not sure that 1GB of <comments on anonymous internet forum> will do less harm than a few hours of vanityfair videos.
Education and setting an example are two others I have in mind for now - the latter is of course easier said than done but honestly, if we truly believe something is healthy, why not do it ourselves?
Not to mention,this stuff is making adults insane, they're addicted too. Just read these comments. Addict caveates and excuses.
Don't allow corporations to build those features, and mandate that they build features that forcibly give children time away from their phones (e.g. caps on usage: no usage between 10PM and 7AM, no usage during school hours for entertainment products, maximum time to play games, mandatory labeling for all websites and products, etc.).
You can even go further (like China today, and the US during the Silver Age of comics) and enforce mandatory outcomes for creatives targeting children. For example the TikTok algorithm in China must output educational resources for children and perhaps children's entertainment could be forced to not glorify certain topics such as school shootings, revenge on bullies, sociopathy, etc.
I've got 5 year olds, 8, 10 and a 12 year old, and they've been my beta testers for Wonder [0].
It uses AI to help direct kids towards positive content online, and defers to me to help my oldest navigate this tricky online world.
Let me know if you have kids and would like to try it out!
Youtube algorithms and the most stupid smartphone games are obviously addictive, so it does make sense if parents step in with a well-considered "thou shalt not" at times. This is far from a perfect solution, but in the long run, it is very probably better than doing nothing at all. I've seen really horrible results of screen time overuse on a teen girl -- basically, a lively and clever 7yo developed into a 18yo with no social skills whatsoever, and the habit to even scroll her phone while brushing teeth!
It's like decidedly putting away those candies when you sense your child has had too much for today. The same thing. No need to punish the child's brain and coping mechanisms for the parent's inability to... parent.
Best solution, obviously, is simple parental role model: the entire family putting away smartphones for the evening. (In our case, for example, nobody in the family has a smartphone; only dumb phones here. So far, with our oldest child being 9yo, I don't notice this being a problem. He is clearly fine not having one.)
I have also observed that careful explanations of what gaming or smartphones do to the child's brain also make a lot of sense. Our son is clearly interested in these effects, so he is always setting himself timers to limit his gaming. (Doesn't always follow them, but often, nonetheless, does; I think it is the purpose that counts, not 100% execution.)
I think children need to see cause and effect of smartphone overuse already at early ages. They need to understand and feel that by reasonable, down-to-earth limiting, parents are actually protecting them and their brain.
Counterpoint: my partner's father was an alcoholic who abandoned her after her mother died and ended up homeless for two decades, her aunt was also an alcoholic. She didn't grow up to be an alcoholic and doesn't drink alcohol. I don't drink alcohol. Most adults are capable of managing themselves.
> I've seen really horrible results of screen time overuse on a teen girl -- basically, a lively and clever 7yo developed into a 18yo with no social skills whatsoever, and the habit to even scroll her phone while brushing teeth!
Could equally be undiagnosed autism and/or ADHD, which is infamously underdiagnosed in women.
Adults are children in first place, and children model themselves a lot from parents.
There's certainly a significant randomness at play, and it's admirable when adults manage to deviate from problems of their parents, but exposure to them ultimately presents a high risk factor, if one wants to put in mathematical terms.
Screen time is actually a very concrete problem in the context of parenting. There's again significant randomness at play (I myself grew up watching lots of TV), but at the end of the day - literally, what happened during a given day - the difference in educational quality between households with and without¹ screens, is night and day².
¹=with "without" I mean extremely limited quantities of screen (no tvs, no internet, not checking out smartphones etc.etc.).
²=there is certainly a spectrum of screen time content in terms of quality, but the vast majority is garbage.
Yet having family who smoke leads to kids who take up smoking. It's not guaranteed on the individual level, but statistically very significant for the population. The same goes for domestic violence, excessive drinking, and, of course, smartphone use.
Anecdotal observations of exceptions don't really make a counterpoint to the general (and well documented) trend.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-sec...
Seeing your parents get drunk while partying and feel embarassed for them act ing stupid rather then it being super fun makes alcohol seem a lot less cooler.
For many people the only computer they have is their phone, I’d say well over half the people I work with have only their phone, and especially young people.
I’ve got one, two, thr… I don’t, maybe nine computers, and have read zero on any but the phones.
These strange papery things are also rather portable.
Kids aren't addicted to phones. They're addicted to certain types of apps on phones.
My dad brought home an old, destined-for-the-trash computer from work when I was 8 years old, and that was my first introduction to computing, an event that changed the course of my life. If he'd decided "no, I'm not going to let my son use this because he might play a violent video game or download pixelated porn from some BBS", I would not be the curious technologist I am today.
Don't ban the neutral, multi-use technology. Ban the specific thing on it that does harm.
Those dead trees can survive up to 50 years in the hands of children, mobile devices tend to break down significantly faster and create considerably more waste. Just have a copy of the books for school and one for home and you would probably get rid of 90% of the pointless book carrying I did as a kid.
Paper is produced using a mix of recycled paper and newly harvested trees. Overall, paper is usually recycled up to 7 times, and it really is due to the need of recycled paper for each production. Actually, paper manufacturers have whole departments responsible for the sourcing of recycled paper.
Trees come from, most of time, dedicated tree farms. Those are, by virtue of being needed, operated in a sustainable manner, meaning new trees are constantly planted to replace the harvested ones. Due to the growth periods of trees, there are a lot more trees in those forest than are needed for harvesting (fun fact, the term sustainability comes from 19th (?) century book about wood and forest cultivation).
While paper production requires a lot of energy, the industry is by now really good in serving as a way to load balance grids. They sell and buy energy, mostly electricity but also heat / gas, on spot markets and through long term contracts. Bring to readily pull huge amounts of energy, and also being able to reduce energy consumption almost immediately (production and production planning just love that by the way), their overall impact on energy consumption is nowhere as bad as people think. Added benefit, the majority of theirbraw material actually are renewable, they even store CO2 while growing.
On the other side you have electronc devices: rare earths, needing internet and server farms, have to be charged all the time. Raw materials have to be reycled, and not at a reasonable rate. Recycling happens in poor countries and causes all kinds of health environmental problems.
The main reason why retail moves from mailed advertizing to apps is simple: data. Putting the ads in an app, connected to whatever benefit program people are part of, allows for much better data collection and analysis that paper based advertizing.
Books are similar, added benefit of books is basically unlimited storage capability.
I remember having books transported through an ocean and paying half of my allowances every month to get two of them while I was in middle school. Same when my kid was born: pre-school kids' books are massively absent from ebooks, publisher assume they won't have a device and don't really care about accessiblity, and it's a real PITA to find books that are either out of publication or in foreign languages.
Portable they are not, at least compared to a few MO of data this days.
I think the underlying assumption in this thread is that "books" are a commodity and are purely interchangeable. You just give "books" to your kids and they'll like it. I'd disagree.
2. Not all books are available, or available locally, or available locally in the language you want.
3. Phone book readers don't normally have adverts, videos, or other distractions. If yours does, you should check other options.
Source: Read most of Patchett from my phone on the bus to school, it was not available locally and even if it was I would definitely not add any more books to my backpack.
If they didn't already exist they would never be allowed to come to exist in today's world. It would be considered wholesale IP theft and people would be arguing that the very notion of the idea would be the death of creativity.
Many of the problems of smartphones are not intrinsic to the technology but are a reflection of that modern world. Many people would call that late stage capitalism, but without much of that capitalism the technology wouldn't exist.
This has turned into a ramble, I apologize.
https://www.amazon.fr/Angélique-5-révolte-Anne-Golon/dp/2266...
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp...
One girl in her class doesn't have phone at all! The girl gets complaints from her parents because she reads too much books, spends time outside much more than our kid and does all kinds creative projects. It's same time inspiring and bit depressing to see in comparison how the smartphone free childhood looks like.
I would not beat myselfe up too much in this situation. I happen to have two children who were risen almost identically with little to none restriction of access to phones, tablets, streaming and computer games.
Older daughter just turned 10 years old and is reading more books than I (she even got her own library card made Matilda style), has quite good sport results (third place at schools olimpic running with older children), and even have time to do some group dancing, bringing handful of medals from competitions. And she is doing all this while spending lots of time with her friends outside.
My 7 years old son, on the other hand, is none of this. After two years of access to tablet he still have problems with letting it go. An he does not want to start reading anything, despite me reading him books for most of his life.
I think, we as parents, like to believe that we have some influence over "emerged" behaviours of our children, but somehow in the end it all comes down to their nature and is mostly accidental.
Are you able to elaborate on what you noticed?
> The girl gets complaints from her parents because she reads too much books
Do you mean complements?
> Do you mean complements?
I'm pretty sure they meant 'complaints', but maybe you meant 'compliments' ?
I sometimes complain about my son's reading - too fast. I recently bought a Dogman book for him that cost 7 GBP, and he'd read it within 30 minutes. Pound for pound, not worth the money as it has basically zero re-use.
I wish this would happen in the US. Our family is the odd one out, because most parents are not yet aware of the harms of social media and FOMO (esp. for girls).
Of course, our daughter is extremely annoyed at us all the time because of peer pressure...
Meaning that kids that spend 5+ hours per day on their phones are depressed. Up to one hour had no noticeable effects. [0]
Now think about why a kid would self-isolate for 5 hours a day and it might give you a clue about why they are depressed in the first place (hint, it's not the magical screen!).
[0] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
As a potential compromise, an Apple Watch with celular means they can still write to their friends and family, get directions etc.
This shift was likely initiated both by the beginnings of austerity in the US and by a trends towards a cultural prejudice toward being able to work right out of high school (likely incubated that austerity), an outcome in no way exclusive to blue-collar work, but carried that connotation anyway and so became frowned upon (I distinctly remember this being a problem in the 90s, even though my grandfather worked his entire life at a General Electric factory, had bought a home for his family of 6, etc)
i've been wanting to out-compete the current schooling paradigm by using kids as little innovators and having them graduate with the skills to set up or participate in a functional business, no college necessary.
This extends a similar existing policy in primary schools (5-11yo).
I think in general it's a well received policy, and pushes questions and decisions about ownership and usage outside of school back onto parents. It may shift some of the economics favourably for parents that want to hold off a little longer in providing their kids with a phone.
The problem - inasmuch as it's a problem - is evaluating the long-term success of such a policy in the absence of any kind of comparable control group.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/nsw-government-begins-...
At that age I was riding my bike the 3 or so miles to the nearest library to check out books.
In the far off long ago world of the 1990s, when crime was stupidly higher than it is now.
That's about 0.8km ~ 1.2km. That's literally 10 minutes of walking, probably less as an energetic kid. What do you imagine will happen to your kid if they're left alone on a 10 minute walk?
It's about as cliched as it gets as a response, but at that age my friends and I were gone for hours on end much further than 1.2km from our homes with 0 devices of any kind, other than 1 or 2 kids that were lucky enough to have a Nokia.
I'm not saying you are wrong or right for wanting this, but it brings 2 thoughts to mind.
One is a reminder that our parents and beyond always joke about, back in the day throwing a few blankets in a car and driving 12 hours north for the weekend and having no way to contact anyone and "they were fine".
Second is this feeling of overlap between having a child grow up with a phone constantly on them, and our mental attachment to having them. Everyone is aware of this emptiness / stress that occurs with many people when you leave the house without your phone these days. You feel this strong mental attachment / reliance on this connection to the world. Now, are we forcing children to have that same mental reliance on these devices by starting them so young?
Again, not saying you are right/wrong to want it, just something that came to mind.
What're you actually concerned about? Is that going to helped by your child having a phone themselves (vs some bystander)?
Then do what I did with my child as a half-way compromise: turn the phone off when at home, never let it into their bedroom, lock down the majority of functions (parental features) to the basics needed during the day and check usage.
There is no reason why parenting and ground rules can't come into play. It's not all-or-nothing.
Based on the comments here, most don't seem to understand that. Restricting access requires someone to actually parent and that seems to be too big of an ask for most of these folks. Instead a blanket ban is the only solution. And then it's only a solution if you can ban everyone else's kids from having phones as well so their precious little snowflake doesn't suffer from FOMO. There is a post on here about a dad whose relationships with his children were "ruined" by giving them smart phones. As if he has no agency outside of giving them the phones in the first place. It's ridiculous.
1: Pofung BF-T15. Two pack was $17 on Amazon at the time. Baofeng is an adjacent brand.
What element of safety does the phone confer?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/15/mobile-pho...
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36174753 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36180835
She has an iPad, a laptop, an apple watch and a 4g Nokia, but when she gets a smartphone with a SIM in it, it's the last thing she will ever look at.
I'm just trying to get her exposed to as much real life as possible before that happens.
https://protectyoungeyes.com/12-ingenious-screen-time-hacks-...
With kids getting to that age, I’m holding off as much as possible, and I’m indoctrinating them to the sociopathy of social media, where the Algorithms don’t give a shit about you, they will do whatever it takes to maximize your engagement on their platform.
When I was a kid, my parents didn't allow to sit and play Nintendo all day, as much as I wanted to sometimes. The idea that getting a smartphone for a kid inevitably means that they're going to have it on their person and be glued to it 24/7 is just bonkers.
The problem is that screens are just scarily addicting for kids. They have limited, supervised screen time to less than half an hour a day for the youngest (5) and around an hour a day for the eldest (8), yet despite that it's practically all they care about. The only thing they seem to think about is getting back mum's phone so that they can watch youtube or whatever it is they do, despite it being such a short part of their otherwise eventful days.
Hell, I've got a Steam Deck that I bring with me whenever I come around to visit, yet they don't care about it at all despite my steam library having around 900 games, they'd rather use my phone!
In that sense they would be denying a kid an opportunity to self-learn, which I don't agree with.
Or areas of the town that are safe from cars for them to play together in as an alternative
Offering parental controls built into the platform appears to always be an after thought by these big companies. They'll release a non-innovative copycat solution as lip service eventually so they can claim they care. Beyond that, based on how poor their solutions are and how difficult to setup/maintain/use, seems like they don't actually care.
The "dangers" on smartphones are not limited to just a few apps. Dangerous content is found everywhere. Social media, texting, chatting, web browsing, video games, etc. Dangers include accessing "bad" content, but also simply accessing good content too much. "Bad" content is found everywhere, including "acceptable" sites/apps. So whatever the solution is it needs to work on every app. For example, loads of apps use a Webview (built in web browser in the app). A child could use an "approved" app by mom n dad to then access the web to view whatever content they wanted using the webview.
Its actually a very difficult problem to solve. Think of the headache tech has moderating content... now you have to moderate with very limited knowledge about whats actually being done on the device (each platform has different limitations). And to make it worse each parent and child has a different set of rules for what is okay vs not okay for that child based on their beliefs, age, culture, etc (basically a custom set of moderation rules).
How do you build a solution thats easy for parents to use but actually works? Its difficult. A dumb phone or no phone is often a wise choice, especially when the child is young. Eventually parents need to realize its their job to prepare their child for adulthood, so that means giving them unfettered access to a smartphone (ideally with some parental monitoring) so they can coach them to use it responsibly.
It's a satellite town of Dublin with a big motorway going by it that people commute to Dublin city centre on. Also on the coast with nice beaches and multiple golf courses for the rich assholes.
I was interested in article but once I saw Greystones, I just thought, gross. Of course the wealthy elites can afford (in terms of time, money, education, opportunity cost etc.) to take steps to be more healthy.
The requirement is not wealth but being committed. That's even more difficult but easily ignored when lack of wealth seems to be the obstacle.
Also, I grew up in the vicinity of Greystones and painting it as a kind of Irish Beverly Hills is daft. Everyone I knew from the town was regular middle class.
Absolutely terrible move. Good that it's voluntary.
In 5 years I'd assume that skill will be completely obsolete for "normal" people.
Heck even as a programmer I loathe navigating files and am searching everything as much as I can. Sure some kids will need to learn about file systems as they grow up, just as some of us learned how boot loaders work or how CPU are architected. But I wouldn't put that as mandatory literacy even today.
> regular PC applications
Looking at the latest developments from Apple and Microsoft, I don't see "regular" PC applications staying much different from phone/tablets one for much longer either.
My mother, in the mid 90s, could just barely use a computer to type something up in Word and print it out. She was just sorta starting to grasp email by 2000. Even some kids I knew in middle and high school had trouble with the basics of navigating around a Mac and using a web browser. Go back to the late 80s when my dad brought home the first computer I got to use, and most of my schoolmates had never even seen one, let alone knew how to use one.
I absolutely agree that the locked down environments we have today are awful and counter-productive. But my nephew could scroll through YouTube Kids on a tablet when he was three years old and start the videos he wanted to watch, and go back to find something else when he was tired of it. Three years old! Now, at seven, even though he can't always read everything, he can operate fairly complex apps.
I guess it depends on how you define "technical literacy". I look at it more as "being able to successfully navigate the technology of the time", not so much "be a hacker", which seems to be what some people try to push it to be.
Even as a dev, I can’t say I really know how to use the file system on Mac as I have only owned Mac computers since search became zippy and all development work happens inside an IDE.
Kids don’t know how to use a file system as the speed of search has rendered day to day use of the file system mostly irrelevant.
PC applications are also increasingly disappearing. Things are done on the web (even many “desktop” apps are just the site in an Electron instance) or on the phone.
Technical literacy needs to be cultivated. We should be teaching kids to use technology productively, not banning it.
I've been coding for over 30 years. I don't recall using a phone to bring up an API document
While I'm looking forward to this experiment, it feels so much like all what adults (many of them) are forbidding to children, thinking it will be better off preserving their innocence, until they turn 18. They've suddenly access to cars, alcohol, sex and more, and when mixed together, especially the alcohol part, after 18 years of obedience, this sometimes doesn't end up very well. On another hand, some parents educate their children drinking small amount of wine and/or beer - is that worse?
Of course, people from fucking Greystones would make out that this is a revolutionary new concept. I can’t see it lasting, they will be back to letting the iPad raise their kids within the year.
Practically, 11+ year olds are capable of getting their hands on anything they want if they have the money and inclination for it. And they certainly have the inclination to get a smartphone.
So the only way to achieve your vision would be to ban giving money to anybody under the age of 18.
If nothing else, it should spawn a new generation of young Irish hackers. For better or worse.
I know this dates me, but mobile phones weren’t a thing until I was at university, and they definitely weren’t smart.
I didn’t lead an impoverished childhood as a result, and information was still available to me through a desktop computer.
Then they'll have great survival skills.
Or... you know... not.
Are there risks? Sure. But there are risks in everything. And, by the way, that phone can distract your kid while crossing the road, ending up in a much more likely dangerous situation.
Plus, the idea is not about banning phones altogether but rather regulating them, using them wisely. You know, like how we should use literally any tool ever invented? Having an appropriate usage based on age and situation is called responsible parenting, not Orwellian control.
We can either raise a generation of mindless zombies glued to screens, or we can try and foster responsible and thoughtful use of technology. I know which one I'd prefer.
Let's give them guns too, because what if a giant bear comes in that cliff?
When I was a kid, I got to play with the cast-off computers my dad would bring home from work. If he had your attitude, he would have thought, "oh, we didn't have computers when I was a kid, so certainly there's no value in my son having one".
The difference? Well, the key was that I had just some time slots I was authorized to play in a week and I suppose responsible parents now do the same with their kids smartphones.