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Comment by maxwell | Hacker News Reader

On this specific issue: not giving kids phones. Case for tablets, watches, desktops/laptops, cameras, etc. depending on individual maturity, but their use is to be appropriately monitored, e.g. no social media in most cases.

This parental responsibility is not be to outsourced to quasi-government surveillance entities with unclear private interests and security practices.

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I'm not sure you appreciate that your solution is just as absolutist as the proposed ban. You're just banning a different thing.

I've raised two girls to adulthood (now in their mid-20s). When they were at high school, it was a mandatory requirement for them to have laptops (from year 8/9 onwards). (I'm not wanting to kick off a discussion about schooling and the efficacy or not of various tech).

Highly complex problems with lots of nuanced issues are not amenable to trivially simple and seductively satisfying solutions.

> Case for tablets, watches, desktops/laptops

This makes sense. Social media is much less harmful over wifi vs cellular data or when viewed through a tablet form factor mobile app vs phone form factor mobile app

Tablets don't fit in your pocket and go along everywhere. Watches are still pretty limited in functionality. Constant connectivity is the problem, but again up for families to figure out, not something that demands the end of anonymous social media usage. Will HN need to comply with age checks or face a ban in Australia?

Exactly. It is difficult to the point of impossibility for a youth to move a tablet to a second location. Further, watches can neither display or send tweets. These are the reasons why a phone is uniquely bad and other devices are uniquely manageable

It's the way they're used and how they alter behavior and affect those in the vicinity. Phones are antisocial. Tablets and watches and laptops are not.

Exactly, that is why the phrase “iPad kid” isn’t a thing that describes a phenomenon.

Calling handing a child a 6” screen “inadequate parenting” and calling handing a child a 9” screen “adequate parenting” is rational because 9 is 6 upside down, which everyone knows means that it’s the opposite

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