Don't give children under age 13 smartphones | Hacker News Reader

Don't give children under age 13 smartphones

cnn.com

My 11 year old son has an old android phone, to keep in touch with his friends and family.

He does not have access to any form of social media.

His friend list is limited to people he knows irl.

Activity on all devices is monitored (Google family link) and controlled (pi-hole, DNS blocking, ad blocking etc).

The internet is a cesspool and I agree we should limit children from free access to this - but telling kids to stick to pen and paper until they are 13 isn't the way to do it.

Definitely agree. Kids are not prisoners and will react predictably if you try vainly to lock them down. Theyll find vpns, save money for their own phone, barrow a friends ipad, google the simplest way to jailbreak a cheap IoT device, or any of dozens of ways to subvert lockdown.

Or worse the kid wont be subvertive. Theyll be supplicative, submissive, and compliant.

Maybe just spend a few less hours in the office or on netflix and develop a trust filled relationship with your child, prempting the biggest threats with candid conversation about sex, drugs, risk analysis, and the fact that as a parent we broke all those rules too.

> Kids are not prisoners and will react predictably if you try vainly to lock them down. Theyll find vpns, save money for their own phone, barrow a friends ipad, google the simplest way to jailbreak a cheap IoT device, or any of dozens of ways to subvert lockdown

This all actually seems like good lessons to me. Well, except simply borrowing a friend's ipad. But I guess even just making a close enough friend who trusts them to lend an ipad is still a good skill

I don't know. Maybe kids can benefit from having some artificial boundaries that make them think outside the box and put in effort to overcome

This is why I'm expanding my basement to make a much larger pitch-black labyrinth. If anyone knows where you can still buy minotaurs lmk pls.

Just to add to this. It’s important to monitor group chats a well as avoiding social media. Close friends 1 on 1 are usually somewhat ok, but the bigger groups / discords that happen quickly in middle school have more issues.

i dont think its acceptable to monitor and read your kids chats. Great way to show your trust in them

You dont need a smartphone to keep in touch.

I would argue a limited feature set (ie dumbphone) is better than placing restrictions a full featured device.

> The results were self-reported, which means they weren’t independently verified by researchers. In addition, the study can’t pinpoint what types of smartphone use drove the results and can’t account for how they might change as technologies evolve.

Lordy what a useless study—it's a twitter poll with some statistics added. Also it's conflating the device with the supermassive but also creepily personal self-esteem killing machine, Instagram. Like why are we pretending that it's texting and candy crush? Every study that does this in more detail concludes that yep, it's social media, and specifically social media where everyone shows off how cool they are and how much fun they're having—turning up every insecurity you have in middle/high school to 11.

Related to this is WaitUntil8th, a movement encouraging parents to sign up in groups/regional block (think a PAC) so there is less pressure on individual kids if their peers are also banned.

For what it is worth, after speaking with a friend of mine that teaches 8th grade, I think this movement should be expanded to social media in addition to cell phones.

https://www.waituntil8th.org/

You can give a phone with very restricted social media

My child under 10 has a tablet. She can message the family, draw, make videos, take pictures, has a album, some musics. Some, limited time, video cartoons and mostly educational games

Companies should provide better tolling to help parents follow their children online. Especially now with AI would be quite easy to make smart policies

Crazy. All those influencers on Youtube, Twitch and Instagram would be bankrupt without their underage customers.

I say 16

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