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Comment by W0lfEagle | Hacker News Reader

Downvote me but: kids shouldn't have phones. No disrespect to the author and congratulations on the launch and all. I just find the entire concept completely dystopian. Like, play, enjoy your life kids! There's plenty of time for entirely unnecessary "tasks"/"work" later in life.

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My child started walking to school, alone, at age seven. More importantly he'd start walking home from school in the afternoon a couple of hours before his parents were home.

Having a child be able to call you and say "I'm in the park", "I'm at my friends house", "Can I invite a friend over?" was very good for reassurance.

We still throw him out and say "Go to the park" on a weekend, safe in the knowledge that if we need to know where he is we can call and ask, or he can phone us to say he saw a friend and is going to their place, etc.

I don't love children having screen time, and we set a timer so he's not allowed unfettered access, but giving him a phone? Even a dumb phone? I think its a net positive.

Parent, 100% agree. Even worse, approaching device access like a reward to be earned is a bad idea.

I think I'm heading to the place were you already are. I gave access to phones to my kids, and all the apps that monitor their time fail, when there is no will in them to stop. Also doing any task with the phone makes them navigate away (to instant messaging with their colleagues etc)

But on the other hand - the world is digital now. I have no idea how to make them learn good habits on finding things on the internet while not falling to the infinite well of doomscrolling etc.

We seem to be the only family in my children's school who think under-13s should not have a smart phone. The places they range to are so close they don't even need a dumb phone.

I'm getting quite pissed at the school seemingly assuming every kid has a smart phone that they need to access things for school with.

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