What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the actually-hard part.
My daughter's sports teams, since moving up to 12U, have had group chats. She was absolutely getting left behind in the social interaction. It was painful to watch.
It's still a pain point because we've been limiting her SMS to known contacts. We're probably coming to have to capitulate on that because other parents don't seem to grok what we are trying to do and don't understand why we want to get their kids' phone numbers to add to my daughter's approved contact list. I guess we're the only people who have ever done this... >sigh<
There's team apps for the parents to use (which are universally terrible, but it is what it is), but not for the kids, because it's better to pretend it doesn't happen than acknowledge it does and deal with the necessary issues of abuse and privacy.
It's hard to say how this'll go in the long run. I have two littler children right now, and a lot of the parents of much younger kids, at least in the area we live in, seem to be trying really hard to move in the "dumb phone/don't let them fall into these addictive layers" direction. Many of the parents we meet talk about eventually giving them dumb phones, or getting a landline at home so kids can call each other.
My hope is that with sustained effort from the community, this sort of concern falls by the wayside to a good degree. Who knows how it'll play out in the long-term given how much our culture has structured itself around this bullshit, but it's nice to see folk trying to push back in a more concerted way.
If we want our kids to thrive in the world without being hooked on this attention syphoning machines, we must get the socials out of those walled gardens.
This is a huge challenge, and no one but us will build it. It will require deliberate action in our community.
I tire of hearing this.
We definitely knew better. I definitely did. Lots of people who did not opt into these services did. We were not silent about it.
Everyone else just refused to listen. Willful ignorance is how they got there.