They missed an oppportunity to name it Deep Thought.
280 karma · joined December 17, 2009
For example, when our children were small, we didn't allow phones or social media, but allowed them to text/call friends with our phones. As they got older, we introduced Google Voice via family desktop computers so they had their own number for texts/calls, but given that it was on a desktop computer, it had limited usage. After that, we introduced a family smartphone that was shared among our younger children so they could text and have some limited social media, mainly group chat apps based on their clubs/sports. Once they became teenagers, we allow them their own phone, but still had restrictions on apps installed, types of websites available and time spent. Gradually over time, we introduce new apps, discuss app usage and review how things are going with the goal of increased independence over time.
For managing restrictions, we've used a lot of things, but never found a perfect solution. Bark works pretty well for signalling us of potential problems while giving our children a level of privacy. I use a Firewalla router to manage home internet access restrictions and Google Family Link to manage mobile devices. Both are mainly used to restrict time-based access (no middle of the night access) and for temporary restrictions to allow us to focus on things like homework and family events.
I can see why a lot of parents put no restrictions up or just ban too much. It takes a lot of work to create a nuanced set of restrictions that gradually give more independence as the child matures. Unfortunately, we've seen friends of our children who have had a lot of issues due to totally unrestricted internet access. We need to find and foster more middle grounds for easing children into social media and related technologies. Neither full unrestricted access nor total bans are helpful.
What kind of excuse is that? I've seen so many small businesses using Stripe. I doubt all their owners are developers who are comfortable with Discord.
Over the past decade, the term smartphone typically refers to a general purpose computing device that fits in your pocket that also acts as a phone. There is also more recently an implied requirement of a touch screen. A feature phone is more of an appliance device, where the primary feature is a phone, but it also has other limited features, some of which are internet enabled.
Unlike a smartphone, where you have a lot of control over what software you can put on it (similar to a PC), a feature phone only has a limited set of preinstalled features and optionally has a limited app store to add some more limited features.
By those definitions, the phones in the article are more feature phone than smartphone.
S10e - £669: https://www.samsung.com/uk/smartphones/galaxy-s10/buy/
Pixel 3a XL - £469: https://store.google.com/gb/config/pixel_3a
You can't find these in stores in the US, so there's little competition there. Even OnePlus only sells the OnePlus 6T in stores.
For me, I'm planning on getting a Pixel 3a. The talk of it being like a "2 year old flagship" sounds great to me, not a detriment at all. I'm upgrading from a Honor 8, which is an almost 3 year old mid-range phone, so the Pixel 3a will be a decent upgrade, even though the performance of my Honor 8 is still perfectly good. I'm mainly upgrading for the camera, 3 years of software updates and because my Honor 8's Bluetooth is becoming less reliable over time.
There's many non-mental diseases that we don't yet understand fully enough to know how to cure completely. There are many diseases where there are varied causes of the disease, where we are still learning these causes, and still learning what could be a cure. Should all these not be called an illness too?
The disease like this that I'm most familiar with is Cystic Fibrosis. 35 years ago, doctors had no idea what caused it. Now we know it is genetic. However, the disease is caused by many different possible combinations of gene mutations and we're still discovering more that can cause it. There's currently over a thousand gene mutations that cause Cystic Fibrosis. While a lot of progress in slowing disease progression has been made, there is no cure. We're not even certain about what would be needed for a full cure as science is still learning about the full extent of the disease. Cystic Fibrosis does not meet your criteria for an illness either. Should we not call it as such? I think that would be absurd. It is clearly an illness.
Just because we don't fully understand a disease yet doesn't mean it can't be called an illness. If you want to come up with a new word that can clarify the fact that we don't fully understand it yet, I guess that's fine, but I don't like confusing people by trying to deny the common understanding of a word.