Technology

Why not if you're a parent who thinks smartphones are bad, don't give one to your kid? No reason for a law here.

These parents are lazy

Or bring back flip phones. Calling and texting but does basically nothing else.

man? thats really well put. kudos.

would you mind if I screenshot'd your post to share with people or possibly post on bluesky

I always would advocate for an act only when needed approach, blocking kids from accessing content their peers have access to can only result in them resenting you. And to what end, at some point they are going to get online they are going to start using social media they might as well be used to it.

You are much better off talking to your kids and having an open dialogue than you are trying to hide everything away from them, because that's an impossible task.

Probably mostly not the same ones. Unless they just hate their children.

Honestly I would appreciate if they banned phone manufacturers from forcing Facebook, X, and other bullshit onto your phone. Making people go out and get it is one of the many intended barriers.

The question then would be if it might cause other problems. A lot of places are moving to e-learning, for example, and might expect the students to have internet access of some form or other.

Whether that be in the form of smartphone apps/websites, or through a laptop that the school provides, at which point, it's basically the same thing, especially if peer pressure puts them on social media or some such.

If they don't create a new law then how will these parents impose their parenting on other families?

I'm probably going to make it a rule that my kids don't get them until 15. I'm 28 and have definitely been ruined by smartphones. My attention span is shit and motivation is hard to maintain when the internet is just right there.

I wish there was a device that only did the bare minimum of email, phone, texting, navigation, and music.

I remember getting mine at like 15.

Dumbphones still exist. The only reason a child needs a phone is to place a call during an emergency, so as far as I'm concerned, they should get them whenever they can be trusted not to use them in class.

Many children are being radicalised by online content, like the criminal Andrew Tate becoming popular among teenagers.

Most people aren't fact checking anything online. They are far more likely to start believing conspiracy theories or outright false narratives.

There's some of that too.

My policy is to always answer every question my kids have, ideally with some reputable online source. It's not "because I said so," but more "let's find out together."

But I'm also not going to be giving my kids a smartphone or allowing them to use social media until they prove to me that they're responsible. I want them to learn how to fact check misinformation, call out bullying, and demonstrate empathy over a text medium (so they don't become bullies). If they're mature enough to show that, I'll slowly introduce things to them.

That said, I'm convinced social media can have a huge negative impact on mental health. Lack of access has an impact too, so it's important to help them establish boundaries. I'm not going to be monitoring what they do (that's a privacy violation), but I will be slowly loosening what services I allow them to access on family devices.

To be fair, the smartphone market kinda sucks. There's not a great way to limit what the device can do without setting up privacy-violating controls.

So I'm looking into Linux phones like the Pinephone so I can completely remove access to certain features. I'll probably start with disabling WiFi and data (except access to the carrier for calls and texts), then slowly open things up from there. That way I don't need to monitor what they're doing, since I know the boundaries I've set, and I can loosen it up slowly as they earn my trust.

In the meantime, they can still access the Internet and whatnot on family owned devices, but only during times my wife and I set. That, too, will be loosened as they earn trust. I'm mostly concerned about time spent, not what they end up actually doing.

I guess it would be too much to get a set of metronomes eh.