TLDR:

Making your kids go without smartphones could be difficult because their friends will most likely have phones and will most likely leave your kid out of events and conversations.

  • crime [she/her, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    If I were a kid I wouldn't want to use software my parents set up to talk to my friends. Maybe I just had shittier than average parents but imo having private space is super important.

    You'd need to designate one of the kids as sysadmin, but then you're in an Omelas situation where you've got a bunch of happy ten-year-olds and one who's aged 30 years with a dead-eyed stare and a coffee addiction muttering to themselves about database backups

    • lurkerlady [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      in fact my paranoia about my parents seeing what i did online is what ended up with me going into the highly lucrative field of work im doing now :thonk:

      • crime [she/her, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh yeah absolutely same, one day I'm 12 doing dumb javascript snippets for an Internet forum full of other dumb kids, suddenly im thirty-mumble trying to untangle someone else's Gordian knot of a kubernetes cluster

        • fox [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          There's probably something to zoomers being less adept with computers than millennials. We grew up with computers that were fairly easy to use but still required some technical knowledge. It's all been abstracted away for ease of use now unless you really go digging or use :tux:

          • crime [she/her, any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah, that and spending more time with their phones than on devices with keyboards/terminal access/etc like a desktop or laptop