I linked to this thread, only because it's what got me thinking about this topic again. Me and my SO talk about phones occasionally, regarding our kids. Neither of them are anywhere close to an age where they might have one. However, as time goes on, we find ourselves so repelled by the idea of the kids having a fully fledged smartphone.
Given the reality that all social media apps are effectively skinner boxes, training you to use them more, the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette. I have to remind myself that the internet I grew up on is dead and gone. I may have been exposed to some weird ass shit in AOL chat rooms, but there wasn't any kind of algorithmic content feed keeping me itching and scratching.
So far, the only time the oldest uses an iPad is when they use mine, and the only apps they use are Procreate for drawing, and an app that helps kids learn to write letters and words. Watching TV is probably the worst thing we get into at home when it comes to just pure content consumption, but we keep the list of watchable stuff pretty small, and regularly axe shows we feel don't meet our standards when we venture off that list.
I guess this has evolved into a larger discussion about media consumption as I have typed this out, but at the end of the day, that's what's happening on these phones, right?
The Internet is demonic but at the same time you can't expect to keep kids off when all their friends are on it. I'm lucky that my kid is in a tight knit school where all the parents know each other so I've been meaning to make a class pact to do no smartphones until 7th grade or something. It only takes one.
I honestly think the majority of people don't fully comprehend what they're fucking with when it comes to this stuff, social media in particular. The fact that most of these kids will end up face id'ed in a database before they reach the age of consent is horrifying. Let alone the addiction potential, higher value activities bypassed for mindless scrolling, cyberbullying and like legit stranger danger.
I will probably end up getting a desktop PC in the living room for research and homework assignments etc. but when it comes to carrying a computer around in your pocket the bad outweighs the good.
It’s a new entire vector of power, you can’t just try and ignore it, you have to teach your kids to use it instead of being used by others through it
Yes exactly, how many of us are commies bc of the internet
Yeah, the cat has entirely escaped all conceivable bags at this point. Kids are going to have their lives fucked up by media, best you can do is give them weapons to fight back. I strongly advocate stealing as much decent media as possible and putting it on local storage for them. Old music, movies, anything you can get so they can watch shit without ads. Ask them what they want to see then pull the torrents and give it to them to engage with on their own level without being exposed to algos and adverts.
It's not too bad on streaming services yet, though it's coming. I have attempted to do just this btw, but kids content is amazingly hard to find seeds for. If I were a better person with more time on my hands I would find a way to rip it and seed it myself. But atm I'm nowhere near equipped for that. My box has been down for a month after a power outage and I haven't even had the time to debug it
Get a good Bluray/DVD drive and hit up your local library or RedBox and just start ripping that shit yourself. Most of the stuff from the library is in pretty good condition. Your results may vary, depending on the library in your area.
It feels dystopian when I see children today so young they can't speak yet, already hooked on a tablet watching the crappiest content imaginable and a myriad ads in between. Capitalism has left kids with the cheapest to produce entertainment while also being scientifically designed to be as addictive as possible, terrible for their attention spans and development of critical thinking, with a touch of capitalist and atomistic propaganda.
I don't have kids but if I did I would also try to delay any access to the internet for as long as possible. Maybe until 13 at least idk, I can imagine that they get very frustrated if their friends are allowed while they aren't. It's important to show them as many activities as possible so they can find interests aside from that, it might keep them from having such an urge to get a mobile device.
I see kids on the reg while were shopping, just goblin crouched in the back of the cart just sucked into weird AI YouTube nonsense. It is pretty nutty.
This subject is easily one of the biggest and most frustrating realities of doing parallel parenting that I have to deal with being divorced. Kiddo is 9 and unlike mom I straight up refuse to give him smartphone access at my house until 11, at the earliest. He has access to electronic devices for his hour of screen time a day which are heavily moderated and controlled at both a device level and router level. PG-13 content is totally acceptable to me and I'll even allow R rated depending on the circumstances and provided we can engage with it together. I am not a fan at all of trying to shelter your kids entirely from the outside world and definitely believe in talking to kids about difficult subjects like violence, sex, drugs, et al.
Straight-up though: I think you're making a huge mistake if you give your kid a smartphone and let them raw dog the internet when they're in single digits. There is just so much goddamn awful trash, gross inappropriate memes, and parasocial relationships which are going to give them tons of weird ideas about all kinds of shit you'll eventually have to work with them through. Media literacy is a complicated subject even for a adults. That isn't even getting into all the shit designed to fuck with their dopamine levels.
I do think the comparison of giving a kid a cellphone to giving them a cigarette is probably a bit hyperbolic...but I definitely would liken it to giving them a soft drink or ice cream or something. At a certain age its ok and totally normal to have it...but the internet and smart devices are treats which as the parent makes you responsible for handling moderation until that blasted prefrontal cortex comes in.
and let them raw dog the internet when they're in single digits.
Hell of a sentence.
But yea, I can't imagine how frustrating parenting while divorced and not agreeing on how to do it properly.
No I think it's about as bad as giving your kid a cigarette honestly. In some ways worse, in some ways better... but ya know. Worse than a soft drink imo
I think the net is potentially much more dangerous than cigs. The worst thing cigarettes can do is kill you. And between when you start smoking at eight and when you die of lung cancer smoking will introduce you to all kinds of cool weirdos and you'll have good taste in music.
But the net can destroy your conscience, your will, your ethics, your sense of self.
Death of the body is nothing to death of the mind. Cigarettes never made anyone in to a fascist or a democrat.
It’s much worse than a soft drink or ice cream, but better than a cigarette (with a chance of being worse than that too). More like a weed joint with a 30% chance of being laced with crack (to be clear weed is probably better for you than any of the things mentioned if you’re 21 or older, but when you’re under 18 it’s definitely worse for you than a soft drink)
Straight-up though: I think you're making a huge mistake if you give your kid a smartphone and let them raw dog the internet when they're in single digits.
Yeah, this is specifically what I'm talking about. I have friends whose kids are just a few years older than mine, and they have access to YouTube kids. One told me he had to take it off the iPad because a creator can flag anything as "for kids" and it just gets added to the app, so he was playing cat and mouse with brain rot all the time. Another friend of mine had to collect the Nintendo Switch at night because their kid figured out they could watch YouTube from the built-in browser on the device.
I see comments here in this thread about how "You gotta also talk to your kids", which, I feel, is implied, but maybe I'm wrong. However, over a decade of working in K12-IT has taught me that kids are a relentless force of nature. If you've implemented a block on something like "YouTube", they will collaboratively work towards finding a way around that block (and they will find a way, they always do). They will even create black markets to distribute videos from YouTube!
Most of that doesn't really bother me, though, I was doing that kind of shit in high school. One thing that stuck with me is someone from the same group of friends told me recently that his oldest (high school age) told him about a year ago, "Thanks for keeping me off the iPad\Computer, and pushing me to do my work, instead of letting me become an iPad kid." He's also in a parallel parenting situation. He told me that his kid and his friends "Can tell which kids are iPad kids." Whatever that might mean. It's not isolated, though, because I hear the same thing from Teachers I work with, and even daycare workers at our daycare.
I should say, it's not a scientific classification, and I recognize how anecdotal it is, but it's enough to give me pause.
I understand and share all your concerns. I am dealing with a kid of a similar age, and it is frustrating to know what's out there. That's why "his" phone is his "mom's" phone that he's "borrowing". It's logged on to her stuff. Sure he can (And does) sometimes get around that, but ultimately he is responsible to her for all he does on the phone, which has limited what he does on it quite a lot. And ultimately we can't really do a lot of other stuff that we can enforce when he's at his father's place, or just enforce at all really. Ultimately he has to have a phone and that phone needs the internet, so we can only create an environment of responsibility for what he does with the phone.
But he basically can't exist without a phone. He gets his homework on an app ffs.
the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette
Pretty much yes. Like you I was lucky enough to be on the internet before it turned into an engagement-maximizing hellhole so my brain had time to develop its defenses as things deteriorated and I matured. It wasn't without its mis-steps, I got hooked enough on an MMO to fail some of my classes in university but managed to recover and permanently swore off multiplayer games. Throwing kids right into the deep end of that pool is honestly bordering on criminal neglect.
These are my guiding principles on the subject:
- Kids need to not be alienated from their peers by excessive restriction
- Kids need to be educated on how to safely and smartly engage with the internet and tech, which they can only get through experience and regular guided discussion
- Kids need to see digital hygiene modeled for them by their parents
They sometimes conflict with each other and they can be hard standards to meet, but the more ambiguous parts are things we can feel out as we go since that’s de facto what everyone is doing on the subject anyway.
I’m skeptical of the narrative that tech companies push where they’ve created mind control rays which force people to engage with their content. Super convenient if your entire business model revolves around content engagement. If your kid is at risk of addiction (mental health, family history, etc) then yeah don’t let them download the slop machine apps. I authorize intense parental controls for my kids stuff. I also have Pihole set up to block ads on our entire network. I also tell my kids that it’s not healthy to enjoy something so much that it makes other things boring. And then I model taking breaks.
How often would you say your kids attempt to bypass the parental controls? I operate what amount to "parental controls" for over 1000 kids every day, and I regularly encounter the new, interesting, and funny ways kids find to get around those controls. No one shares paper notes anymore, they share Google Docs and use the Chat feature built into the doc interface.
Either they ask permission when necessary or they just tell me that they bypassed something because they’re proud of figuring it out. It’s definitely a different dynamic than doing tech for a school, for example. Might just be a thing with my kids idk. I don’t get mad when they bypass stuff. There’s just a lot of reinforcement about why the rules are in place and validation of their emotions around that.
why don’t people just lean into it? I mean, heavily regulate/limit devices until they can really understand them (maybe 12-15 years old), and then start just teaching them full on about nerd shit. Turn them into Linux nerds, teach them about dystopian social media algorithms, get them hooked on nerd shit like compiling their own software and programming scripts for menial work. I can’t imagine a kid getting hooked on Cocomelon if you’ve managed to instill in them a reflexive disgust of the entire YouTube content farming industry
Start them out with a lan-only Linux install that’s properly set up to prevent them from using the internet, but has access to few pre-installed games and all the apps needed for development and tinkering
This. If you're old enough to pick up a weapon you're old enough to fight. There's no such thing as "too young" or "not ready". War has never spared the children. As soon as they can coordinate their eyes and their hands they're fighting a war for their own attention, dopamine regulation, self esteem, and social life.
God created Mint to train the faithful.
- Show
Something that's amazingly consistent about play behaviors in mammals; play teaches you to fight.
Goat kids rear and headbutt, cats pounce, wolves hound and nip and submit, monkeys chase each other up and down, human kids turn anything they can pick up in to a sword.
Play teaches many other things - social relationships, fairness, theory of mind, coordination, dance, joy. But it also teaches you how to fight, how to hunt, how to move quickly through unknown terrain, how to hide and deceive.
Progress is an illusion. We still live in a world of violence and hardship. Not everywhere, not for everyone, not all the time. But look at the former ussr. 35 years ago Russians and Ukrainians were comrades, friends, building communism together. Now after a generation of Nazi lies and NATO manipulations, capital theft and demographic collapse the two nations are locked in a brutal struggle that should have been unthinkable.
And there are many other, less dramatic cases. Kids will face bullying. Kids will need to lie convincly to teachers and bureaucrats and cops. Kids might need to steal shit. Kids might need to run real goddamn fast, even if it's just to catch the bus.
Every act of play can be preparation for hardship as well as joy. A tiktok dance might teach you to love life, but it's also teaching you to lead and follow, to have patience when other's can't keep up or with your own limits, to coordinate, to view the world as an interconnect network of people. And dancing is just swordsmanship without the blade. Footwork is the first step in learning to fight, before you learn to control your breath or throw a punch.
You can view these things holistically. Learning to fight gives you the power to avoid fighting. Learning the wield a sword teaches you to dance with someone you love. Learning to coordinate a dance routine teaches you to lead an army but also to plan a wedding feast.
I agree completely, it’s just funny and horrific from a zoomed out viewpoint
True dat. No one should have to deal with this bs, especially kids.
Our cause is just. The enemy shall be defeated. Victory shall be ours. Long live Linux.
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, this will probably be us as well. It's a duality my SO and I live in. Because on one hand, we'd rather they never have to touch social media, but on the other hand, we want a sick gaming and tinkering room where we can all hang and play games. So the former is pretty idealist, and I accept is unrealistic, considering I know the latter is inevitable. Besides, I already have a rolling server rack with some gear in it, and by the time they're old enough for Minecraft, that rack will be loaded with servers that I'll happily let them tinker with.
I feel really bad criticizing other parents ways of raising their kids (I know I'm not perfect) but I do want to say something when parents just hand their kid a phone at restaurants and let youtube autoplay them to hitlers playhouse. We stood firm and now our kids can sit at the table for a while and worst case they get a piece of paper and some crayons to keep them distracted if we're being too boring.
I don't plan to give my kids a phone for as long as possible. I think our friends are on the same page too but someone's going to make the first move at some point. I'd like to keep it down to simple messaging apps so they can talk to each other but we're not even at that stage with our kids so I have no clue how it'll go.
What's the app for reading/writing letters that yours use?
I like the way China handles things by limiting screen time I think if your like really young you shouldn't have a phone period The older you get the more screen time you get
The biggest problem with smartphones with young kids, as opposed to other devices, is that they’re much harder to to monitor. If your kid is only allowed to use the device around you, you can keep an eye out, clamp down on content you don’t want them to be looking at, but more importantly you can explain why it’s problematic. The real danger isn’t in the possibility of seeing problematic content, it’s the explanation and context coming from someone with ill intent. That’s the problem with sheltering kids, if you don’t explain it to them then someone else will. And it’s much easier for that to happen with a smartphone.
Now as far as general behavioral impact from the devices, yeah I do see the bottled up energy/withdrawal issues once the device goes away. Everything in moderation, including moderation. But I do think parents, teachers, adults generally can fall too easily into a knee jerk mentality of “modes of my youth were good, modes of current youth are destructive.” I remember my boomer mom back when fretting about the negative mental effects of the Internet We Grew Up On. Even today, I hear the refrain of “oh get them reading they’re not going to learn from watching videos.” But, while my kid reads plenty, he’s also learned a ton of stuff from videos. And I’m not talking about dumb pop culture shit, we’re talking about history stuff on a level way above his grade. There’s also an inescapable element in that a lot school work is tied to apps, my kid has to use them in order to get his work done.
And, well, there’s also a heavy duty amount of “those in glass houses.” We can’t expect the kids to get off the devices while we’re constantly glued to our socials and content media.
This. 24/7 media is the way things are now. Old folks (us) don't understand what it's like for kids and never will. We can't teach them how to fight it because we didn't grow up in their environment and don't know what they're facing. Trying to lock them out to protect them, afaik, has not worked at any time in the last 450,000 years. Best you can do is give them the best weapons and as much wisdom as we can so they can figure out how to fight on their own terms.
And, well, there’s also a heavy duty amount of “those in glass houses.” We can’t expect the kids to get off the devices while we’re constantly glued to our socials and content media.
My SO and I were just talking about this. It's a struggle.
I think it might be negative. But I also think it's even more negative for a kid not to get the same experiences as their peers, it leads to bullying and problems socialising if they do not. The safest option is probably to allow it but be careful, and to make sure they're getting a good education from you outside of it to inoculate them to the worst aspects.
The amount of harassment and horrible negative stuff that children can be exposed to via unsupervised smartphone access is staggering.
I'm not a parent but I'd rather my kids get bullied for not having a phone than opening them up to the risk of receiving a constant stream of bullying 24/7.
[CW: for pretty much everything - SH, CSA, suicide etc. from here on]
That's without even mentioning the potential for them to be exposed to sexual predators, to reveal too much information about themselves online, to be involved in production or consumption of CSE material, to be exposed to really toxic stuff about things like health (e.g. pro-anorexia groups), scams, gambling, drug abuse, guides for carrying out suicide and so much more.
Looking back on it I was exposed to wildly inappropriate things online although I missed a whole lot of the really violent and graphic stuff due to a lack of interest in a lot of that material, thankfully. But it only takes one video to seriously traumatise a kid, potentially even permanently, and it only takes one "prank" for that to happen.
I get what you're saying but at the same time, sometimes there are worse things in the world than copping some flak for not having a smartphone like the cool kids and I'm certain that there are parents out there who wish they could get their kid back or get their kid back to the time before they were deeply and permanently scarred by overexposure to the online world.
It's just not the kind of gamble I'd be willing to personally take.
Had to figure this out this year with my daughter going to middle school and signing up for after school activities every possible day. The good news is that smart phones have tons of parental controls that you can basically make them function only for calls and texts.
Kids get them way too early though, by 3rd grade we were hearing laments that everyone had a phone but her. Naturally all those kids have like full access to tiktok and I'm assuming the internet 🤮
Kids with phones? They're taking over. It won't be long. They're mesmerized skeletons, those kids with phones.
I thought it was weird by Gorillaz to make a follow-up to 'kids with guns' since I'm pretty sure that song wasn't even a single, but I can't argue that it's not a hit.
The kid has a phone. He walks around town and he might need to call his mother, sometimes I take him out to do stuff in nature and he might need to call me if he gets lost, if he's at a friends house or at his dad's he needs to be able to call us, and both his school and the social services he is expected to interact with expects him to have a phone. It's of course a dilemma given how messed up social media is, but it is simply unrealistic for him not to have a phone.
