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?

  • Melonius [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    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?