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Calls for smartphone-free childhood grow in Britain
(www.straitstimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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Why does everything have to always be so goddamn black and white always? "Smartphones bad, let's ban them for kids". Why not have smartphones with parental regulation?
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.
What? You mean actually be a responsible parent?
Don't be silly.
Seriously. Why even have a government unless they are telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and parents what they can and cannot do, share with, or read to their children?
Parent here, raising kids without smartphones until they're at least in high school.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Older millennial here who didn't get a (dumb) phone until high school, so I have no idea what the state is with kids and phones nowadays. Are they pressured by friends/school to have smart phones? How do you help them manage/cope?
My personal experience as a university student who had to use a flip phone for like a month while waiting for a replacement screen to arrive for the main phone, which is quite similar to what would have probably happened 10 years ago when I was still in school.
Everyone kinda expects you to just have one, for example, nobody uses the actual calling or SMS functions, they use chat apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, or discord. Most of the people that I talk to in the university, I wouldn't even be able to contact without the apps, since I don't actually know their phone numbers or e-mails
Thats one thing America has going for it. Texting is still a thing here
There are different challenges in early and late childhood. Things like peer pressure are a much bigger issue during late childhood.
In early childhood the kid wants the entertainment and it's incumbent upon the parent to deny them that and provide more enriching activities that have fewer strings attached.
Yes. It's how they communicate via social media and watch Tiktok. Also, the better the iphone you have, the cooler you are.
I'm amazed this is even controversial. My parents didn't get me my first cellphone until I was in the 8th grade, and it was a flip phone. I didn't get my first smartphone until the 10th grade, and it was a Blackberry. My first Android wasn't until I was almost finished highschool. And I turned out just fine.
The only reason it's controversial is because parents do not take responsibility for their children.
It seems like the big hangups are parents unwilling to face social backlash ("but all the other kids have phones") and parents trying to justify their lack of effort with their kids (setting a device in front of the kid to shut them up). Ironically these two groups are willing to throw all the effort they don't put into raising their children into defending their bad behavior.
There’s an all or nothing problem here.
It’s actually a good way to ostracize your child by making them be the only one without a phone.
But that's also legislating how everyone should raise their kids based on how you want to raise yours.
Only if the law passes, which in theory means it has majority support. All laws legislate against the minority opinion.
True, but that all exists on a spectrum, and a law which prohibits all children from using a device because you don't want your kid using that device and they'll get bullied if they're the only one, seems a little excessive. Might as well ban expensive sneakers or shiny pokemon cards too.
The root of the issue is parents controlling how much their child uses a device, and you just cannot legislate that away. Even if it was 100% illegal, you think parents wouldn't let kids use the devices in their home if it made things easier? "Just ban it" never works, you need to incentivize alternate behavior.
Laws can allow exceptions and protect minorities. Laws are not always black and white, just like most of reality.
That wasn't what I was saying
I think the government should be going after service providers and advertiser's that knowing and deliberately target children with content that isn't curated by a suitable authority for the children's age group.
Previously we had librarians and TV channels to regulate children's media. Responsible people making reasonable judgements about the content a child should be targeted with.
That isn't the case anymore. Social media allows people and organisations direct access to children with no accountable authority in-between. Children are watching content that the child knows they shouldn't be watching. The producer and the service provider also knows this too. So children will place concert effort to avoid it being detected.
They all know that they are making content for children. Even when they're making content that the know isn't suitable for them. The people behind prime energy drink wanted to sell alcoholic drinks. They revealed in a podcast they didn't because they knew there was no market for it as their audience was far too young. Despite this they continue to make content that uses frequently sexual and violent humour. They also use and play with racism and sexism in their content.
Regulate the market and the problem will dwindle away. Their is entire businesses set up to pray on the attention of children.
Exactly. Some parts of my country are banning social media for kids without parental approval, which means they need to verify that I am an adult and my kid is not. That's a privacy violation imo, and I will use a VPN to get around it if needed.
I'm capable of monitoring what my kid has access to, and I'm capable of building trust with them so they don't feel the need to go behind my back. Laws like this don't allow for trust since the government is the one making the decisions, not the kids.
I'm not giving my kids a smartphone (except maybe a loaner phone here and there) until they prove to be they can be responsible, or they actually need one. I have a 10yo, and he's definitely not getting one yet.
The majority of people don't understand the harms of social media even while living through them. That said social media is the majority of the problem, so just give us the ability to lock it down for our kids and that would work for me. Plenty of other good uses for smartphones.
You can already put parental restrictions on a smartphone
These parents are lazy
Or bring back flip phones. Calling and texting but does basically nothing else.
They still exist! Most of them are designed to be extra durable too, perfect for kids.
I'm considering a Linux phone, like the Pinephone. I use Linux at home, so I'm comfortable locking it down to only have what I trust them to use. It looks like a regular smartphone, has terrible battery life (so limited late night time wasting), and most Android apps don't work anyway, but it makes calls and texts just fine. I may even just not get a data plan at all.
Hopefully they'll think it's cool since it'll be able to run a Minecraft server and whatnot.
Pinephone owner here. The pinephone is not meant to be, not is it suitable for being, a phone you actually use. It's a developer device.
As you say, the battery life is dreadful. If I actually do anything on it, it lasts maybe an hour and a half with the screen on, maybe up to six with it off.
It is slow. And I don't mean omg it can't multitask or play mobile games slow, I mean sometimes you type and it takes a while to appear on the screen slow.
Call quality is abysmal if you even manage to get calls to come through.
I love the pinephone as a project, and the software has improved a huge amount. But it's not really suitable day to day.
Yeah, that's why I've never pulled the trigger. I'm interested in the PPP, but reports say that battery life sucks and the camera doesn't work. I'm honestly okay with the camera not working, but I need it to last most of the day.
I'm a developer, and I'd love to hack on it, but I need the phone to be usable as a daily driver first. For me that means: reliable MMS, good call quality, decent speakers, and all day battery life. I only need a couple Android apps, and even those may be negotiable (could carry a second phone to work if necessary). I can contribute to the rest of the nice to haves.
But the OG PP may be good enough for an emergency phone. Maybe. And it's cheap enough to take a chance on it.
Laughs in Android flip phone
because parents are not regulating this. Its why we have minimum driving ages because parents cant just make their kid do the right thing.
Cars don't have a feature called "parental control". Smartphones do.