this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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May I gently ask if you have children in the phone age range?
I have never seen anything with such a hold over teenagers.
It's absolutely crack. My nephew and niece is 7 and 4, they don't watch a lot of tv and aren't allowed on the phone a lot, but when they are it's fucking crazy. They don't even have to do anything on it. When he was 5 and his friend was also 5, we had a Christmas family party. My phone was on the table and it blinked. No joke, they were like zombies, starring my phone down. He reached for it and i told him not to touch it. Their fingers kept moving on their own, and all they could to is stt the time, yet that was the most interesting thing in the universe to them. They were unable to not touch it.
When they are allowed on the phone for like 15 minutes all they do is to watch the biggest most meaningless garbage i can imagine. They would pick looking at a phone over pretty much anything. Before my sister had kids i would always think the whole ipad kids thing is blown out of proportion and i would teach them things with it, because after all, it is a useful tool. Not anymore, fuck that. I feel bad for ipad kids, i can only imagine the brain rot.
I have kids that age and a little older, and we have strict rules on screen time because of this. When I ask what they want to do, two will be uninterested in watching something on the TV or tablet, but if I let the other do it, they'll all watch whatever is on the screen. My kids will try to grab my phone from me randomly during the day, and if I'm doing anything on my phone or computer, they'll try to see what I'm doing. If I let them watch something on YouTube or something, they'll watch stupid, high-engagement videos (e.g. Minecraft "challenges" or whatever), and my oldest was practically addicted to a toy review channel (they weren't even interested in the toys) until I banned YouTube entirely (we let them choose how to use their allotted screen time).
There's no way I'm letting them have a phone until they can demonstrate the smallest bit of restraint. I'm considering leaving my old phone around for emergency calls, but I know the moment I let them access it, they'll get on the internet and watch random videos.
I think devices can be a fantastic learning tool, and I sometimes let them use my devices for educational reasons occasionally, but even then, they need strict limits on total time and per session time. We let them "earn" time by reading, but again, we have those strict limits so they don't binge.
When my kids can be trusted with a phone, I'm not going to let them bring it unless they have a legitimate reason to have it at school (e.g. they have an after school activity w/o a fixed end time).
You're really good at writing compelling fiction.
Maybe y'all are just boring AF to these poor kids? I would greatly prefer a phone over somebody condescending to me.
I have children, including a teen, and they have phones.
One thing I do notice is that they're quite a lot better at putting the phone away when they're with friends doing stuff or at family dinners than their grandparents who keeps checking notifications and answering calls regardless of when and where.
They grew up with phones and they have a much better understanding of when it's socially acceptable to use it.
They know not use the phone during class, so there's really no good reason to ban it entirely.
That's your kids which are in the minority.
Their friends are pretty good too. Whenever they hang out they do other stuff. They plan to meet for some purpose and that's what they do. Keeping up to date on social media is something they do on their own time when they're bored.
It's like they grow out of it, once they've seen enough crap.
I know one family like that. Kids prefer activities to phones. But the rest not so much. The kids get together and do things in spurts separated by phone time. Usually whatever they are doing, at least one of them is on the phone. So it is really kid dependent.
I think you're missing my point.
I doubt the sports jocks use their phone during sports ball practice?
Seems like a sports jock attention problem more than a phone availability problem.
Your anecdotes and your kid's anecdotes might not represent reality either. But somehow y'all are (violently) banning phones for everybody.
Exactly.
I'm surprised to see users on Lemmy being this dead set on banning stuff for kids just because "we tried nothing and it doesn't work*
Social media is bad, phones are bad, I get it, but banning is not the solution.
Kids will grow up in a world with both social media and phones. IMO school should prepare them and be a practice ground for it, so they don't make the same mistakes as we - the parents - did.
Like posted elsewhere, my kids are better at it than I am. Banning phones is projection all the way.
I'm perfectly fine with disallowing phones during class, but an outright ban is an extreme reaction completely missing the problematic issues and potentially making it worse.
True
Citations needed.