3 kids. 13, 11 and 11 now. 10 years old was what my ex and I did with data plans coming a year after that.
Phone is like any other tool. It is my job as a parent to teach my children the proper way to use it.
I’ve got twin girls. We held off on smartphones until this past summer when they turned 13.
One couldn’t wait to have a smart phone and now handles her own entire social life through it and is happier than ever now that she can communicate with her friends non stop.
The other simply did not want a phone. We asked a dozen times and she said she wasn’t interested in one and didn’t think she would use it. Since she’s with her twin 75% of the time anyway we decided not to push.
We gave my son a smart phone at 8, because his mother and I lived in different states and he flew as an unaccompanied minor a LOT. I also lived in Oakland and I wanted to be able to reach him and to know where he was when he was with me.
We had strict rules about when he was allowed to have it on and when he was not allowed to NOT have it. We also didn’t get him a data plan and made him use Wifi.
As a result of him actually being impressively responsible with that phone, we turned on the data and relaxed the rules probably years earlier than we would have under other circumstances.
Our first daughter had a old smart phone at about 8 (she has just turned 9). It doesn’t have data turned on, so is more or less a dumb phone unless she is at home. I don’t think her little sister could care less about getting one.
I think that it’s good for her to have one as it means she can contact us if she goes up the road to her friends or park/shop.
She doesn’t have it for at school or general day to day life - so it may not be the best example
Honestly, if I can afford it I’m getting it to them whenever other parents are getting it to their kids.
There were plenty of parents who held off on getting things like TV, the Internet, and it had no pronounced effect.
My buddy just had a kid and proudly said “they’re never getting a smartphone.” And I was like “dude you slept over my house to watch porn because you didn’t have Internet in the 90s. You do you, but like… Idk. That won’t go the way you think it will.”
How old are your kids now?
Are you sure it didn’t have any effect? I have seen some kids who wouldn’t put their phone away when they are walking, when they are talking to others , etc. Their attention span is so low they cant even concentrate.
Also the dangers of the internet and what stuff you can find. I will give them a phone when they are old enough to understand that. Maybe 15 -16
Yes, I’m sure. This is a tale as old as time.
Same was said of newspapers. Same was said of television. Same was said of videogames. Same was said of the internet.
Humans get new tool. Old people who grew up without tool look down on young for overusing tool.
I mean sometimes it has /some/ effect. I’m in my late 20s, so was a kid somewhat recently. We grew up without television. We had movies, and we had the Internet, but no TV. My dad didn’t want us mindlessly wasting time on stuff we weren’t even interested in just because it was what was “on right now.” Not to mention the accumulative hours of watching ads.
We all ended up more creative and artistic than our peers, and my relationships with my siblings are stronger than those of my friends. We read a lot (though people I knew with TV also often read a lot so I don’t think that’s necessarily a given, though I know I myself would not have been regularly reading a book a day in middle school if TV had been an option)
I’m just saying limiting time wasted on media is often net positive.
Mine is almost 12 and I’m not sure she is ready for that. She has an iPad now and her friends all chat via Discord. I have an old phone for 911 calls only.
Before I wanted them to have a phone, I got a second d phone. It was my phone, not my kids phone. I would let my child take it when they went for a ride, or stayed over with a friend, or whatever. But it was my phone. If I had to take it off them, I wasn’t taking their phone, I was taking my phone. The difference is important. It also gave them a chance to learn appropriate use, and normalised me being in control of it. By age 10-11 the phone was basically theirs, in their hands, but the control is still mine. So my advice is don’t give the phone to your child, especially it as a present. It’s more difficult to take something of theirs away, but if they borrow something of yours, it’s much easier.
We just did this a month or so ago. My wife’s old Pixel 4a got a data-only SIM, and we locked it down extensively with a profile for each of the older kids (9 and 7). Websites and apps are allow-only. They can call or text us through Google Chat, and we also allow Pokemon Go and a couple of other things. We call it the “Family Phone,” and they don’t have unlimited access to it, but it’s handy to have something to hand them when they leave the house without us.
Best answer yet. Plus, you can sneak on then when in doubt with FindMyPhone or something. Thank you.
No, that is bullshit. If you don’t trust them or if they can’t be trusted don’t give them a phone. Nanny parenting, or pretending you’re the NSA is unhealthy for their development, and gives you an illusion of control of their life that is inaccurate and misleading.
Talk to your fucking kid about your worries or their behavior and/or parent them, actually drive behavioral change, but don’t bitch out and not parent and pretend the E-leash is helping them or you.
I really like this idea. I am going to mention it to my partner. We have been trying to craft a policy for it recently.
This is the way to go. I don’t have kids, but it’s how my sisters went about it. For the longest time if my nephew wanted to call and talk to me, the number would ring up as my sister’s number, because not only was it a spare phone, but it was dually connected with her number (not sure how tbh, she worked for a carrier for a long time).
It’s just hard to find that thin line between allowing them to have something or have them be behind all their friends who do have access to one.
My policy would probably be worse, tbh. I’d toss them an old Nokia and be like, “Legends say it’ll take the force of an 18 wheeler and a flood and still work.” For context, I had a friend who ran his over 3 times with his dad’s mack truck, reducing it to just a screen and PCB which he used as his phone at school. Then I watched him accidentally drop and fully submerge said screen and PCB into a half foot deep puddle while we ran down a mountain in a thunderstorm and that sucker still worked.
It was his experiment, to keep trying to destroy it to the point where he couldn’t use it but have to use it if it did. I think it died not too long after, though.
I apologize for being harsh, but you have no monkey in this circus.
Yeah! How dare someone without a child share their opinion and relevant life experiences. That dick should know we don’t care for his type here!
/s in case it’s needed
I mean… the prompt is “parents”… so… you know.
The comment is not a response to the prompt though, but a reply to another comment.
None taken, friend. I understand that, but I still think about these things a lot. I’m still young enough where I could have a happy accident, even if we’re not trying. My mind is always on how to be a good father if it did.
As a successful father I’ll tell you the secret. Raise excellent humans.
That’s hopefully the plan if that time does come. Two of my three sisters lived at home and single while raising their first kids, so I tried to help them out as much as I could. I wouldn’t be completely blind going in. I’d be fretting a lot at first, though. The world would seem much more dangerous with a kid to worry about.
Not having the Futurama brain slug that comes with having a child makes you a note objective and better observer of parenting in my opinion.
It also often makes people prone to establishing rules and lines in the sand that they’ll never adhere to because they underestimate the will and ingenuity of young humans lol
Probably true. Idealism always loses out to material reality.
Four kids, smartphone distribution from top to bottom was about 15, 14, 14, 12. It was all of course dependent on the age of the kid and the ability to cope with the immense wealth of bullshit you get from having a smartphone.
Saw this in the news in my country just recently. Like, middle school would be appropriate, with property parental controls. I think that is what was said.
We gave our kid their first proper smartphone when they had to do a bit of travel to get to school. However, I’ve fully embraced the parental controls of Google family link and Microsoft safety and it’s been great so far. The combination of both provides incredibly granular controls to what they can see on the web, how long they use specific apps and what apps they’re allowed to install.
I think my kid will be like me and try to overcome those restrictions.
I’ve got complaints about Google family link’s limits. They don’t work right.
This is on the family tablet.
As for phones, my kid will get a phone sometime after they ask for one, likely when I upgrade mine. (Unless it’s a forced upgrade due to gravity or water)
What’s wrong with the screenshot? I have no idea what the numbers mean but I’d guess 28min is how long the app was opened, and 20m is how much video was watched?
Oh, yeah, it’s set for a 20 minute limit, it was used for 28. Limits are supposed to be uh, limiting.
Oh, yeah. So one’s the limit, the other the actual? Yikes.
Depends heavily on were you are (and customs around your community)
For me, my parents gave me a smartphone when I was going to college, I kid you not.
Yes, I wished I had it sooner, but I turned out ok. Glad they didn’t tho. social media additions and withdrawals are real.
I bought myself a 7 inch tablet when I was 8, and I used that as a smartphone. It was small enough to fit into most pockets, and looking at smartphones now, I guess I was just ahead of time with that screen size.
Yes, bought myself. It was the cheapest Android tablet, costing €50. It was quite a bit for me at the time, but nothing unrealistic. My parents didn’t give me any pocket money, but you know, I had a grandma. She’d sometimes give me like 10-20 bucks and tell me to keep it away from my parents. And probably a similar amount in food each time I visited her xD.As for internet, basically unrestricted access, and that turned out well for me. I’d be really (much more) dumb without all that access to information. Now, we didn’t have internet, and we still don’t (I am 18 now), so how? I’ve had a dumbphone before, with a SIM card of course. I could use 250MB for 50¢ for a day and top up the credit at basically any supermarket.
Obviously, that wasn’t good for everyday usage. But there was something else. WiFi. Like half the people left WPS PIN enabled, with the default PIN. I then used app called “WPS WPA Tester” which had some 14 default PINs it would try. And it usually worked. Even if it didn’t, 12345678 was a fairly common password.
However, I did understand that it’s not quite good, so when I wanted to download something larger (>50MB), I went to places with public WiFi. Usually the bus station.Social media: I’ve only used Facebook for a long time because my parents wanted me to have that (how ironic). However, I’ve deleted it when I was 12. Too much dumb stuff. I’ve seen some classmates use Snapchat, and I liked the filters. However I thought it was just a camera app, but when I downloaded it, I found it needs me to sign up. I’ve always had the same allergy to signing up on random places, so I quickly uninstalled it.
When I was 13 I signed up on Twitter and Quora. Twitter mainly for space-related accounts like NASA, SpaceX, Scott Manley, NSF,… and Quora occasionally had questions even I could answer.
At 14 I got my first laptop which needed an OS. I liked Linux Mint (and didn’t even understand the difference between Windows) and Reddit had a nice community for LM. So I signed up on Reddit.
At 15 I signed up on Telegram for the PixelExperience community as I installed the PE 11 custom ROM on my Moto G5s Plus.
At 17 I created an account here on Lemmy, ditched Reddit (due to API changes), deleted Quora account and deleted the Telegram account.Overall I think it was mostly positive. It allowed me to learn a lot and get in contact with more people. I wouldn’t even know any English at all without it, which basically unlocked me the gate to most information. And now, I’d probably be mostly a copy of my parents, which would be terrible. Fun fact: The first website I visited when I got internet access was Wikipedia. So much information in 1 place.
But yeah, I should mention some negatives too. I did spend quite a bit of time watching Minecraft and FNAF videos. Although before the tablet I spent all that time with TV, so I guess not much difference.
I should also probably mention that until high school I didn’t even take my devices to school because I was worried about them getting stolen or broken. I never broke a screen, so that was a success.I never broke a screen, so that was a success.
wow. respect.
Quite a story.Respect.And worthy of turning it into a blog post!
My oldest got a smart watch which could make calls only to preset numbers that we added (mom, dad, grandma, aunt, and one neighbor who had a son the same age) at 9. That’s when he started getting dropped off at friends’ houses without a parent sticking around (mind you - this was just coming off COVID lockdowns, so we may have done it sooner if there was a need to). I wanted him to always be able to reach us in any situation. He’s a really responsible kid, so he got a full smartphone the summer after 5th grade (11) when he went on the class trip to Washington DC. Currently in middle school with a smartphone and no issues yet, plus it gives us something valuable to him to take away if we feel he’s letting grades slip, etc.
My second does not seem to share the same level of responsibility, so he did not get his smart watch until 10. He may not get a smartphone anytime soon. It depends on the kid.
My youngest is 8. Time will tell about how responsible he is, but Lord - this is the child that WILL need to call us. Always getting into something 🤦🏻♀️.
Apple Watch with a cellular calling plan when he started walking to school by himself, at age 8. No need for a proper phone for a while.
My wife and I had this conversation the other day. Our kid is only two right now, but as we’ve learned, these milestones sneak up on you.
I used my own life as a guide to my opinion, and so landed on age eight or so. That’s around the age I remember being able to go to the park or to a friend’s house within the neighbourhood on my own.
Other questions about how much functionality the phone would have and how much access they would have to it at home are still to be determined.
Unrelated to the question but can we please drop the Reddit habit of adding “of Lemmy” to the question? You’re asking Lemmy, no need to add it to every question.
No ill will to OP!
Honestly. I don’t know why I found that so fucking annoying but I used to skip posts with that style of title.
Agreed, it’s so cringe
I agree, because these posts have reach beyond just Lemmy, it’s the whole fediverse. No need to address just one platform
