3 ms·

Parent dealing with this question myself. The two main challenges that we face: 1) A smartphone is increasingly required for getting by in society. My kid do

Parent dealing with this question myself. The two main challenges that we face: 1) A smartphone is increasingly required for getting by in society. My kid doesn't really need it, but I worry about him navigating the transit system to/from school and extra curricular activities. A smartphone takes some of the parental anxiety away here. 2) Sadly, a flip-phone is a sign of poor status and it invites bullying at school. I feel there is a genuine need for parental controls on smartphones, but getting it right is, from an engineering standpoint, not as trivial as we might think. It's also probably not as profitable either (we have a lot of battles over the phone in our house, but a lot of parents just don't care about setting similar boundaries).

madengr 8y ago
Hell, I'm about to smash this stinking iPhone and go back to a flip phone. Better yet, a 2 meter amateur radio HT.
- kawfey 8y ago
  APRS has come a long way since flip phones, now you can send email natively [http://www.aprs-is.net/email.aspx http://www.aprs-is.net/email.aspx] and SMS via SMSGTE [http://smsgte.wixsite.com/smsgte http://smsgte.wixsite.com/smsgte]
  - madengr 8y ago
    My Yeasu VX8 doesn’t have predictive text entry, which is a shame. I don’t know of any that do. I’d love to have an APRS radio with a slide out keyboard for quick texting.
jayjayok 8y ago
Would it be enough to disable/block social media apps, Youtube/Twitch and problematic games? The kid would still have a smartphone but without the addictive stuff.
- bradford 8y ago
  an inclusion list (i.e, only these apps are allowed to run) would help. Really, though, the thing that I want (and I'm probably not thinking through the ramifications too deeply, so bear with me), is a remote kill switch that is physically manifested as a FOB. Without such a device, our option of last resort is to temporarily cut service to the phone via the cell provider. This is not a process that lends itself easily toward doing and undoing, and its also only available to the primary account holder, which makes it sub-optimal. Though it has been done more than once...
  - photojosh 8y ago
    iOS 12 is introducing time-based AND app-based parental controls, manageable from a parent's phone. This is perfect timing as my kids will be getting phones in another 2 years or so, and we'll start with full monitoring and gradually remove it.
gnicholas 8y ago
> 2) Sadly, a flip-phone is a sign of poor status and it invites bullying at school. It would be great if there were a way to flip this, so that having a flip-phone were seen as a sign of having super high-tech parents who could afford any phone but chose to get this instead. I live in Silicon Valley and am curious to see what happens when my daughter starts school. I'm sure there are other parents who will want to keep their kids off devices, and many of them would be very wealthy. I'm terrible at branding, but this seems like a branding challenge. Like if you're the kind of parent who would enroll your kid in an SAT class or after-school tutoring, this is a thing that will have more impact on their eventual growth.
- soared 8y ago
  Purely a marketing problem then. If someone makes apple 2.0, sells high-end flip phones for $2,000 each, the goal would be achieved.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    I did wonder if the "answer" is a diamond-encrusted dumbphone. Maybe a less socially-wasteful solution would be to create an OLPC-like model, where you give your kid a phone and simultaneously signal that you have enough wealth to donate a phone to a kid in need elsewhere. If I weren't already running a couple early-stage startups, I would seriously pursue this — for the good of kids in the US, and kids elsewhere.
PenguinCoder 8y ago
I have been using a product called ESET Parental Control for android. With this on the device, you can set allowed hours, apps, sites, etc. It has the ability to set duration of usage, and allowed apps 'regardless of time frame/other rules'. It has a location tracker and also allows emergency calling/texting to set numbers no matter what. While I do not advocate for censorship at all, in the case of my kid, without this app he would be using the devices at all times no matter what the rules and limitations are. This helps give a better piece of mind and technological aid for the parent. It's not entirely fool proof or without its downsides, but I also do not use it as a spying tactic; merely to limit device usage and applications.

madengr 8y ago

Hell, I'm about to smash this stinking iPhone and go back to a flip phone. Better yet, a 2 meter amateur radio HT.

kawfey 8y ago
APRS has come a long way since flip phones, now you can send email natively [http://www.aprs-is.net/email.aspx http://www.aprs-is.net/email.aspx] and SMS via SMSGTE [http://smsgte.wixsite.com/smsgte http://smsgte.wixsite.com/smsgte]
- madengr 8y ago
  My Yeasu VX8 doesn’t have predictive text entry, which is a shame. I don’t know of any that do. I’d love to have an APRS radio with a slide out keyboard for quick texting.

jayjayok 8y ago

Would it be enough to disable/block social media apps, Youtube/Twitch and problematic games? The kid would still have a smartphone but without the addictive stuff.

bradford 8y ago
an inclusion list (i.e, only these apps are allowed to run) would help. Really, though, the thing that I want (and I'm probably not thinking through the ramifications too deeply, so bear with me), is a remote kill switch that is physically manifested as a FOB. Without such a device, our option of last resort is to temporarily cut service to the phone via the cell provider. This is not a process that lends itself easily toward doing and undoing, and its also only available to the primary account holder, which makes it sub-optimal. Though it has been done more than once...
- photojosh 8y ago
  iOS 12 is introducing time-based AND app-based parental controls, manageable from a parent's phone. This is perfect timing as my kids will be getting phones in another 2 years or so, and we'll start with full monitoring and gradually remove it.

gnicholas 8y ago

> 2) Sadly, a flip-phone is a sign of poor status and it invites bullying at school. It would be great if there were a way to flip this, so that having a flip-phone were seen as a sign of having super high-tech parents who could afford any phone but chose to get this instead. I live in Silicon Valley and am curious to see what happens when my daughter starts school. I'm sure there are other parents who will want to keep their kids off devices, and many of them would be very wealthy. I'm terrible at branding, but this seems like a branding challenge. Like if you're the kind of parent who would enroll your kid in an SAT class or after-school tutoring, this is a thing that will have more impact on their eventual growth.

soared 8y ago
Purely a marketing problem then. If someone makes apple 2.0, sells high-end flip phones for $2,000 each, the goal would be achieved.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  I did wonder if the "answer" is a diamond-encrusted dumbphone. Maybe a less socially-wasteful solution would be to create an OLPC-like model, where you give your kid a phone and simultaneously signal that you have enough wealth to donate a phone to a kid in need elsewhere. If I weren't already running a couple early-stage startups, I would seriously pursue this — for the good of kids in the US, and kids elsewhere.

PenguinCoder 8y ago

I have been using a product called ESET Parental Control for android. With this on the device, you can set allowed hours, apps, sites, etc. It has the ability to set duration of usage, and allowed apps 'regardless of time frame/other rules'. It has a location tracker and also allows emergency calling/texting to set numbers no matter what. While I do not advocate for censorship at all, in the case of my kid, without this app he would be using the devices at all times no matter what the rules and limitations are. This helps give a better piece of mind and technological aid for the parent. It's not entirely fool proof or without its downsides, but I also do not use it as a spying tactic; merely to limit device usage and applications.