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This is sad. As a parent of a grade-schooler, I feel helpless with a complete lack of awareness around this. It feels as if everyone is calming their kids with

This is sad. As a parent of a grade-schooler, I feel helpless with a complete lack of awareness around this. It feels as if everyone is calming their kids with opiates and Xanax, and no one bats an eye because that's what everyone else is doing. Even if you're aware of the mental health issues associated with social media use, you have the option of either giving up and losing your kid to the phenomenon, or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone. The only positive trend I've seen is school districts banning smartphones. That could relieve some of the social pressure to hook your kid up with a smartphone so early in their life.

squigz 2y ago
(I'll preface this by saying I'm not a parent, and I don't raise children. I imagine it's not an easy endeavor. But...) > you have the option of either giving up and losing your kid to the phenomenon, or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone. Are these really the only 2 options you see? No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? Edit: People replying to this comment seem to have forgotten the role of parents.
- gaze 2y ago
  I don't think the personal responsibility of someone with a developing mind is any match for 10-20 years of extensive AB testing.
  - squigz 2y ago
    Well... no, but neither is it a match for, say, thousands of years of drug abuse. And yet... Perhaps our parents have something to do with that?
    - barbazoo 2y ago
      When I was a kid, all drugs were illegal, at least to me as a minor. My parents had the alcohol is bad and cigarettes are bad talks with me but even if I wanted to drink and smoke, it was hard to access until I got closer to the age where it was allowed anyway.
      - squigz 2y ago
        When I was a kid, all drugs were illegal to me too. Yet my parents had cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, and weed in the house. Me and my siblings didn't touch them. That has something to do with the law?
        sickofparadox 2y ago
        Likely not the law of the government, but I'm certain the law of your parents had something to do with it.
        squigz 2y ago
        That's, uh, sort of my point here :)
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      Kids will mostly do what they see others do. This makes drugs less difficult to dissuade. It makes phones and screens particularly pernicious. "do as I say, not as I do" is not always good enough. I have kids. They watch movies with us, and the nanny gives them more screen time than I'd like. I don't have to talk to them about drugs because nobody is handing my kids drugs. But screens are everywhere and I use them all the time, sadly.
    - jimbokun 2y ago
      And yet...we don't recommend parents allowing their middle school children to try addictive drugs.
  - htrp 2y ago
    More like 10mn-20mn subjective years of AB testing (horizontally across the population/user pool)
- barbazoo 2y ago
  > No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? Probably works for some but I imagine it being really hard to do, especially if they're at school. Our brains take a while to mature and I don't see many 5-7 year olds being able to make long term good choices on their own at that point. I think that's too much to ask.
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  You’re applying adult logic to children who haven’t developed a prefrontal cortex. Child psychology is very different than what you think.
  - babyshake 2y ago
    Even adult psychology is not what we think. We don't really understand the implications of computing untrusted information in our brains every day.
- cjohnson318 2y ago
  Yes and no. If you keep your kid off of these social media sites (a) you're going to fight about it Every. Single. Day. For. Years. and (b) they're going to get on them with burner accounts/devices anyway. Where will they get a burner phone? From any other kid at school that gets a new phone, and wants $20. The whole situation is psychotic. Even without social media there's horror stories from the "local media" of AirDrop and group texts.
  - foobarian 2y ago
    I discovered that my kid's peer group shares screen recordings via imessage chats to get around being offline or running out of time limit on the source apps (youtube, etc.). I kind of like the resourcefulness tbh.
    - squigz 2y ago
      This is another good point that seems to fly under the radar - putting aside the implications for free society for a moment, even if we were to implement legislation regarding the use of social media, rest assured, kids will find a way around it if they want to - much like with drugs.
      - cjohnson318 2y ago
        Yeah, there's no winning. I think there's a happy medium, like Fail Whale Twitter, where you can have social media that doesn't drag you into a short video loop for an hour or more, but that model doesn't seem to be commercially viable.
    - rescbr 2y ago
      Hah! That's ingenious. Back in the middle school days, decades ago, I was running proxies on free PHP hosting services to avoid content restriction on school computers. Learned more from my shenanigans than from the computer lab classes :)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- rpcope1 2y ago
  You're talking about a medium that's been explicitly designed to be addictive and young children, who don't reason in the same way that an adult does. You may as well say to little Timmy "here are your smokes, just remember that this could cause lung cancer one day and consider it before blowing through a pack a day."
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Parent to middle schooler: "OK, honey, this is called cocaine. I'm going to let you try it, but only in a safe and reasonable manner. We'll discuss reasonable limits on how much you can use and when."
  - squigz 2y ago
    This is a sane and reasonable comparison to what I was talking about. Thank you for the constructive addition.
  - jq-r 2y ago
    This is exactly how it went with my ex neighbour. Her dad offered her cigarettes on her 18th birthday to "use responsibly". She's been smoking since that day. She's retired now and a heavy smoker most of her life. I'm not sure how she avoided cancer but I guess she was lucky.
- ineptech 2y ago
  > "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? It's not so much that people are too dumb to do this or don't understand the danger, it's that doing this well is tedious and time-consuming and expensive. Setting up parental controls and monitoring them is a chore, you have to sign up for a bunch of apps you don't want and read outdated docs and troubleshoot random error messages and crap. Most of the good stuff costs money, all of the shitty stuff is free. Finding educational apps that aren't terrible requires research, whereas the worst garbage imaginable is heavily advertised. So, I'm not saying you're wrong, but that this is a problem with incentives as opposed to a moral failing. I think there's a direct parallel to the rise of highly processed foods. The people 2-3 generations ago understood that junk food was unhealthy, and very few people fed their kids 100% soda and hot pockets, but junk food was so much cheaper and easier that people gradually allowed more and more into their diets, and now here we are with an adult obesity rate 3x that of 1960. > "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" Edit to add, it seems most of your other responders are responding to this bit, which I agree is not realistic (children aren't rational to reliably refrain from something just because you can explain why it's bad) but I can see why you're frustrated that they're zeroing in on that part and not the part I responded to.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > doing this well is tedious and time-consuming and expensive. Doesn't this sum up being a parent in general? :P You raise a fair enough point, though.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > Edit to add, it seems most of your other responders are responding to this bit, which I agree is not realistic (children aren't rational to reliably refrain from something just because you can explain why it's bad) but I can see why you're frustrated that they're zeroing in on that part and not the part I responded to. What's frustrating to me is that people are taking this so literally and not reading into at all. I'm not suggesting parents be like, "Okay Tommy, here's why phones are bad, now here you go!" and never talk about it again. That's utterly absurd, and isn't how anyone should expect a parent to teach a child life skills. It's a constant battle - as you say, tedious, time-consuming, and expensive - to raise a child with good principles. Why is this thread acting as though teaching our children self-control is somehow a different lesson?
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? The capitalist solution is always to move all the responsibility to the most vulnerable members of society. Your food is infected with a novel bacteria resistant to all antibiotics? Should have chosen your food better! Sorry, not sorry, it's you by yourself vs deception of a multi-billion dollar corporation. Also, while you are at it, we made it a crime to photograph the farm, so you will never know the condition animals were raised in! https://sentientmedia.org/ag-gag-laws/ https://sentientmedia.org/ag-gag-laws/ Maybe a common sense solution would criminalise exploitation of children under 10 for profit, but that's too socialist these days.
  - squigz 2y ago
    I'm about as far from a capitalist as one might imagine. But hey, let's let the corporations and lobbyists legislate more of what we can and can't do, instead of relying on our own willpower to do so. Certainly that will show those pesky capitalists!
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  > Are these really the only 2 options you see? No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? It starts from no to progressively more access while teaching your growing kid to self regulate. There is no way you can treat your 7-17 year old the same when they are getting full access whether you like it or not when they turn 18.
fergonco 2y ago
According to "Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children", which I recommend, there is no scientific evidence of kids without access to phones being more sad, depressive, etc. But there is evidence of the opposite. Yes: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But it still makes your decision easier.
- pmarreck 2y ago
  How do we distinguish (potentially cherry-picked) claims made in such a book from a simple moral panic?
  - fergonco 2y ago
    Very easily: the book does not get moral at all. It just claims that there is scientific consensus about the damage that leisure screens make. This is quite easy to debunk, if false.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Jonathan Haidt has assembled a very strong body of evidence demonstrating the mental health harms of allowing access to smart phones and social media for young children.
LVB 2y ago
I have a 12 and 10 y/o. Neither has a phone, but both have access to plenty of approved apps (games, etc.) via their iPads, and now also group chats via iMessage where we can choose read everything (we spot check) and know the contacts. This seems like a reasonable amount of connectivity, without the full wrath of social media just yet. They occasionally complain their friend has an iPhone 15 XL blah blah, but then they move on.
- monetus 2y ago
  How do you think you should deal with say, 14 and up? Ostracized and resentful is a state I want to avoid, and I worry about it. Good luck.
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    Kids who are not part of the cool in-group getting drunk and doing coke after school are the ones who read more and study more and become successful. Data point: everyone in my HS's class of 1200 who was "cool" is now more or less a bagger in a grocery store, or dead from drug overdose. Everyone who was ostracized and a "loser" is successful. Do you want your kids to have a happy high school time (4 years) or a happy life being able to afford fun things(~60 years)?
  - LVB 2y ago
    There is a gradient only a few years long with the end point being they can do whatever they want, basically. Based on chats with other parents who have older kids, I think the model will transition to ever more access, with more severe consequences for breaking whatever rules we end up setting (behavior, content, etc). For example, a neighbor's 16-year-old had a strict rule of leaving location tracking on for his parents to know where he was. He turned it off to sneak about, they found out, so he lost the phone for two weeks. But tbh with kids it all changes so quickly, we will take it day by day.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    I have a 14 year old boy who has a phone. He has a pretty large imessage group of about 20 kids from his school named 'dumbasses united' (which is pretty freaking funny IMO) he also has another smaller imessage group with his close friends. He isn't interested in social media like tiktok or instagram and in fact is pretty anti-social media platform beyond imessage. He does have a discord with some kids from school to play games with however. I don't bother him too much about it as long as his grades are good and responsibilities around the house are met. Every so often i'll scroll through his phone but haven't found anything you wouldn't expect from a typical 8th grader. I don't come down on him for language or crude jokes or anything like that, i'm looking for actual danger and not 14 year olds being 14. He knows I have the pin to his phone and he could change it to make it a bigger issue between us but he never has and in return i won't confront him unless i feel like it's a very serious issue.
l5870uoo9y 2y ago
One thing is the detrimental effects of general usage, but what happens to children when they encounter “extreme” content?
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  It’s certainly not a new phenomenon - except maybe it’s at scale now. The early internet was very extreme. Things like goatse were the main memes and everyone at my school knew rotten.com, etc. Not to even mention the file sharing sites and apps where you never really knew what you were getting until you play it
atonse 2y ago
Know that you're not alone! I have young kids to and there are many of us who are trying our damndest to make sure that our kids have a normal childhood. Our kids basically get 1 hour on Saturday, 1 hour on Sunday (sometimes a bit more), and only shared screen time (like we watch shows as a family, not individualized) on weeknights at most. And they definitely want more, but we have pushed hard enough for them to play outside so they are able to do that with a couple other neighborhood kids and they love it. Neither are teenagers yet so I'm expecting things to get a lot harder in coming years. And our kids won't get smartphones until they're older (we've said 14 but my wish is for 16. I'm hoping there will be an under-16 social media ban as law). This is going to be the toughest nut to crack, because it requires many parents to agree on the same norms. We're also holding out hope for proper and official smartphone bans in schools. Many staff in schools are sick of it, so I think it's just a matter of time. It is also going to depend a lot on each of your kids. Some kids have more FOMO, others don't. Probably worse for girls than boys too at a population level (there's plenty of data supporting that). Good luck and I hope that parents like us eventually prevail.
AlexandrB 2y ago
> or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone. I had plenty of friends when I was young that had restrictions on "TV time". My parents, in contrast, were very "hands-off". I've never heard people who are now adults who had "TV time" restrictions express a lot of FOMO or regret about it. Some frame it as "my parents were strict" or "my parents were a little overbearing" but that's about it. Obviously I understand that it's not the same thing since phones are a 2-way medium and can sometimes be a lynchpin for communication these days, but it's not that crazy or unprecedented either. What's talked about less (and I suspect the cause of a lot of reluctance to take phones away) is how parents now track their kids' whereabouts using smartphones and apps[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/01/honey-lets-track-the-kids-phone-apps-now-allow-parents-to-track-their-children https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/01/honey-lets-tra...
- ransom1538 2y ago
  Like I tell my parents, taking away "The love boat" rerun away from ME on channel 4 when I was eight, IS NOT LIKE taking away a phone from a kid today that is playing Roblox. Roblox is NOT a rerun of a horrible 70s show. It is a fully immersive, awesome and a complete social network. I view it closer to cocaine.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    I can't tell if this is an argument for or against taking away Roblox.
- tarr11 2y ago
  I’ve heard it. Some of these now-adults felt left out. They resented that they weren’t part of any conversations with their peers about what was on tv etc.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    How much of this is TV specifically and how much is social signalling about wealth and class? I know I resented that my parents made me buy clothes at "Zellers" (defunct Canadian WalMart) and "Value Village" (thrift store) because kids made fun of my "poor" clothes once in a while. By the time I was 20 I realized that my parents were right and none of those opinions from my peers mattered the least bit.
deleted 2y ago
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orochimaaru 2y ago
I have a 9 and a 13 yr old. Neither has TikTok. 9 yr old doesn’t have a phone. 13 yr old has one but I’m not approving TikTok on it. I’ve had no protests around it. Most of the 9 yr olds friends don’t have phones either. Same with the 13 yrs old - most of her friends don’t have TikTok access. In general, social media messes with a kids mind. I’d rather have my kids not be friends with folks too addicted to social media.
thomastjeffery 2y ago
Prohibition is the laziest "solution" I can think of. It doesn't work, and we can do better anyway. If you want to change a behavior, replace it! After all, given time awake, a human will always have to do something. Give your kid something healthy and productive to do; or at the very least, something neutral. Get them excited about it. This isn't a war of "do" vs "don't". This is a war of engagement. If you are losing, then the best strategy is "more do".
antiframe 2y ago
My child's school bans smartphones and smart watches until 5th grade, but on top of that the majority of patents have plegded [1] to wait until 8th grade. The best defense we have as parents is through collective discussion and action. [1]: https://www.waituntil8th.org/ https://www.waituntil8th.org/
- pmarreck 2y ago
  A lot of this enforced waiting seems to be motivated by the negative behavior of children and early teens towards each other. And since you can't control how other parents raise their kids, a few bad apples have to spoil it for everyone. And, truth be told, when I recollect how bad junior high was before the Internet or smartphones existed, the capability of smartphones to magnify the negative as well as the positive certainly seems terrifying. This just makes me want to home-school my kid if possible. (My son, my only kid, is about to turn 3 and I have been carefully watching this ongoing conversation/debate/research.)
johnea 2y ago
You're not helpless! Don't give a digital device to a small child, period. You could think of this in terms of training the child that what other people are doing is not a direct indicator of what they should be doing. The greatest FOMO is missing out on personal autonomy...
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Don't give a digital device to a small child, period. I like how we've accepted that a device that can be used to call for help, and is the greatest innovation of the last 20 years, is toxic and dangerous and exploits you. Even if you are a child. And we just accept that.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    But it is toxic and dangerous and exploits you. It's also a very valuable tool. As with all things, there's a cost/benefit calculation to be done here. I think that the cost/benefit ratio is hugely unfavorable when we're talking about very young children.
  - strix_varius 2y ago
    Many of us work, or have worked (for me, thankfully, past tense) at the companies turning phones and tablets into exploitation devices. The data is clear. And here, so is the personal experience. If you want something that can "call for help," there are many options other than smartphones.
legitster 2y ago
> It feels as if everyone is calming their kids with opiates and Xanax, and no one bats an eye because that's what everyone else is doing. Hot take: as a millennial, I feel like our entire generation is overall failing as parents. The average parent is incredibly conflict-averse but also thoroughly wired for paranoia. So the end result is that children often have no discipline/structure in their lives, but they also have no freedoms. Their parents give them a phone with unlimited Youtube, but they aren't allowed to have friends. They never get spanked but they are always grounded. They don't sit down and eat meals as a family, but they follow a strict allergen-controlled diet because of a weird rash they had once in third grade. Not to say that this generation of kids is going to turn out any worse than any other, but the way that Millenials blame Baby Boomers for all of their problems as adults is going to look cute in comparison.
giantg2 2y ago
"Even if you're aware of the mental health issues associated with social media use, you have the option of either giving up and losing your kid to the phenomenon, or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone." I absolutely choose "FOMO complexes". Just because other parents let their teens do pot and alcohol doesn't mean it's right for my kid. That same logic can extend to less harmful (or more legal or socially acceptable) things like TikTok brain rot.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
  I don't think it's comparable, for several reasons: 1. With pot and alcohol, the law is on your side. Any kid will understand that you don't let them do pot and alcohol, it isn't even legal. They may find workarounds if they are rebel enough, but at least they will understand your point of view just fine. With phones, even a normal, properly-raised kid can struggle to understand why you are depriving them from what their peers have, is commonly seen as normal and other parents may be actively validating. 2. If social media become the primary means of communication for the class, not using them means being marginalized. It's not even a matter of "they laugh at me because I don't drink", which can be overcome with self-esteem and self-confidence, even if it's difficult. It's a simple matter of people making plans and your kid not even finding out because they can't communicate. 3. The sheer magnitude of the phenomenon and the network effect. I can imagine that if your kid were in a class where 90% did pot, it would be very difficult if not impossible to stop them (other than by just sending them to a different school). But that kind of prevalence is common with social media...
  - giantg2 2y ago
    I was saying the same type of thing can extend to the others. Yes, pot and alcohol are extreme examples. However there are still kids who would question it if others are allowed to and they aren't, especially if maybe they know their parents do pot in a state where it isn't legal. Event the network effects and marginalization can happen with substances. How many sober people do you see at college parties? There's some of that presenting in the high school crowds too. I'm wondering if there are any messenger clients that can basically strip out the other portions of social media if you really want to use it just for communication. I suppose with the mention of what is legal and what is not, we could start passing age laws on social media usage. Although many places have laws about the age needed for an email account. Seems to be generally ignored.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
The fact that you're concerned about FOMO is disappointing. Your job is to parent and make hard choices for the betterment of your kid and sometimes saying, " no you can't have a smartphone at 7/go to a concert on a school night/smoke pot/drink/party/ do whatever else kids do because it's not the healthy thing to do." Yeah I went through the same thing as a kid. I didn't have any video game systems until I was 13. Did I get FOMO? Absolutely, did I die from it? Hell no. Instead when I got my own money I bought an n64 and was able to enjoy it later on. In the meantime, my education and professional career thanked me. FFS, there is an epidemic of bad parents and kids are suffering for it.
coffeebeqn 2y ago
I have a 5 year old - I’ve deemed TikTok way too addicting for myself. There’s no way the kids will go on there to scroll through industrial strength entertaining nonsense for hours. Even with my somewhat adult impulse control I would mindlessly look at that app for hours
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Banning phones is necessary. Otherwise, if you want to be a responsible parent and keep your kid away from smartphones or social media, it’s not going to work. They’ll get exposed to it through others around them, which will make things difficult, but they’ll also be exposed to the culture, trends and mental health issues that social media creates from other kids.
arnorhs 2y ago
100p this. However the no-smartphone policy in schools is far from perfect, since a lot of parents are so busy in their phones, that they give their children pretty unrestricted access at home. You can win a battle but the war is lost

squigz 2y ago

(I'll preface this by saying I'm not a parent, and I don't raise children. I imagine it's not an easy endeavor. But...) > you have the option of either giving up and losing your kid to the phenomenon, or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone. Are these really the only 2 options you see? No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? Edit: People replying to this comment seem to have forgotten the role of parents.

gaze 2y ago
I don't think the personal responsibility of someone with a developing mind is any match for 10-20 years of extensive AB testing.
- squigz 2y ago
  Well... no, but neither is it a match for, say, thousands of years of drug abuse. And yet... Perhaps our parents have something to do with that?
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    When I was a kid, all drugs were illegal, at least to me as a minor. My parents had the alcohol is bad and cigarettes are bad talks with me but even if I wanted to drink and smoke, it was hard to access until I got closer to the age where it was allowed anyway.
    - squigz 2y ago
      When I was a kid, all drugs were illegal to me too. Yet my parents had cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, and weed in the house. Me and my siblings didn't touch them. That has something to do with the law?
      - sickofparadox 2y ago
        Likely not the law of the government, but I'm certain the law of your parents had something to do with it.
        squigz 2y ago
        That's, uh, sort of my point here :)
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Kids will mostly do what they see others do. This makes drugs less difficult to dissuade. It makes phones and screens particularly pernicious. "do as I say, not as I do" is not always good enough. I have kids. They watch movies with us, and the nanny gives them more screen time than I'd like. I don't have to talk to them about drugs because nobody is handing my kids drugs. But screens are everywhere and I use them all the time, sadly.
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    And yet...we don't recommend parents allowing their middle school children to try addictive drugs.
- htrp 2y ago
  More like 10mn-20mn subjective years of AB testing (horizontally across the population/user pool)
barbazoo 2y ago
> No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? Probably works for some but I imagine it being really hard to do, especially if they're at school. Our brains take a while to mature and I don't see many 5-7 year olds being able to make long term good choices on their own at that point. I think that's too much to ask.
drivebyhooting 2y ago
You’re applying adult logic to children who haven’t developed a prefrontal cortex. Child psychology is very different than what you think.
- babyshake 2y ago
  Even adult psychology is not what we think. We don't really understand the implications of computing untrusted information in our brains every day.
cjohnson318 2y ago
Yes and no. If you keep your kid off of these social media sites (a) you're going to fight about it Every. Single. Day. For. Years. and (b) they're going to get on them with burner accounts/devices anyway. Where will they get a burner phone? From any other kid at school that gets a new phone, and wants $20. The whole situation is psychotic. Even without social media there's horror stories from the "local media" of AirDrop and group texts.
- foobarian 2y ago
  I discovered that my kid's peer group shares screen recordings via imessage chats to get around being offline or running out of time limit on the source apps (youtube, etc.). I kind of like the resourcefulness tbh.
  - squigz 2y ago
    This is another good point that seems to fly under the radar - putting aside the implications for free society for a moment, even if we were to implement legislation regarding the use of social media, rest assured, kids will find a way around it if they want to - much like with drugs.
    - cjohnson318 2y ago
      Yeah, there's no winning. I think there's a happy medium, like Fail Whale Twitter, where you can have social media that doesn't drag you into a short video loop for an hour or more, but that model doesn't seem to be commercially viable.
  - rescbr 2y ago
    Hah! That's ingenious. Back in the middle school days, decades ago, I was running proxies on free PHP hosting services to avoid content restriction on school computers. Learned more from my shenanigans than from the computer lab classes :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rpcope1 2y ago
You're talking about a medium that's been explicitly designed to be addictive and young children, who don't reason in the same way that an adult does. You may as well say to little Timmy "here are your smokes, just remember that this could cause lung cancer one day and consider it before blowing through a pack a day."
jimbokun 2y ago
Parent to middle schooler: "OK, honey, this is called cocaine. I'm going to let you try it, but only in a safe and reasonable manner. We'll discuss reasonable limits on how much you can use and when."
- squigz 2y ago
  This is a sane and reasonable comparison to what I was talking about. Thank you for the constructive addition.
- jq-r 2y ago
  This is exactly how it went with my ex neighbour. Her dad offered her cigarettes on her 18th birthday to "use responsibly". She's been smoking since that day. She's retired now and a heavy smoker most of her life. I'm not sure how she avoided cancer but I guess she was lucky.
ineptech 2y ago
> "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? It's not so much that people are too dumb to do this or don't understand the danger, it's that doing this well is tedious and time-consuming and expensive. Setting up parental controls and monitoring them is a chore, you have to sign up for a bunch of apps you don't want and read outdated docs and troubleshoot random error messages and crap. Most of the good stuff costs money, all of the shitty stuff is free. Finding educational apps that aren't terrible requires research, whereas the worst garbage imaginable is heavily advertised. So, I'm not saying you're wrong, but that this is a problem with incentives as opposed to a moral failing. I think there's a direct parallel to the rise of highly processed foods. The people 2-3 generations ago understood that junk food was unhealthy, and very few people fed their kids 100% soda and hot pockets, but junk food was so much cheaper and easier that people gradually allowed more and more into their diets, and now here we are with an adult obesity rate 3x that of 1960. > "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" Edit to add, it seems most of your other responders are responding to this bit, which I agree is not realistic (children aren't rational to reliably refrain from something just because you can explain why it's bad) but I can see why you're frustrated that they're zeroing in on that part and not the part I responded to.
- squigz 2y ago
  > doing this well is tedious and time-consuming and expensive. Doesn't this sum up being a parent in general? :P You raise a fair enough point, though.
- squigz 2y ago
  > Edit to add, it seems most of your other responders are responding to this bit, which I agree is not realistic (children aren't rational to reliably refrain from something just because you can explain why it's bad) but I can see why you're frustrated that they're zeroing in on that part and not the part I responded to. What's frustrating to me is that people are taking this so literally and not reading into at all. I'm not suggesting parents be like, "Okay Tommy, here's why phones are bad, now here you go!" and never talk about it again. That's utterly absurd, and isn't how anyone should expect a parent to teach a child life skills. It's a constant battle - as you say, tedious, time-consuming, and expensive - to raise a child with good principles. Why is this thread acting as though teaching our children self-control is somehow a different lesson?
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? The capitalist solution is always to move all the responsibility to the most vulnerable members of society. Your food is infected with a novel bacteria resistant to all antibiotics? Should have chosen your food better! Sorry, not sorry, it's you by yourself vs deception of a multi-billion dollar corporation. Also, while you are at it, we made it a crime to photograph the farm, so you will never know the condition animals were raised in! https://sentientmedia.org/ag-gag-laws/ https://sentientmedia.org/ag-gag-laws/ Maybe a common sense solution would criminalise exploitation of children under 10 for profit, but that's too socialist these days.
- squigz 2y ago
  I'm about as far from a capitalist as one might imagine. But hey, let's let the corporations and lobbyists legislate more of what we can and can't do, instead of relying on our own willpower to do so. Certainly that will show those pesky capitalists!
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> Are these really the only 2 options you see? No "teach your child about the issues with being on a phone all day" or "set reasonable restrictions on phone usage"? It starts from no to progressively more access while teaching your growing kid to self regulate. There is no way you can treat your 7-17 year old the same when they are getting full access whether you like it or not when they turn 18.

fergonco 2y ago

According to "Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children", which I recommend, there is no scientific evidence of kids without access to phones being more sad, depressive, etc. But there is evidence of the opposite. Yes: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But it still makes your decision easier.

pmarreck 2y ago
How do we distinguish (potentially cherry-picked) claims made in such a book from a simple moral panic?
- fergonco 2y ago
  Very easily: the book does not get moral at all. It just claims that there is scientific consensus about the damage that leisure screens make. This is quite easy to debunk, if false.
jimbokun 2y ago
Jonathan Haidt has assembled a very strong body of evidence demonstrating the mental health harms of allowing access to smart phones and social media for young children.

LVB 2y ago

I have a 12 and 10 y/o. Neither has a phone, but both have access to plenty of approved apps (games, etc.) via their iPads, and now also group chats via iMessage where we can choose read everything (we spot check) and know the contacts. This seems like a reasonable amount of connectivity, without the full wrath of social media just yet. They occasionally complain their friend has an iPhone 15 XL blah blah, but then they move on.

monetus 2y ago
How do you think you should deal with say, 14 and up? Ostracized and resentful is a state I want to avoid, and I worry about it. Good luck.
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  Kids who are not part of the cool in-group getting drunk and doing coke after school are the ones who read more and study more and become successful. Data point: everyone in my HS's class of 1200 who was "cool" is now more or less a bagger in a grocery store, or dead from drug overdose. Everyone who was ostracized and a "loser" is successful. Do you want your kids to have a happy high school time (4 years) or a happy life being able to afford fun things(~60 years)?
- LVB 2y ago
  There is a gradient only a few years long with the end point being they can do whatever they want, basically. Based on chats with other parents who have older kids, I think the model will transition to ever more access, with more severe consequences for breaking whatever rules we end up setting (behavior, content, etc). For example, a neighbor's 16-year-old had a strict rule of leaving location tracking on for his parents to know where he was. He turned it off to sneak about, they found out, so he lost the phone for two weeks. But tbh with kids it all changes so quickly, we will take it day by day.
- chasd00 2y ago
  I have a 14 year old boy who has a phone. He has a pretty large imessage group of about 20 kids from his school named 'dumbasses united' (which is pretty freaking funny IMO) he also has another smaller imessage group with his close friends. He isn't interested in social media like tiktok or instagram and in fact is pretty anti-social media platform beyond imessage. He does have a discord with some kids from school to play games with however. I don't bother him too much about it as long as his grades are good and responsibilities around the house are met. Every so often i'll scroll through his phone but haven't found anything you wouldn't expect from a typical 8th grader. I don't come down on him for language or crude jokes or anything like that, i'm looking for actual danger and not 14 year olds being 14. He knows I have the pin to his phone and he could change it to make it a bigger issue between us but he never has and in return i won't confront him unless i feel like it's a very serious issue.

l5870uoo9y 2y ago

One thing is the detrimental effects of general usage, but what happens to children when they encounter “extreme” content?

coffeebeqn 2y ago
It’s certainly not a new phenomenon - except maybe it’s at scale now. The early internet was very extreme. Things like goatse were the main memes and everyone at my school knew rotten.com, etc. Not to even mention the file sharing sites and apps where you never really knew what you were getting until you play it

atonse 2y ago

Know that you're not alone! I have young kids to and there are many of us who are trying our damndest to make sure that our kids have a normal childhood. Our kids basically get 1 hour on Saturday, 1 hour on Sunday (sometimes a bit more), and only shared screen time (like we watch shows as a family, not individualized) on weeknights at most. And they definitely want more, but we have pushed hard enough for them to play outside so they are able to do that with a couple other neighborhood kids and they love it. Neither are teenagers yet so I'm expecting things to get a lot harder in coming years. And our kids won't get smartphones until they're older (we've said 14 but my wish is for 16. I'm hoping there will be an under-16 social media ban as law). This is going to be the toughest nut to crack, because it requires many parents to agree on the same norms. We're also holding out hope for proper and official smartphone bans in schools. Many staff in schools are sick of it, so I think it's just a matter of time. It is also going to depend a lot on each of your kids. Some kids have more FOMO, others don't. Probably worse for girls than boys too at a population level (there's plenty of data supporting that). Good luck and I hope that parents like us eventually prevail.

AlexandrB 2y ago

> or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone. I had plenty of friends when I was young that had restrictions on "TV time". My parents, in contrast, were very "hands-off". I've never heard people who are now adults who had "TV time" restrictions express a lot of FOMO or regret about it. Some frame it as "my parents were strict" or "my parents were a little overbearing" but that's about it. Obviously I understand that it's not the same thing since phones are a 2-way medium and can sometimes be a lynchpin for communication these days, but it's not that crazy or unprecedented either. What's talked about less (and I suspect the cause of a lot of reluctance to take phones away) is how parents now track their kids' whereabouts using smartphones and apps[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/01/honey-lets-track-the-kids-phone-apps-now-allow-parents-to-track-their-children https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/01/honey-lets-tra...

ransom1538 2y ago
Like I tell my parents, taking away "The love boat" rerun away from ME on channel 4 when I was eight, IS NOT LIKE taking away a phone from a kid today that is playing Roblox. Roblox is NOT a rerun of a horrible 70s show. It is a fully immersive, awesome and a complete social network. I view it closer to cocaine.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  I can't tell if this is an argument for or against taking away Roblox.
tarr11 2y ago
I’ve heard it. Some of these now-adults felt left out. They resented that they weren’t part of any conversations with their peers about what was on tv etc.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  How much of this is TV specifically and how much is social signalling about wealth and class? I know I resented that my parents made me buy clothes at "Zellers" (defunct Canadian WalMart) and "Value Village" (thrift store) because kids made fun of my "poor" clothes once in a while. By the time I was 20 I realized that my parents were right and none of those opinions from my peers mattered the least bit.

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orochimaaru 2y ago

I have a 9 and a 13 yr old. Neither has TikTok. 9 yr old doesn’t have a phone. 13 yr old has one but I’m not approving TikTok on it. I’ve had no protests around it. Most of the 9 yr olds friends don’t have phones either. Same with the 13 yrs old - most of her friends don’t have TikTok access. In general, social media messes with a kids mind. I’d rather have my kids not be friends with folks too addicted to social media.

thomastjeffery 2y ago

Prohibition is the laziest "solution" I can think of. It doesn't work, and we can do better anyway. If you want to change a behavior, replace it! After all, given time awake, a human will always have to do something. Give your kid something healthy and productive to do; or at the very least, something neutral. Get them excited about it. This isn't a war of "do" vs "don't". This is a war of engagement. If you are losing, then the best strategy is "more do".

antiframe 2y ago

My child's school bans smartphones and smart watches until 5th grade, but on top of that the majority of patents have plegded [1] to wait until 8th grade. The best defense we have as parents is through collective discussion and action. [1]: https://www.waituntil8th.org/ https://www.waituntil8th.org/

pmarreck 2y ago
A lot of this enforced waiting seems to be motivated by the negative behavior of children and early teens towards each other. And since you can't control how other parents raise their kids, a few bad apples have to spoil it for everyone. And, truth be told, when I recollect how bad junior high was before the Internet or smartphones existed, the capability of smartphones to magnify the negative as well as the positive certainly seems terrifying. This just makes me want to home-school my kid if possible. (My son, my only kid, is about to turn 3 and I have been carefully watching this ongoing conversation/debate/research.)

johnea 2y ago

You're not helpless! Don't give a digital device to a small child, period. You could think of this in terms of training the child that what other people are doing is not a direct indicator of what they should be doing. The greatest FOMO is missing out on personal autonomy...

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> Don't give a digital device to a small child, period. I like how we've accepted that a device that can be used to call for help, and is the greatest innovation of the last 20 years, is toxic and dangerous and exploits you. Even if you are a child. And we just accept that.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  But it is toxic and dangerous and exploits you. It's also a very valuable tool. As with all things, there's a cost/benefit calculation to be done here. I think that the cost/benefit ratio is hugely unfavorable when we're talking about very young children.
- strix_varius 2y ago
  Many of us work, or have worked (for me, thankfully, past tense) at the companies turning phones and tablets into exploitation devices. The data is clear. And here, so is the personal experience. If you want something that can "call for help," there are many options other than smartphones.

legitster 2y ago

> It feels as if everyone is calming their kids with opiates and Xanax, and no one bats an eye because that's what everyone else is doing. Hot take: as a millennial, I feel like our entire generation is overall failing as parents. The average parent is incredibly conflict-averse but also thoroughly wired for paranoia. So the end result is that children often have no discipline/structure in their lives, but they also have no freedoms. Their parents give them a phone with unlimited Youtube, but they aren't allowed to have friends. They never get spanked but they are always grounded. They don't sit down and eat meals as a family, but they follow a strict allergen-controlled diet because of a weird rash they had once in third grade. Not to say that this generation of kids is going to turn out any worse than any other, but the way that Millenials blame Baby Boomers for all of their problems as adults is going to look cute in comparison.

giantg2 2y ago

"Even if you're aware of the mental health issues associated with social media use, you have the option of either giving up and losing your kid to the phenomenon, or giving them FOMO and complexes by depriving them of a phone." I absolutely choose "FOMO complexes". Just because other parents let their teens do pot and alcohol doesn't mean it's right for my kid. That same logic can extend to less harmful (or more legal or socially acceptable) things like TikTok brain rot.

Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
I don't think it's comparable, for several reasons: 1. With pot and alcohol, the law is on your side. Any kid will understand that you don't let them do pot and alcohol, it isn't even legal. They may find workarounds if they are rebel enough, but at least they will understand your point of view just fine. With phones, even a normal, properly-raised kid can struggle to understand why you are depriving them from what their peers have, is commonly seen as normal and other parents may be actively validating. 2. If social media become the primary means of communication for the class, not using them means being marginalized. It's not even a matter of "they laugh at me because I don't drink", which can be overcome with self-esteem and self-confidence, even if it's difficult. It's a simple matter of people making plans and your kid not even finding out because they can't communicate. 3. The sheer magnitude of the phenomenon and the network effect. I can imagine that if your kid were in a class where 90% did pot, it would be very difficult if not impossible to stop them (other than by just sending them to a different school). But that kind of prevalence is common with social media...
- giantg2 2y ago
  I was saying the same type of thing can extend to the others. Yes, pot and alcohol are extreme examples. However there are still kids who would question it if others are allowed to and they aren't, especially if maybe they know their parents do pot in a state where it isn't legal. Event the network effects and marginalization can happen with substances. How many sober people do you see at college parties? There's some of that presenting in the high school crowds too. I'm wondering if there are any messenger clients that can basically strip out the other portions of social media if you really want to use it just for communication. I suppose with the mention of what is legal and what is not, we could start passing age laws on social media usage. Although many places have laws about the age needed for an email account. Seems to be generally ignored.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

The fact that you're concerned about FOMO is disappointing. Your job is to parent and make hard choices for the betterment of your kid and sometimes saying, " no you can't have a smartphone at 7/go to a concert on a school night/smoke pot/drink/party/ do whatever else kids do because it's not the healthy thing to do." Yeah I went through the same thing as a kid. I didn't have any video game systems until I was 13. Did I get FOMO? Absolutely, did I die from it? Hell no. Instead when I got my own money I bought an n64 and was able to enjoy it later on. In the meantime, my education and professional career thanked me. FFS, there is an epidemic of bad parents and kids are suffering for it.

coffeebeqn 2y ago

I have a 5 year old - I’ve deemed TikTok way too addicting for myself. There’s no way the kids will go on there to scroll through industrial strength entertaining nonsense for hours. Even with my somewhat adult impulse control I would mindlessly look at that app for hours

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Banning phones is necessary. Otherwise, if you want to be a responsible parent and keep your kid away from smartphones or social media, it’s not going to work. They’ll get exposed to it through others around them, which will make things difficult, but they’ll also be exposed to the culture, trends and mental health issues that social media creates from other kids.

arnorhs 2y ago

100p this. However the no-smartphone policy in schools is far from perfect, since a lot of parents are so busy in their phones, that they give their children pretty unrestricted access at home. You can win a battle but the war is lost