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>> Guess the kids need a dumb phone. Nokia will rise again. > Why do kids need a phone at all? They especially shouldn't need it at school. Part of it is that
by tivert 2y ago
>> Guess the kids need a dumb phone. Nokia will rise again.
> Why do kids need a phone at all? They especially shouldn't need it at school.
Part of it is that almost all the infrastructure for "not having a cell phone" has disappeared. At every school I went to as a kid, there was a landline phone or two for kids to call their parents. There were payphones everywhere. I remember biking around as a kid, getting soaked in heavy rainstorms, then biking to whatever school was closest to call my parents to pick me up to take me the rest of the way. I think even the airport (traditionally the pay-phoniest places in the world) now only has one or two payphones left, if any. So a kid with no phone today is probably less able to contact their parents than in the pre-cell phone era.
So a kid needs a call phone of some kind in the modern world, but certainly not a fully-featured unlocked smartphone. I'm thinking ideally that would be a locked down phone that has no web access, no ability to install apps, and can only send and receive texts from numbers on a whitelist (though I actually think it might be fine for the phone make and receive voice calls from any number).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amluto 2y agoThe embarrassing thing is that newer technology should make it easy and cheap to have free phones at schools.
- arp242 2y ago> At every school I went to as a kid, there was a landline phone or two for kids to call their parents. We didn't even have a dedicated phone for that, although I'm sure I could have used a phone if I had need to. I think I may have did once or twice. I'm sure that's still the case in all schools, especially if they start banning kids brining phones to school. Lack of payphones is more of a problem, although I would imagine that especially for a child or teenager it wouldn't be too hard to use a phone from a stranger or business or even a random house. But not all personalities would be comfterable with that.
- EasyMark 2y agoSchools still have phones, plus there’s cable/fiber connections. It’s not a big deal. Kids don’t need phones at school.I would not want to be the staff enforcing this during the first year though lol. It’s going to be a real shit show fighting all those addicted to their phones.