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I didn't have a dumb phone when everyone else did, and when I finally did get one (I think senior year of high school) I didn't have texting. It never really ca

I didn't have a dumb phone when everyone else did, and when I finally did get one (I think senior year of high school) I didn't have texting. It never really caused me issues. In adulthood, the only thing I really need the phone for is Duo, and my work offers to provide yubikeys as an alternative. I've just been too lazy to get one. It's also nice to have a crappy camera on hand when I don't have the real camera with me. That's about it. "Come on" seems like a crazy reaction to me to schools making it mandatory to use services that spy on kids and show them ads. That's actually a huge motivator for me to want to home school my kids. It is completely unacceptable to require kids be exposed to that. It's unacceptable to allow them to be exposed to that while they're in the school's care.

watwut 2y ago
I did not had it and buying one made massive difference. It made me reachable which made it possible for friends ... to reach me. It turned situation from "I am only listening about half stuff they do because even if they try to reach me they cant" to "I am not actual full member of the group". It sux
skeeter2020 2y ago
It's a natural reaction, but I believe a losing battle to try to shelter your kids from these things. If you're going to home school you can displace some of it, or delay it long enough that they hopefuly build up some personal resilience, but ultimately this is the world they will venture into.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  I don't use Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/any of that (I do still have an old Facebook account), so I can't relate to the idea that they're somehow just part of the life now. They seem completely irrelevant to me as an adult. When I have checked my Facebook on occasion, it appears to be a ghost town with maybe ~3 people I know that use it. Or maybe Facebook simply does a poor job now of showing you your friends' posts so it only appears to be abandoned at a glance. Hard to tell without putting in a bunch of work to go mine my friends' profiles. In any case, school business just like any government business should not require agreeing to a company's ToS. Especially not one in the spying/advertising business.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    Ideologically I agree about the absurdity of school-mandated spy- and crapware. However, my fierce hatred of advertisements and trackers is merely a personality quirk. A quirk that, although mainstream on this forum, is shared only by a tiny percentage of the population. Should a parent force their eccentricities on a child? Preferably not. Children, once they reach a certain age, are their own people with their own preferences and aspirations. For many people (that includes adults) staying in touch with others through facebook or other social media is what they desire more than anything else. Isolating people like that from their friends and peers is cruel.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      I don't find it to be a personality quirk any more than I find healthy eating and regular exercise to be a personality quirk. The rest of the population can eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch and drink Coke if that's what they want, but it's not going to be in our house. Part of my job is to guide my kids toward making wise choices and avoiding obviously poor ones, even if 80% of the population does it. I don't think that requires social isolation; I think that requires placing them in situations where the other 20% are wildly over-represented as peers.
      - watwut 2y ago
        It is funny, because over focus on healthy eating and exercise can be a quirk ... or grow entirely into full on eating disorder. And that one is rather massive fck up. > The rest of the population can eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch and drink Coke if that's what they want, but it's not going to be in our house. And then the nutritionist and psychologist will beat into you that there is no such thing as junk food, it is just a food, and drinking coke wont harm you or your kid.
        ndriscoll 2y ago
        Such a nutritionist or psychologist would be an incompetent fool, of course. Sugary beverages are horrible for you, and are associated with a variety of poor health outcomes (obviously T2D and tooth decay, but also e.g. heart disease and liver disease). If a nutritionist can't identify that a can of literal sugar water is a worse calorie source than e.g. a potato in pretty much all scenarios (perhaps except during the act of running an ultra-marathon), then I can't imagine what use consulting them could possibly have. You don't have to give a kid an eating disorder to explain that candy for breakfast isn't acceptable, and we don't drink dissolved sugar (except perhaps as an extremely rare treat, like cake). Just set an example of a normal life where we don't do those things. Let them see the results speak for themselves as they observe society, and let them eventually ponder if everyone is wrong about something so obvious, how good could society (including, apparently, credentialed 'experts') possibly be at other judgements it makes?

watwut 2y ago

I did not had it and buying one made massive difference. It made me reachable which made it possible for friends ... to reach me. It turned situation from "I am only listening about half stuff they do because even if they try to reach me they cant" to "I am not actual full member of the group". It sux

skeeter2020 2y ago

It's a natural reaction, but I believe a losing battle to try to shelter your kids from these things. If you're going to home school you can displace some of it, or delay it long enough that they hopefuly build up some personal resilience, but ultimately this is the world they will venture into.

ndriscoll 2y ago
I don't use Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/any of that (I do still have an old Facebook account), so I can't relate to the idea that they're somehow just part of the life now. They seem completely irrelevant to me as an adult. When I have checked my Facebook on occasion, it appears to be a ghost town with maybe ~3 people I know that use it. Or maybe Facebook simply does a poor job now of showing you your friends' posts so it only appears to be abandoned at a glance. Hard to tell without putting in a bunch of work to go mine my friends' profiles. In any case, school business just like any government business should not require agreeing to a company's ToS. Especially not one in the spying/advertising business.
- gizmo 2y ago
  Ideologically I agree about the absurdity of school-mandated spy- and crapware. However, my fierce hatred of advertisements and trackers is merely a personality quirk. A quirk that, although mainstream on this forum, is shared only by a tiny percentage of the population. Should a parent force their eccentricities on a child? Preferably not. Children, once they reach a certain age, are their own people with their own preferences and aspirations. For many people (that includes adults) staying in touch with others through facebook or other social media is what they desire more than anything else. Isolating people like that from their friends and peers is cruel.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    I don't find it to be a personality quirk any more than I find healthy eating and regular exercise to be a personality quirk. The rest of the population can eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch and drink Coke if that's what they want, but it's not going to be in our house. Part of my job is to guide my kids toward making wise choices and avoiding obviously poor ones, even if 80% of the population does it. I don't think that requires social isolation; I think that requires placing them in situations where the other 20% are wildly over-represented as peers.
    - watwut 2y ago
      It is funny, because over focus on healthy eating and exercise can be a quirk ... or grow entirely into full on eating disorder. And that one is rather massive fck up. > The rest of the population can eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch and drink Coke if that's what they want, but it's not going to be in our house. And then the nutritionist and psychologist will beat into you that there is no such thing as junk food, it is just a food, and drinking coke wont harm you or your kid.
      - ndriscoll 2y ago
        Such a nutritionist or psychologist would be an incompetent fool, of course. Sugary beverages are horrible for you, and are associated with a variety of poor health outcomes (obviously T2D and tooth decay, but also e.g. heart disease and liver disease). If a nutritionist can't identify that a can of literal sugar water is a worse calorie source than e.g. a potato in pretty much all scenarios (perhaps except during the act of running an ultra-marathon), then I can't imagine what use consulting them could possibly have. You don't have to give a kid an eating disorder to explain that candy for breakfast isn't acceptable, and we don't drink dissolved sugar (except perhaps as an extremely rare treat, like cake). Just set an example of a normal life where we don't do those things. Let them see the results speak for themselves as they observe society, and let them eventually ponder if everyone is wrong about something so obvious, how good could society (including, apparently, credentialed 'experts') possibly be at other judgements it makes?