10 ms·

Wait Until 8th

• larrik 2y ago
  I applaud the initiative. I waited until the beginning of 7th and it was pretty hard, honestly. We don't give them free access to it, though (but ironically it's most valuable to ME for them to bring it to school).
  • hotguysixpack 2y ago
    Why is it beneficial to you? Did you have a dumb phone before for calls/texts?
    • larrik 2y ago
      easier to see where they are and let them know things. Otherwise they are normally home so it doesn't benefit me for them to be on their phones
  • ragnese 2y ago
    The waiting was hard, or your child having the phone in 7th grade was hard?
    • larrik 2y ago
      lol, both? everything is over text now, and excluding them from that was difficult
• empathy_m 2y ago
  After high school ended (2:30pm) most days I used to have some kind of club activity (2:30pm-3:30pm) and then hang out in the cafeteria or by the front of the school, waiting for a parent to pick me up on the way home from work (5pm). I had a dumb phone so I could stay in touch, and I could also walk home if I wanted (40min / no sidewalks / 35mph roads), but most of the time I just sat down and did homework and read books. Spent a ton of time on the computer at home. Got through "Brothers Karamazov" and "Anna Karenina" that way -- just 1.5hr a day of focused, uninterrupted time. I absolutely never would have read them and would have spent the whole time scrolling TikTok if I could have. Hrmm.
  • OtomotO 2y ago
    I would've gone home, every day. And then I would've read, after I played hours of World of Warcraft ;-) Oh wait, that's what actually happened! But I agree and I don't want to bd young these days anymore.
    • yard2010 2y ago
      Sorry for being old but playing wow is different from scrolling tiktok. If These were drugs, wow would be a weed kind of thing and tiktok and the other cancers would be crack cocaine. In my honest humble opinion ofc
  • rvba 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • hollerith 2y ago
      "Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated."
      • rvba 2y ago
        More like snobism: reading classic books for the sake of being able to brag about them. As if that made someone a better person. If the author at least did something creative... but nooo reading Brothers Karamazov as a kid is better than playing WoW. I still take the kid who created something, or at least spent time with other kids. And apparently the author didnt.
        • kelnos 2y ago
          I would say yes, reading Brothers Karamazov is probably a better use for a developing mind's time than playing WoW. Hell, that's a better use for an adult's time than playing WoW. But adults get to do whatever they want with their free time, and it would be hypocritical of me to judge.
• kardianos 2y ago
  We have a house phone, which is normally in the unihertz "student mode" which prevents installing apps and only allowing use of some apps. When our kids ask for their own phone, the answer is always an easy no. I have no problem with computers. But the internet is not your friend. Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times. If they want to stay up late, their forced to sneak a book into their bed.
  • switch007 2y ago
    > Endless content is hard for me, a developed adult to resist at times. Remind me of food Would you give your kid endless access to chips and sweets?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • pflenker 2y ago
      No to both - but it’s important to teach kids self-moderating, both when it comes to food and to internet stuff. Withholding either is in my opinion solving it short-term while leaving kids unprepared for dealing with these things themselves.
• cstuder 2y ago
  For non-americans: Apparently this corresponds to 13-14 years old.
  • hotguysixpack 2y ago
    the beginning of secondary school, if that phrase is more known outside US
    • beardyw 2y ago
      Doesn't help if secondary school starts at a different age!
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • aidenn0 2y ago
      Two years after the begininng of secondary school; in general lower-secondary starts around age 11, and in the US it usually begins with Junior High which is often, but not always, 7th grade,
      • doublerabbit 2y ago
        In the UK ages 12-13 are typically Year 7 of secondary school.
        • notreallyauser 2y ago
          Year 7's regular age range is 11-12: you're 11 going into the September that the school year starts and will be 12 by the end of the following August.
          • doublerabbit 2y ago
            So it is, oops miscounted. Never was any good at math.
  • 2y ago
• thebruce87m 2y ago
  > Students in eighth grade are usually 13–14 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_grade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_grade In case anyone else outside the US couldn’t find the actual age when scanning the site.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • mattlondon 2y ago
    Yeah I thought 8 years old was kinda surprisingly young to "wait" for!
  • chris_wot 2y ago
    This is clearly aimed at Americans only.
    • kelnos 2y ago
      Well, "Wait for 8th or whatever the similarly-aged grade level is in your area" doesn't sound quite as punchy. This is applicable to anyone, anywhere, though sure, it's targeted at a US audience.
      • yayoohooyahoo 2y ago
        The point is that this website is not applicable to anyone, anywhere, since the core message is strictly US-only. If the authors were aware of this, they may have focused their message on, eg the children's age, which should be more universal.
      • sph 2y ago
        "Wait until 13" is not much worse than "wait until 8th".
    • thebruce87m 2y ago
      I think I’m missing your point. Would you rather I had not posted the age for people outside the US?
• zetazzed 2y ago
  I'm still surprised the "dumb phone for kids" and "dumb watch with basic comms" markets are so underdeveloped (from my perspective). I would love my kids to have (a) gps tracking, (b) ability to send texts/calls to like 5 predefined numbers, (c) tell the time, and nothing else. But watches all seem to have games or weird gamified fitness trackers (Google's new fitbit for kids). Or they are super kid-ish, like bright blue with animal icons, and would be revolting to my older kids. That would make it easy to wait until 9th grade for a more feature-rich phone, though maybe still not unfettered access. Does anyone have a basic watch/dumbphone solution for older kids that they like?
  • 0_____0 2y ago
    I didn't have a phone at all until I was in high school! Looking back on all the times that I was tragically killed or maimed as a result, it's a miracle I'm able to write this comment today!
    • brewdad 2y ago
      I'm glad to see high schools pushing back on this. My college student had classes their first two years that required a smartphone in order to participate in class. Failure to procure an Android or Apple device that could run the app they used was an automatic 20% markdown on one's final grade for non-participation.
      • 0_____0 2y ago
        A friend shared a photo of a wall organizer that (middle school?) kids put their phones into during class. Even though I'm now long out of school, that they sort of have to adapt or else it will really affect the educational outcomes. I don't think people failing out of college really has the same stigma for the institution. I wonder if in fact it would even help with the prestige somehow.
  • tirant 2y ago
    Smart watches were banned in our kids primary school as some of them have cameras and were used to take inappropriate photos. We have finally decided for an analog watch and no tracking as we live in a safe neighborhood and they know most of the neighbors.
• brycethornton 2y ago
  Apple Watches have been great for us. Both of my kids (ages 10 & 13) use a cellular Apple Watch which gives them a way to call/text with us and their friends but it doesn't give them access to social media. I know they'll want a phone soon (my youngest is already asking) but it's an easy "no" for us. I think waiting until around age 14 (or later) sounds about right. I'd like to delay even longer if possible. We'll see how hard they push.
  • whstl 2y ago
    Not a kid anymore but I bought one for myself to reduce my own cell phone usage. It's amazing. I can pay for stuff, I can make calls, I can use maps, I can hear music, store my subway card QR-code.
• cmeacham98 2y ago
  I'm going to post the same comment I did last year when this showed up on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142), as checking the website it still seems to be true: Literally none of the evidence on the website's own "Why" page supports their suggestion: https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait https://www.waituntil8th.org/why-wait All of the studies (bonus points for linking to news articles instead of directly to the studies) have something to do with "time spent using screens/a phone/social media", but nothing to do with age of first use. How can anyone trust this website has any basis in reality when they wrote a whole page explaining why and none of it was applicable? Of course parents should regulate how much time their kids spend on electronics (similar to how parents of previous generations would prevent kids from watching TV 5 hours a day) - but this website presents no evidence that giving a kid a smartphone in 8th grade rather than 5th grade would make a meaningful difference.
  • jb1991 2y ago
    IMO it's not the phone itself that matters, it's what the kids do on it. Phone can be good to communicate with parents, bad for nearly anything else at a young age.
    • nvarsj 2y ago
      Kids entire social lives run on their phones. Covid accelerated this and pushed down the age for where this was true. Denying your kid a smart phone is basically denying them a social life nowadays. It simply doesn't work unless everyone does it.
      • couchdb_ouchdb 2y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/
      • prepend 2y ago
        You may be confusing what happens with a phone with what is required. Certainly kids can have a social life without a phone. It’s not required. I just had a kid who didn’t get instagram until 14. They claimed that their life was ruined, but they had a healthy social life without it (and without a phone). I think people generalize what will happen without things they think are common incorrectly. Just because phones are used for many things, it doesn’t mean those things are impossible without phones. I do think it works better if more parents did it and it was so nice to find other parents (super rare) who felt similarly.
• karaterobot 2y ago
  Even better, try to convince them to wait until at least their eighth wedding anniversary if at all possible.
• grecy 2y ago
  I remember recently reading about a town where all the parents in the entire town agreed not to give their kids smartphones, so then none felt they were missing out. I think that could work really well
  • switch007 2y ago
    It takes a village!
  • jrussino 2y ago
    > none felt they were missing out Exactly. It seems obvious to me that the vast majority of social media is junk and I'd prefer to keep my kids from getting drawn into it for as long as possible, and I think a ton of parents feel this way. The main counter-argument I hear is that "that's where socializing happens these days, and if you keep them away from it they'll just be left out / isolated from their peers". An initiative like this acknowledges that we have some control over our culture. We don't just need to put up with a shitty status quo because "that's the way it is".
  • talldayo 2y ago
    I grew up in a town where kids used yo-yos as economic status symbols and needed adult chaperones to resolve Pokemon card trading disputes that ended up in tears. In my sophomore English class I watched two kids fight after one accused the other of wearing a fake designer sweatshirt. You can lead a horse away from water, but you can't stop it from getting thirsty. Reckoning with disparity is what helps kids grow up and shed the solipsism of childhood - take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life. It's a catch-22, but I don't think banning everything digital is going to improve anyone's quality of life, kids or parents.
    • grecy 2y ago
      > take the smartphones away and you're leaving them even less equipped to deal with modern life. I grew up without a smartphone and have done just fine as a software engineer. I don’t think access to a smartphone before age 15 would correlate to better life outcomes.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• spondylosaurus 2y ago
  Younger millennial chiming in: I'm pretty sure that 8th grade is exactly when I got my first smartphone, although social media had a fraction of the presence back then, so it's hard to draw a direct comparison to today. But I do feel like the timing worked out well enough: not having a smartphone until that point (since they didn't exist lol) turned me into a voracious reader, and the dumbphone I did have meant I was still able to text friends sporadically (T9 anyone?), but getting a smartphone was a good step towards the increased independence and social connectivity of high school. Also brought me into the world of ebook piracy to feed my reading habit, and the world of smartphone mods/jailbreaking to feed my geek streak.
  • warner25 2y ago
    This makes me think, as I've thought previously, that the generational labels seem too broad for the pace of change in information technology over the last 40 years. I read your comment as an older Millenial and thought "what?! a smartphone in 8th grade?!" Despite being in the same "generation," someone born in the mid-80s came of age with radically different consumer technology compared to someone born just ten years later in the mid-90s. I have clear memories of trying to understand what the "Information Superhighway" was, and then getting dial-up Internet in our home for the first time. At the end of 8th grade, I convinced my dad to upgrade from 33 kbps dial-up to cable. As a sophomore in college, I remember thinking that some company would make a lot of money by putting Wi-Fi access points everywhere so we could have always-on Internet access with some sort of mobile device... Just a night-and-day difference from the experience of someone getting a smartphone in 8th grade.
    • kelnos 2y ago
      > This makes me think, as I've thought previously, that the generational labels seem too broad for the pace of change in information technology over the last 40 years. Yeah, no kidding. I'm an older millennial as well, and I didn't have a dumb phone until my senior year of college, let alone a smartphone. My experience growing up was so much different from someone born just 10 years after me, even though we're technically in the same "generation".
• rammer 2y ago
  Wouldn't it be simpler to implement an Mobile device management app / overlay that restricts all actions but the select few. Phone calls / SMS to 5 numbers Clock enforce GPS on until battery is less than 20 No smart phone functions No data access
  • syndicatedjelly 2y ago
    That sounds like the opposite of simple
• mmcgaha 2y ago
  Among my children, my oldest got an iphone for Christmas in 2007 when he was 17. The other four got them spread out over the following ten years but progressively younger in age. I cannot say that I see a big difference in their phone usage, grades, or social development. It seems to me that they all just got more attached to the phone the longer they had it. I am starting to see some push back from my 16-year-old after reading "Stolen Focus" a few months back and I hear that other kids her age are doing the same.
  • computerdork 2y ago
    Very interesting. Was wondering, are there any differences in how independent they are at the same age? Have read that there is a possibility that the smartphone may be contributing to the development of children to be delayed by a year or two. For instance, are your younger children less interested in driving at the same age and doing things on their own. ... although, even if this is true, this could just be that kids seem to be more attached to their parents then they used to be (have read this as well).
• michaelfm1211 2y ago
  I see the good intentions, but it's too idealistic. In many families both parents work and kids are expected to get home by themselves (such was the case for me from 3rd grade onwards). Smartphones are simply a necessity for communication and Google Maps. I can only ever see this working with upper middle class nuclear families with a stay at home parent.
  • 50208 2y ago
    Or ... we could continue doing what worked for all of us before being tethered to phones. Communicate beforehand / afterwards / using shared phones (which still exist) and learning to navigate the world using brains.
    • NBJack 2y ago
      Aspirational at best I'm afraid. What happens when the other partner/parent/family member isn't responsible, smashing your plans? Or if the event has a variable end time with no safe care or phone in between? How do you deal with emergencies like school closures that now require every child to line up to use available landlines (my personal favorite experience)? Landlines are becoming scant in my particular part of my country, YMMV. I rarely even see them in my workplace anymore.
    • kawogi 2y ago
      So, no flexibility, spontaneity? So far we had: - "I'd like to stay with a friend after school - they'll drive me home after dinner", "Sure, thanks for the info, have fun" - "Fire alert, I'm fine but bored" - "Had to help a friend with an accident, will be home 1h later approx" - Bus didn't turn up, uses app to improvise an alternative connection - asking teachers about details from the lessons - getting a news-feed from school - looking up the schedule if things change - manage their calendar and todo-lists - set an alarm/reminder So basically "everything" an adult does with their phone to make their lives easier. After that there's enough brain left to learn that social media is something that needs special attention
      • brewdad 2y ago
• WillyF 2y ago
  I’d like to see something for this for travel sports.
  • boogieknite 2y ago
    Grew up with a few guys who made pro teams and travel didnt help any of them or any of the other schlubs like me. Many of the best guys didnt even do travel for money or other reasons. We would have been better off playing at the park on the weekends.
• doakes 2y ago
  In my area it's becoming very popular for schools (middle and high) to restrict phones. They put them in the pouch things. I'm a bit surprised how much the parents support it. Talking to a local journalist he said he couldn't find parents with good arguments against it. One of them was "my son runs an online business and needs access to his phone for it". I couldn't get a cell until I had a driver's license, which I think made sense at the time. Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone.
  • 50208 2y ago
    "Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone." Might ... but more likely not. I can't understand why this irrational fear of potential social problems if not tethered to a phone is outweighing the clear evidence of actual social problems when tethered to a phone has so much traction with adults.
  • jrussino 2y ago
    > Today, a kid might be alienated without a phone. That's really the point of a program like this. A lot of parents think smartphones (mainly social media, really) are a net negative for their kids, but we have this tragedy of the commons situation where no one wants their kid to be left out / socially isolated. Having this "wait until 8th" thing is basically parents playing the prisoner's dilemma getting together and agreeing that it we'd be much happier if everyone cooperates rather than defect on this issue.
• alpb 2y ago
  I feel like every sentence on this website has a missing ^{[citation needed]} next to it.
  • kawogi 2y ago
    I had the same sentiment when reading. It all looks like B'n'W opinions and mixing devices and services. I completely miss the "parenting" aspect. It's all about prohibition.
• urbandw311er 2y ago
  What does the “8th grade” mean?
  • doublerabbit 2y ago
    8th school grade in the US which equates to around 13 years old.
• ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  More discussion from 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142
  • dang 2y ago
    Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Wait Until 8th pledge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207142 - June 2023 (244 comments) Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284217 - March 2019 (146 comments)
• hidelooktropic 2y ago
  Maybe off topic, but is that AI gen gore on the image of the small child looking down at his phone on the left?
  • yobananaboy 2y ago
    Oh wow that is surprisingly spooky, looks like something out of Coraline.
  • NBJack 2y ago
    It honestly looks more like a really, really bad photoshop cutout to me (weird but consistent edge, nose issue my be a blowout). AI generators I've used tend to get lighting more or less consistent but with edges that can waffle between blurry and sharp.
  • arealaccount 2y ago
    And then the very next picture, a stack of hands, which just is a cruel ask for a LLM
• 50208 2y ago
  Good start ... but it should actually be "Wait until 18". I did this with my son and, now at 25, he has a much more normal perspective on connectivity and social media than most his age. There was ZERO downside (for all you worrisome types who think not having a phone is bad for some reason). Thinking kids "need phones!" for safety / socialization are making that shit up entirely.
• PHGamer 2y ago
  meanwhile millenials had full reign over the internet as kids cause their boomer parents didnt know shit. back when everyone did the famous A/S/L questionare from randos online lol.
  • diputsmonro 2y ago
    It's not just about internet access , it's about the medically recognized highly addictive and predatory nature of social media. It is designed with the same principles as slot machines, to draw you in and keep you engaged for as long as possible. The internet we grew up in was much less centralized and not yet optimized for this kind of manipulation.
    • warner25 2y ago
      I think you're right, plus there was a solid wall dividing online life from "IRL" back then. When I asked and answered "A/S/L" among randos, we were all anonymous. It was an escape from the social dynamics among my peers at school, sports, church, etc. For a while, there was some consensus that anonymity and talking to strangers was the danger. So we got real name and photo policies, and the expectation that we'd have an online presence that was an extension of our real selves. Now that every kid's online persona is indivisible from their IRL identity, and their popularity can be measured with likes and followers and inclusion / exclusion from group chats, it just allows the social dynamics among their peers to play out 24/7 on steroids with no escape.
• __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  If we've built something harmful here, why are we only protecting the kids from it? There's got to be a way to handle this more directly.
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Fair point, but there are a couple of reasons why we would only apply this to kids. First, something can be harmful to children and not to adults. Second, even if smartphones are harmful to adults, for better or for worse we let adults ruin themselves. It's a necessary condition of freedom, that you have the ability to make bad choices as well as good.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• newhotelowner 2y ago
  Our school says that every single time a kid gets a notification or call, everyone gets distracted, and that's why they are not allowing any one carry phone/smart watch. Which I totally agree with.
  • cortesoft 2y ago
    Not allowing something at school is a lot different than not allowing something anywhere.
• rvba 2y ago
  I find it fascinating, that hacker news, the literal community for people tinkering with stuff seems to be full of people who want to gut their kids instead of teaching them how to use stuff responsibly. Probably tons of people here know how to code since they've learned on their own. Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone. Also kids have a lot of time that could be used to learn stuff. And even playing games is... not that bad. But I guess kids should learn chinese or what is the current fad now or torment the kid with 50 extraculliculars.
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone. That is supposition, not reality, and there are parents here who have shared their experience with kids having a healthy social life without a phone. More importantly, a very important role of parents is to make good decisions for their kids when the kids are still too immature to do that. "But all my friends are doing it" is literal child reasoning and should not be the only factor in parenting decisions.
    • rvba 2y ago
      If the kids are "parented" by terror, not actual teaching, they will have a problem once they leave their bubble. Never met that guy who drank every day at university or that opressed girl who fucked 50 people in the first year? Sheltered and not parented kids end like that. Breaking the chain syndrome.
    • ziddoap 2y ago
      >and there are parents here who have shared their experience with kids having a healthy social life without a phone. And there are others who have shared their experiences of responsibly teaching their kids how to coexist with technology. There's probably a lot more that aren't willing to say so, because they'll be roasted in the comments for being a "bad parent". I don't let my kids have unfettered access to social media. But I let them have a smartphone. And I took the time initially, and continually, to have conversations about having a healthy relationship with technology. Somehow this debate is always completely lacking in any sort of middle ground or nuance.
• diputsmonro 2y ago
  I know the site clarifies it, but the headline messaging on this is meaninglessly confusing. "Wait until 8th!" "Oh, you mean their 8th birthday?" "No, 8th grade!" "Oh, so wait until they're in 8th grade, got it!" "No no, until the end of the 8th grade, when they graduate middle school!" "Oh, so it's really wait until 9th" Just seems like this would be the beginning of every conversation and lead to a non-unified approach. They should emphasize it being like an intro to high-school gift or something.
  • Nition 2y ago
    Agreed 100%. Additional factors on top of all those is some countries start year 1 at age five, and others at age 6, and of course there's a variety of actual ages within a grade as well. "Wait Until 9th" would have definitely helped a lot. "Wait until 14" might be even clearer. Or even "wait until high school".
    • socksy 2y ago
      I mean as a non American, I think this is one of the most American sites I've seen all week, and do not get the impression that they will particularly mind if it's ambiguous for other people in other countries
      • Nition 2y ago
        That's fair, it's certainly very USA-centric (although they should still call it "Wait Until 9th"!).
    • iwontberude 2y ago
      You work with the domains you have/can register.
      • ortusdux 2y ago
        https://www.whois.com/whois/waituntilhighschool.com https://www.whois.com/whois/waituntilhighschool.com
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• trump2025 2y ago
  IMHO, this feels like another wave of nannyism that follows after a new technology matures. Being a 90s kid, discovering porn, violence, warez were all normal part of growing up that I don't think has had any negative impact nor do the puritan panic about pornography. Matter of fact the internet started speedrunning censorship and monopolization post 9/11 without much of a fight and I think this triggered the default in people to just shrug and seek other ways to access and share data. It's as ridiculous as suggesting Bittorrent is harmful for kids because of its unrestricted limitless amount of data. What's more harmful is preventing discovering adaptation and self-balancing on their own in the face of endless entertainment wish diminishing value. There's just so many things outside internet and smartphones that even adults struggle to balance, the last thing I think kids need are adults taking away that trial by fire and allowing themselves to develop their own sense of moderation.
  • vacuity 2y ago
    Some fears in this genre are well overblown, I agree. I also like the idea of kids learning for themselves, but it depends on whether they can learn before it becomes unmanageable. There is probably middle ground between no phone and phone here, and a less spoken about factor (IME) is that some kids and parents just have different dispositions and outcomes. Whether that is nature or nurture, it's hard to isolate or alter much right now. There is definitely nannyism following a new technology. I think it becomes gradually more true not because technology is inherently dangerous or something, but because we are producing technology that likely is more and more dangerous. Of course I don't consider social media addiction and Bittorrent on the same level.
  • Epa095 2y ago
    I think this post from another thread is a good answer to this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41930275#41931671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41930275#41931671 Tldr:Seeing shock content is like eating a spoon of salt. The mind has defence mechanisms for it. You consume it, you are disgusted, and you never want to do it again. Consuming social media is like eating fast food
    • 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
• creatonez 2y ago
  Seems pretty strange that this eccentric political campaign is allowed to flood HN with posts and comments on a near weekly basis at this point.
• caseyy 2y ago
  This is a bandaid on a bullet hole. The root issue is that tech leaders (yes, these decision-makers are real, individual people, let's stop diluting accountability!) have forced themselves onto us and our kids with tracking, data mining, personalised advertising, distortion of facts, dark patterns, addiction-forming products, plausible but false AI content, brand-compliance, and all sorts of other user exploitation. The social media/internet landscape as it exists today will probably be the smoking of this generation – everyone is doing it and many will die prematurely (due to stress, depression, lack of motivation and purpose, addiction), or waste so many years of their life consuming product that it will be a pretty good equivalent for dying early. And while banning the equivalent of cigarettes for kids a damn good idea, we definitely need to quit scrolling ourselves into a premature grave, too. Why are we consuming it? Participating in the popular internet today shouldn't be "wait until 8th", but "wait a moment, you don't want this in your life, and the people around you don't want to deal with you involving them into it second-hand either".
  • tonymet 2y ago
    i agree but they deserve credit for running a reasonable campaign. Look how you're ridiculing them, and now imagine how much ridicule they would receive if the campaign was total abstinence from smart phones? Running a contrarian campaign is hard, especially given all of the status , social pressure and marketing surrounding smartphones.
    • caseyy 2y ago
      I agree. What I said may have come off as ridicule. This campaign is an important effort. I argue that we should have more such efforts, bigger efforts, and even alternative efforts to prevent people’s addiction to social media.
      • tonymet 2y ago
        thanks for saying that
• kawogi 2y ago
  > Let’s protect the elementary and middle school years from the distractions and the dangers of a smartphone. > … because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one. Sorry, but I do not agree with the equivalence of a device and one of its possible usages. My kids got their first smartphone at the ages of 5-6. (dramatic pause) When I was younger me and my siblings got a camera, a Game Boy, a watch, a walkman, a calculator, a stopwatch and small handheld battery-driven games. Later a tamagotchi and whatever was trending. Also we were taught to use the phone-booth in case of an "emergency". While you do not have to agree that all of us needed all of this, nobody would've said to "wait until the age of 13" with all of this. The phone I gave my kids were retired Android smartphones with Lineage OS installed. Almost all Google Apps removed or disarmed. I preinstalled Apps like: a calculator, camera, a secure messenger (Threema), clock, navigation (OSMAnd), a few educational games, a paint/drawing app, a calendar and added the most important contacts (Parents, siblings, grandparents) to the address book. We added more apps over time when we felt they might benefit from them. We agreed upon usage duration and modalities. We mostly moved their TV-time towards their phones. We explained how to ask before taking a photo of a person. What happened? My Kids started to get interested in how to read/write, used the navigation software during road-trips to find the next possible stop to have a break or try to find POIs along the road and wait them to pass by. They played with the calculator, started to learn English (non-native if that wasn't obvious, yet), started to "program" robots, send me "good nights" when I was late at work. Call me if they spontaneously decided to stay with a friend after school. Take photos during their holidays, listen to audiobooks during road-trips. Play with the torchlight in the tent. The older one is now 12. She got access to our family calender and contact list, so she can plan her appointments with friends around ours, manage her ToDo-lists, make stop-motion videos, research all sorts of stuff on wikipedia, gain a very good understanding of how those devices work. Learn to take care of expensive gears and how it matters to have control over their own data and that backups are important. She learns how to manage her data plan by moving audiobooks for offline-usage. Also she helps her grandparents with all sorts of technical problems they have with their phones. Yes, it's more work to teach a kid how to work with all this stuff than just throw an iPhone at them when they turn 13 and say "whoa, finally old enough to figure this all out." What could go wrong. Sorry, that I'm a bit salty on this topic (and I sometimes might not find the right words due to the language barrier), but just saying that a smartphone is bad because parents do not care for what their kids are doing with the device just feels plain wrong to me.
• kcmastrpc 2y ago
  I don't see a reason for my children to have smartphones until they're driving themselves to their own job and social functions.
• legitster 2y ago
  Parent here. This is a LOT easier today than it was 5-10 years ago. It feels like there's been a generation divide where younger kids are not as insistent on smartphones as the older kids were. Maybe it was covid. But also there's a lot of negative sentiment even amongst kids about smartphones - that they are addictive, encourage anti-social behaviors, and enable bullying. "Brain-rot". Our local school district banned phones during school hours just this last year and there has been an overwhelming positive sentiment from faculty and kids. We don't otherwise do things like track screen time. Our kids have videogames and computers and tablets. But we're providing a dumbphone in late grade school and so far there are no protests to get anything else.
  • warner25 2y ago
    I've had this same thought. I have younger kids, so we haven't yet reached the point of needing to contend with all this (e.g. "...but everyone else has an iPhone and Instagram and Tik-Tok account..."), and I've been encouraged by what seems like an increasingly popular movement to deal with it through collective action. It does seem like parents with kids 5-10 years older went through the worst of it; with society caught off-guard and any parent who fought the problem going hard against the grain.
  • op00to 2y ago
    My kid is cool wearing a cellular smart watch. He’s not allowed to wear it during school, but can keep it in his backpack.
  • trogdor 2y ago
    I am 38 years old. I attend concerts very frequently, and - though it’s uncommon - some shows don’t allow photos or videos, at the artist’s request. And it’s enforced by venue staff. Even as someone who enjoys taking videos at concerts, I really like the vibe at shows that have a no-photo/no-video policy. It increases audience engagement, and it stops the phenomenon where everyone has their phone held high in the air, blocking the view during popular songs.
    • jcul 2y ago
• irrational 2y ago
  We don’t wait. We tell the kids they can have once when they can buy it themselves. In our experience that usually happens when they are about 17.
  • kawogi 2y ago
    Who will teach them how to (not) use them once they have one? I mean things like privacy, phishing, social media risks, addiction, subscription fees, etc.? I think the possession of a device isn't the risk itself.
    • Jach 2y ago
      The parent has failed if the child can't teach themselves by that age. Besides, as you say, it's not so much the phone itself -- those risks can be learned or taught separately from the phone. (I didn't have my first phone until I was 23, but I'm not a tech-clueless zoomer and grew up with message boards.)
• jMyles 2y ago
  Every single popular / well-funded take on this topic seems to focus entirely on quantity, and not at all on quality. There are many wonderful things for kids - even very young kids - to do on the internet, in collaboration / supervision / concert with a caring adult. My now 9yo has been playing games like Monument Valley, Lost Sounds, Dragonbox, and the SNES randomizers since he was three (maybe two for some of them). And I have no doubt that these have been enormous boosts to his cognitive and behavioral development, and have given him (and so many kids his age) super powers compared to us. It's one thing to ward off social media and FPSs; it's another entirely to suggest that refraining from use of a phone or computer is likely to lead to better outcomes.
  • ziddoap 2y ago
    Indeed, these debates always seem to lack any sort of nuance. Probably because it's about children, and it becomes really emotionally charged. Teaching responsible use of technology is, in my opinion, one of my duties as a parent. That includes how to responsibly use a phone, ideally with the goal of improving my kids life. I don't allow social media (which, I think is really the core of this issue), but I do allow other things like games (in moderation, with approval), communication (with approved contacts), as a dictionary and thesaurus, as an encyclopedia, etc.
• eikenberry 2y ago
  We waited until our kids were 14 to get their phones and they couldn't take them to their bed-room at night until their senior (last) year of high school. They are both in college now and it seemed to turn out OK so far. So I guess that's a +1 for the idea.
• kawogi 2y ago
  > Initial results from a groundbreaking study by the National Institute of Health reveal that MRI's found significant differences in the brains of children who use smartphones, tablets, and video games more than seven hours a day. Reminds me of "Every single person who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying". Jokes aside: "more than 7 hours a day" is a _quite little more_ than the 0 hours the site is asking for. Also I'd guess it might make a difference whether the kids are using a drawing app, tiktok, learning a foreign language, reading an eBook, playing a shooter, gambling, …
• clivestaples 2y ago
  My wife and I adopted two severely abused and neglected children and held out until they were 14. But the thing that we quickly realized is that our children's online life was only as secure as their friends most permissive parent. It still boggles my mind how many elementary-aged children had unfettered access to the internet. I suspect a lot of them unwittingly traumatized themselves.
• burnt-resistor 2y ago
  Smartwatch without apps but with limited phone, texting, and location sharing to trusted contacts appears to be the way out offering most technical benefits without becoming a firehose of horribleness, addiction, and distraction. Dumb / kosher phones seem like another idea but have the disadvantage of being another thing to loose and break rather than something that's strapped to them. Another thing is to role-model and reinforce smartphone etiquette by not pulling them out to waste time when around other people. I applaud keeping smartphone, social media, screen, and computer privileges minimum age as high and restricted as possible for as long as possible.
• standardUser 2y ago
  I don't think American society has been served well by our tradition of trying to confine children to a pretend kid's world and excluding them from the actual world their going to have to contend with. Our drinking culture is awful, our children are routinely barred from "adult" spaces which keeps them away from adult culture and socialization, we treat nudity and sex like some kind of crime to the point where we're afraid to even talk about it. This culture of forbidding inevitably leads to confused, repressed, misinformed kids and we've seen the backlash across multiple generations. We see an alternative, across those same many generations, working in other Western societies, yet we seem stubbornly incapable of learning any lessons from these extremely apt comparisons. We have the data, yet we keep treating kids like "others".
  • api 2y ago
    This is more like trying to keep cigarettes away from little kids. Phones are little pocket dopamine hit machines that feed short attention span slop. They could be something else, but there is no business model that can compete with addiction. I agree that kids need more real world experience. Mindlessly scrolling TikTok and playing repetitive games with compulsion loops designed by psychologists to maximize addiction isn’t real world experience.
    • standardUser 2y ago
      Or sugar. Or TV. Or video games. Modern technology may be more insidious but it's not the first threat of this type. Adults have been ranting and raving about kids relationships with media and technology and drugs and food and sex for a very, very long time.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • api 2y ago
        It’s getting worse not better. We are creating an entire society that is wall to wall addiction that starts at birth. I think a big problem with it is that people don’t realize how addictive this stuff can be or how manipulative and insidious it is. They’re not prepared for it and they get blindsided when it takes over their lives or their kids lives. Infinite scroll alone is incredibly addictive. Add other tactics and our stupid ape dopamine system is no match. It might get better once we culturally assimilate this knowledge and realize that this stuff is more psychologically manipulative than we think it ought to be. We need to look at apps that use addiction patterns the way we look at drugs. We think: It’s just a screen! It’s not like opioids or meth or something. How can a screen take over someone’s life? The average TikTok user spends three hours on the app per day. Average. That means half spend more. That’s insane. Not to single out TikTok. It’s just one example.
• g8oz 2y ago
  Researcher Jonathan Haidt advocates for children not having a smartphone until age 16. https://fortune.com/well/article/rules-for-curbing-kid-smartphone-use-mental-health-crisis/ https://fortune.com/well/article/rules-for-curbing-kid-smart...
  • standardUser 2y ago
    What an insulting and futile approach. You'd think a trained psychologist would know better than to think kids wouldn't a) find this laughable b) develop a severe and justified resentment and c) find a way around their comparatively less-tech-minded parents' arbitrary restrictions. I don't know his background, but it reeks of a person who "studies" kids instead of actually working with them.
• tialaramex 2y ago
  It's weird to not give people access to the Network, which so far as I can tell is the core idea here. It's extremely weird to assume that the specific age matters. This is always a bad idea and where it is necessary for practical reasons (e.g. licensing laws) that causes friction I assumed this site was about waiting until they are eight and I thought huh, well, that's probably not a big problem for most kids and maybe if you don't think about it too hard that's an OK rule. But now I find it means high school age which is entirely crazy.
• slowmovintarget 2y ago
  No phones in the classroom.
• akulbe 2y ago
  I totally get the rationale, no need to convince me. We've raised the bar even higher than 8th. Our kid won't have a phone before they are driving. We have a landline for when they're at home, but there's no reason to rush. They can wait. So can we.
• jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Neither parent nor child has control over the device. That we let these valent swirling forces in someday is semi surprising. I mostly wish there were empowered options parents & children could negotiate & navigate on their own. But all we get is cloudified software, that we don't have direct view of or insight to.
• massive 2y ago
  As a father of a young child with diabetes, I have mixed feelings about this issue. While I believe small children shouldn't carry smartphones, it's currently our only way to monitor their health when they're outside our immediate range, such as in daycare. My child is quite small and not yet interested in the phone, but I expect that will change eventually. We've established ground rules: the phone can’t be used for watching videos or playing games and is intended solely as a medical device. However, maintaining that restriction may become challenging as she grows.
  • tonymet 2y ago
    is it for uploading glucose diagnostic results?
    • massive 2y ago
      Yes, that's correct. It uploads data from the continuous glucose sensor to the medical device provider, allowing us parents to access that data on our smartphones. But it's not just about collecting statistics. For instance, delivering alerts to us, such as low glucose levels or pump malfunction, requires the phone to be present. Additionally, it allows for remote monitoring of glucose levels. For example, during winter, when the child is bundled up in overalls, daycare staff can check the values without needing to undress her in freezing temperatures. Recently, many insulin pumps, although not ours, have also evolved so that the algorithm controlling the pump operates via a smartphone. This means having the phone nearby is not just very useful; it's essential.
      • tonymet 2y ago
        that's pretty neat
• thih9 2y ago
  > The Wait Until 8th pledge empowers parents to rally together to delay giving children a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade. For context, students in eighth grade (US) are usually 13–14 years old.
  • conductr 2y ago
    From a messaging point of view, “wait until 8th” and “until at least the end of 8th grade” may as well be a mile wide difference to kids at that age, and it’s unclear to parents who want to actually follow this guideline without reading all the particulars
• wkat4242 2y ago
  Why do you need to 'pledge' that. What BS. As a parent you can just decide to do so, no need to get anyone else involved. Personally I'd make it dependent on the child's maturity. I was very mature at young age and my parents would let me travel on the train to other cities.
• parasubvert 2y ago
  Every year this post shows up. It’s based on flimsy evidence, and the pledge itself is nonsensical peer pressure. All children are different in how they interact socially. Some do better with a computer or phone as an intermediary. This has been true since the BBS scene in the 1980s through smartphones today. I have had two teens with very different relationships with their phones, one is a socialite, the other just uses it to read manga and text close friends. Both have used their phones since grade 6, and had access to phones and iPads and PCs since age 3. They’re comfortable with technology and understand the risks of talking to people online because that was my job as a parent: to teach them from a young age to see these devices as an extension of themselves, that they will eventually be the ones in charge of their privacy and how they wish to be treated.
  • dartharva 2y ago
    Public policy is based on aggregate behavior patterns of the overall population. If every policy were to account for outliers like your teens, nothing would ever get done.
    • parasubvert 2y ago
      My teens aren’t outliers, and we’re not talking about public policy. We’re talking about an influence campaign that actually doesn’t have reliable evidence about aggregate behaviour patterns, it just has an agenda.
• snvzz 2y ago
  Without legislation, this is hopeless. Despite everything points to the necessity of keeping kids away from the Internet.
• a-saleh 2y ago
  Idk, I bought my kid e-ink smartphone. Black and white screen. 10 fps if you don't mind ghosting. No play-store. She manages. If she wants to play games we have switch and pc and if she wants to watch whatever, we have google-tv stick. So far it works out.
• fergie 2y ago
  "Dumb"-smartwatches for kids allow the kid stay in touch and be located, without getting sucked into anything addictive. Quite popular in my 9 year old's class, where the kids are generally "free range" (Scandinavia), and nobody wants to get them a phone.
• miki123211 2y ago
  As somebody who grew up right when the smartphone wave was starting, I feel extremely uneasy about ideas like this one. I have had almost unrestricted access to a computer since the age of 9, and to a smartphone since the age of 12, and I can definitely say that I wouldn't be the person I am right now without that access. It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their kids access to the devices necessary for that spirit to thrive on the other. I've known several kids in my age group whose access to technology was severely restricted, and I strongly believe that all of them were significantly worse off and have had serious mental health consequences because of that. Not to mention that the restrictions didn't actually accomplish much in most cases, and, if anything, caused a form of Streisand effect when it came to e.g. explicit content or talking to (older) strangers online. Unrestricted (and even more importantly, unmonitored) access to tech provides an "escape hatch" against abusive families. Yes, it may have somewhat of a bad effect on some kids, but for the kids that do need it, it's life changing to an extend that's hard to overstate. English-speaking countries have always seemed more uptight about this though. I live in eastern EU, and we have never really done the whole "kids shouldn't have access to porn / swearing" thing much either, to the point of not having a word for "explicit" in my language, and using the word "censored" instead.
  • benj111 2y ago
    > It's sad to see people lament the demise of the "hacker spirit" on one hand, while denying their kids access to the devices necessary for that spirit to thrive on the other. When I was young devices weren't connected, so you could fiddle and not get yourself into too much trouble. My concern isn't letting my kids loose on the computer, its letting them loose on the internet. I would liken it to letting your kids go to a night club. theyre likely to be exposed to inappropriate content. Ultimately these are tools, I wouldn't stop my young child using a knife, and in fact encourage them to learn how to use it safely, that doesn't mean Ill let my 5 year old keep a pen knife in their pocket.
  • tuumi 2y ago
    You may have a case if there isn't access to any other tech. My five year old son and I use the PC and 3D print to make cool contraptions. We use a computer for Xlights to make light shows for the holidays. He isn't quite ready for online gaming but that could be an option in a few years. There he would, hopefully, be able to have communication with people around the world. This link references smart phones and the unfettering access kids have that rewires the brain due to the short quick dopamine hits of social media.
• benj111 2y ago
  So what would parents suggest? I'm 40, so got a phone at 17. I had rubbish internet in my teens, and anyway, didn't really 'discover' it. So I've never grew up in the connected world. My eldest is now 7. It seems to me secondary school is about the age for a mobile. And at this point its basically supervised education
• BirAdam 2y ago
  My son is in high school. He has a smartphone. He doesn’t have social media accounts. I was just honest with him about how such companies make money, how they actively encourage addiction, etc. He chose, like me, to not have accounts with those companies. I am not sure why people believe that they cannot explain things to their children. My son was in middle school when we had this chat.
  • zelphirkalt 2y ago
    I congratulate you, for having a son, who is able to be so principled about things like that. It is great that you had this informing chat as a parent with your child, and that he was able to understand and draw his conclusions. That said, I think for many kids that social pressure or network effect is quite a motivator to get social media accounts. Say all their friends have one and they have a group, where they usually organize. Or say they are interested in someone and wants their contact info, but they only give them their social media details. For many people traditional ways of communication are somehow not their way any longer. I am talking about e-mail, phone calls, SMS, letters, and whatever else. It is a sad fact, that most people become supporters of the big tech data sharks, even if unknowingly, by creating peer pressure. I wish you and your son can both stay strong in your resolves and that your environment is not too excluding.
• hndamien 2y ago
  My goal is to see if I can get my kids all the way through highschool with just an Apple smart watch and an iPad for home and school stuff where it is required. It seems completely doable.
• pflenker 2y ago
  Indirectly related to smartphone usage - it’s incredibly hard for teenage kids to actually _find something to do_, at least here in Germany, where I live. Going to watch a movie is very, very expensive - without snacks, you pay around 10 EUR, while the recommended amount of pocket money is around 30 EUR per month. There are less and less public swimming pools, playgrounds usually don’t appeal to teens and are frequently neglected (on top of that, teens who meet at a playground are often chased away since they tend to leave litter behind, and the playgrounds are for younger kids). The list goes on. In my opinion, we shouldn’t focus on taking smartphones away, thus limiting the options to do something even further, but instead focus on creating compelling, affordable alternatives, and teach kids to use their smartphones responsibly.
• gr4vityWall 2y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this. Having unrestricted access to my devices at an early age is what made me have a career in software development later on. Having a computer, portable consoles, and then smartphones on was crucial - those were the devices I were playing with, and eventually tried developing for, or even just running homebrew programs. Some of my lifelong friendships were made over the Internet, sometimes at a very young age (9~10yo), and we still talk to this day. I started posting on forums back when I was 7. Some of my friends got into their careers in similar ways - for example, by playing sysadmin when they were kids, then teenagers. I don't know. I have mixed feelings about this. I think not allowing smartphones to be used in class is more reasonable.
• cellular 2y ago
  Wait until 8th? No wait until they drive...or later!
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  I really had to reflect a bit on this site, and show it to other friends with kids, to come to the conclusion. This is helicopter parenting. Specifically, the way that the pledge requires that kids share all passwords and only install approved apps. Kids need a degree of independence that they've lost in how structured modern day youth has become. An important part of growing up is being exposed to people who have different ideas and beliefs than parents and extended family, and making decisions and having real consequences. I think it's more important to talk to children about what they encounter in their day-to-day lives, and find out about their struggles. It's important to remind children that they can turn off their smartphone, or delete an account on a social media site, if it doesn't bring them joy. As parents, it's our duty to tell children that they have the choice, but not make that choice for them.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• sporkland 2y ago
  Anyone have any takes on the Fitbit Ace LTE vs the devices listed on their approved devices list (https://www.waituntil8th.org/devices https://www.waituntil8th.org/devices)?
• horace123x 2y ago
  peallyss successfully accessed my husband's phone discreetly. We worked together through the email address peallyss@gmail. com, which allowed me to gain entry into my husband's device. This experience has given me a newfound sense of security and peace of mind. For those looking for similar assistance, peallyss can be reached via his Instagram account, peallyss or contacted
• opyate 2y ago
  In the UK: https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/ https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/
• fennecbutt 2y ago
  Wth does 8th grade mean?! Maybe their campaign would just be more effective if they specified an age.