8 ms·

Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents. You can prevent as much as you want but then kids go to school nd everyone else has accounts they should not have o

• ceejayoz 2y ago
  Yup. "Why didn't my kid get invited to that birthday? Oh, it was organized on Snapchat..." We have a no phones in the bedroom and no phones past a certain time rule, but disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.
  • iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
    << disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah. Maybe, maybe not. The real question is.. do I really want my kid to associate with kids that are so heavily invested in social media. I know my personal answer to this. I even know my SO answer and the upcoming battles ahead.
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      It’s widespread enough your question boils down to “do I really want my kid to have friends”.
      • iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
        I will tell you what I told my colleague as to whether I am sad that having a big dog prevents family reunions or boyfiends coming over. Sometimes things just work out in our favor.
  • avereveard 2y ago
    There's almost zero chance for that pretend scenario to happen, kid and parents intermingle all the time at drop off and other school activities, kids are pretty vocal about their birthday and who they want to be present, and their parents will find a way to get the message across, and the kid will know from school interactions anyway if they are invited, and relay the info to the parent.
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      Drop off in my area is a line of cars. No mingling. Activities are great if the kids share one, but plenty of friends don’t. By high school, parents tend not to be doing the organizing at all. Outside birthdays, the same thing happens with “hey wanna come over?” ad-hoc scenarios. It isn’t a pretend scenario. We had to loosen up rules because it was happening to our kids.
  • dyingkneepad 2y ago
    The one I heard was: "Dad, can you show me Minecraft? All my friends keep talking about Minecraft, but I don't understand it. I want to know more about Minecraft". If you don't give the stuff to your kids, they get socially excluded. The best we can do is to teach them how to use stuff in moderation. Show them how excessive usage can go bad: there are plenty of examples around, all the time.
• ikiris 2y ago
  “Devices or accounts they should not have” Just because you think your kids should be limited to the Bible or no phones or no social media or no d&d or whatever arbitrary limits / moral panic you impose, does not extend those limits to other kids in any moral fashion. Those kids have full rights to have whatever they have and you are indeed the bad guy for your arbitrary limits if they are not common or inhibiting socially.
  • randunel 2y ago
    No, those kids can't have whatever they have if they're under 13, 14 or 18, depending on what it is that they have.
    • iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
      They can.. if one of the following is true: 1. Their parents are doing exceptionally bad job 2. Their parents are doing exceptionally good job Sadly, there is no way to tell, because not all kids are created equal. I know my parents had to basically remove our PC from our home ( how many parents have that option today? ) to put me and my siblings in line. Unfortunately, this only adds to the problem, because bad parents tend to think they are great and vice-versa.
  • ericmcer 2y ago
    What there is 100% a precedent for prohibiting certain activities from minors because their brains are undeveloped. In the future we will view a child spending hours a day on Tiktok how we currently view a kid smoking cigarettes. It is creating an entire generation of anxious, ADHD addled kids who struggle with school and focused work of any kind.
    • ikiris 2y ago
      [citation needed] for evidence that somehow TikTok is at all responsible for causing adhd
      • 2y ago
• ericmcer 2y ago
  Exactly, I see all these idealized strategies around social media and children but the reality is nothing is going to overcome the peer pressure of being 12 years old and the only kid at school without a phone. Until schools and government restrict phone ownership in a real way, parents are going to keep giving phones to their 8 year olds.
  • figers 2y ago
    We choose an apple watch for this reason, that way we can still call them / locate them, they are part of their friends iMessage groups, but no social media apps are possible...
    • feistypharit 2y ago
      We just got Apple Watches for our 11 and 13 year olds. It is a decent middle ground, as up to now we’ve been very limiting of their screen time. Our district has strict blocks in place at school, but most kids still already have phones. We did it for that reason and so so we don’t introduce phones at the same time they start driving (which is when we figured they’d actually need it) One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for is kids use huge group chats that result in hundreds of messages a day. Learned how to mute discussions really quick. You can also limit access to groups with parental controls. Key is talking to your kids regularly and helping them navigate life. Real and digital.
• asoneth 2y ago
  > everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have You can start the conversation with other parents at kindergarten pickup. Each grade at our school has a pledge that kids & parents can sign to wait until eighth grade to let them have a smartphone. This can be as simple as a shared spreadsheet or a dedicated site like https://www.waituntil8th.org https://www.waituntil8th.org My kids are still young but from what I've heard from families with older kids is that holding the line gets increasingly hard as they approach 8th grade. You have to be prepared to socially exclude families that let their underage children use smartphones or social media, the same way you wouldn't invite a family that lets their middle-schooler drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes to your kid's birthday party. While you can never get everyone to agree to anything, as long as your kids have a critical mass of friends who don't have smartphones then not having one won't make them an outcast.
  • aczerepinski 2y ago
    All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones. No exceptions. If I excluded those families my kid wouldn’t be allowed to have friends. Best I can do is take the other kids phones away after a certain number of screen hours at my house. Limiting screen time is an exceptionally challenging task because of the many loopholes and bugs in parental controls, and my lack of direct control over the chromebooks the schools issue. Do you really think you can predict your kids future friends correctly and lobby the correct set of parents during kindergarten years?
    • asoneth 2y ago
      > All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones My condolences. I agree that it's too late once you hit a tipping point and a critical mass of their friends have smartphones. At that point you have to fall back to weaker backup defenses like parental controls and limiting screen time. The point of Wait Until 8th is to provide a little more time to let them form their own self-image and build up their ability to manage their attention and information diet. > Do you really think you can predict your kids future friends correctly and lobby the correct set of parents during kindergarten years? Instead of trying to predict the "correct" set you can just lobby everyone. Our public school has about a hundred kids per grade from K through 8th. Parents bring it up not just at school pickup but on playdates, the local listserv, the PTO newsletter, when new families move to the neighborhood, etc. Apparently several older grades have managed to hold the line such that most kids in that grade didn't have smartphones until high school, and many didn't even have smartwatches or dumbphones.
• lolinder 2y ago
  The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force me on any of this—they just invited me to be a part of their exclusive club. There might be a way around this that doesn't involve cultivating a mild condescension towards peers, but I can say from experience that the condescension does work!
  • siavosh 2y ago
    I think you're on to something...
  • ckz 2y ago
    Agreed. So much of it is identity (going back to James Clear in Atomic Habits). "I'm not a smoker" is more powerful than "I'm trying to quit". "We just don't watch Youtube on our phones in this house." [and you work to develop that into healthy self-confidence rather than ego] Growing up homeschooled, we had the same simmering sense of pride in not doing what others (e.g. "public schoolers" did). Never had a rebellious teen phase, etc. Some families overdid it, but...idk...I'm still quite close to my parents, so I never felt stifled. It makes it -very- natural in life to focus on what my SO and I think are optimal and more or less disregard what's normal.
  • iforgot22 2y ago
    My family didn't exactly say "better," but they meant it.
    • lolinder 2y ago
      Yeah, I put 'better' in scare quotes because we didn't use that word exactly, but that was definitely the idea. I realize now that that's the opposite of what a quote usually means, but too late now!
  • rachofsunshine 2y ago
• herewulf 2y ago
  It's okay to be "the bad guy". They're your kids, not your friends. Too many parents want to be buddies with their kids these days. That's just setting everyone up for failure. My wife and I have a loving relationship with our kids but they are quite clear on the fact that we are not equals. The distinction will lessen as they reach adulthood and prove their responsibility.
  • tisdadd 2y ago
    I know that I have a great friendship as an adult with my parents, in part because they were parents while I was growing up. I had a friend ask what I would do in a situation and I wanted to yell be a parent! Said something nicer, but basically gently pointed out that sometimes that means giving up things you may want to do to show a good example. For instance, if you are always on social media then of course they will want to be too. Right now, you are the biggest influence on your children's life, even when they do not like something now that does not mean they will not thank you later. Anyway, I was debating building a house that wouldn't allow radio waves in so that everything has to be approved. One of the quotes I like is, "It is not the things that I had as a child that makes me the man I am today, but the things I did not." Went on a bit of a tangent, but I just wanted to encourage that for most of history it was considered good for children to learn to interact well not with their peers but with their elders. This helps firm realistic expectations of what the majority of life will be like, the opposite of social media and much of the internet. Also, remember that if you address a topic with your child first you are the trusted expert, rather than someone else, in their minds.
    • skydhash 2y ago
      Pretty much this. My farther was strict on on the kind of behavior he did not tolerate (and made them explicit early). No compromises. We were aware of the lines and the closer we tread to them, the more he took on the role of authority. But after we became adult and there was no need for that authority role, we became quite good friends with each other. My mother rarely had to take up on that role, but there was still clear separation between children and parents.
• ekianjo 2y ago
  > Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents That's why some people prefer home schooling
• dchichkov 2y ago
  Another Gorilla is the schools, teachers and state-approved recommendations, that extend their reach even into private schools. Imagine my frustration one day, when I've discovered that my kindergartner has full access to a brand-new, shiny iPad during class. Despite complaints from parents, the teacher refused to reduce iPad usage (or even activate Screen Distance and Screen Time controls on the iPad, or share usage statistics). The only thing that I've learned, this is all in line with California’s state-approved computer literacy recommendations.
  • glangdale 2y ago
    100% this. Our kids were required to bring laptops to school for no particularly good reason, then allowed to zombie out on them in the library during lunch and free periods. Infuriating.
    • dchichkov 2y ago
      I understand that it is mostly regulated at the state level. I'm not sure about other states, but The Computer Science Standards for California Public Schools (Kindergarten through Grade Twelve) also tend to be followed by private schools. So they can claim their programs meet state requirements. This brings computers into the classroom, and once they’re available, it is a slippery slope. It is easier for teachers to have students use semi-gamified "educational" apps rather than engage themselves. Example for K-2 - https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/csstandards.pdf https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/csstandards.pdf: K-2.CS.1 Select and operate computing devices that perform a variety of tasks accurately and quickly based on user needs and preferences. K-2.CS.2 Explain the functions of common hardware and software components of computing systems. K-2.CS.3 Describe basic hardware and software problems using accurate terminology. K-2.NI.4 Model and describe how people connect to other people, places, information and ideas through a network. ... K–2 K-2.AP.12 Create programs with sequences of commands and simple loops, to express ideas or address a problem K-2.IC.20 Describe approaches and rationales for keeping login information private, and for logging off of devices appropriately
      • 2y ago
• bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy. Kids have been angry at their parents for parenting decisions since time immemorial. I don't think it's actually a big deal.
• palata 2y ago
  Agreed, you can't prevent them from having access to social media. What you can do, though, is show them that there are tons of better things to do than swiping on their phone for hours. I don't know many kids who would rather watch videos than actually do something cool.
• datavirtue 2y ago
  It's not that simple. Had I cut my daughter off and not allowed a phone, she would never have made the connections with the good friends she has. I am convinced these phones are troubling our youth but cutting them off is not advised.