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Genuinely asking - is it impossible to just enforce a no phones until 16+ rule with your kids? The reasons against it I see are either “it’s too hard for the pa

Genuinely asking - is it impossible to just enforce a no phones until 16+ rule with your kids? The reasons against it I see are either “it’s too hard for the parents” or hypothetical (“they would have no social life”). There were tonnes of things I wanted to do as a teenager that my parents prevented me from doing. Including things my friends were allowed to do by their less strict parents. There was of course things I did despite them but phones seem like a simple one for parents to control given teenagers can’t afford them otherwise until they start working at 16+. Allowing instant messaging via a computer seems like a nice middle ground.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Only if you're willing to ban them from ever going to friends' houses, where they'll use their friends' devices to do it.
- itishappy 2y ago
  A cell phone is available 168 hours a week. A friend's phone might be available, say, 10% of that?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Friend gets a new phone, gives you the old one. Neighbor has open wifi. Hide it deep in the giant pile of laundry in your bedroom. Whack-a-mole is fun at an arcade. It's not fun when it's your kids.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      That's still significantly better than having it available at the dinner table, no? The goal of parenting is to raise good kids. Unfortunately, it's not always going to be fun.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        We don't permit phones at the dinner table, no. Nor in the bedroom. But we've learned things like "no Snapchat at all" make for a social pariah, which is frequently worse than the problem it's trying to solve.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- spacechild1 2y ago
  > where they'll use their friends' devices to do it. That'd already be much, much better than using it at every possible moment. Why do people just give up proactively? Yes, you can't prevent it 100%, but you can still try to restrict it as much as possible.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > Why do people just give up proactively? Because we're up against trillion dollar companies that employ armies of experts with the goal of inducing addictive behavior. We're deeply outgunned. Because kids have a genuine need for socialization, and being the one without a phone means you just don't get invited to shit. Birthday parties, hangouts, random trips to the ice cream shop. Because kids are smart. I'm very technical - I had a pfSense firewall, Pihole, and Apple's screen time on my kids' devices. They found ways around that within hours; kids at school swap VPN/proxy instructions and whatnot. Because kids these days get a school laptop, on which I have zero admin rights. Because I don't want to be a jail warden, I want to be a parent.
    - spacechild1 2y ago
      Yes, I understand all of that. What I meant was: refusing smartphones as long as possible. For example, as long as only ~50% of your kid's friends have a smartphone, it should be possible to still resist. Just don't be one of those parents who (unknowingly) help create the problem in the first place by succumbing to Big Tech on the first occasion.
cardanome 2y ago
I would have strongly agreed with you if we were talking ten years ago but with everything using two-factor authentication these days it pretty much a requirement to have a phone. Even for children to do school work. Like there are parental control systems and all that you could set up but that requires you to be pretty tech savy as a parent. I think you are already doing great if you keep your child away from phones and tablets until they are of school age but keeping teenagers away from smart phones seems very unrealistic if you don't live in a remote commune or something. I really, really wish it weren't the case.

ceejayoz 2y ago

Only if you're willing to ban them from ever going to friends' houses, where they'll use their friends' devices to do it.

itishappy 2y ago
A cell phone is available 168 hours a week. A friend's phone might be available, say, 10% of that?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Friend gets a new phone, gives you the old one. Neighbor has open wifi. Hide it deep in the giant pile of laundry in your bedroom. Whack-a-mole is fun at an arcade. It's not fun when it's your kids.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    That's still significantly better than having it available at the dinner table, no? The goal of parenting is to raise good kids. Unfortunately, it's not always going to be fun.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      We don't permit phones at the dinner table, no. Nor in the bedroom. But we've learned things like "no Snapchat at all" make for a social pariah, which is frequently worse than the problem it's trying to solve.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
spacechild1 2y ago
> where they'll use their friends' devices to do it. That'd already be much, much better than using it at every possible moment. Why do people just give up proactively? Yes, you can't prevent it 100%, but you can still try to restrict it as much as possible.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > Why do people just give up proactively? Because we're up against trillion dollar companies that employ armies of experts with the goal of inducing addictive behavior. We're deeply outgunned. Because kids have a genuine need for socialization, and being the one without a phone means you just don't get invited to shit. Birthday parties, hangouts, random trips to the ice cream shop. Because kids are smart. I'm very technical - I had a pfSense firewall, Pihole, and Apple's screen time on my kids' devices. They found ways around that within hours; kids at school swap VPN/proxy instructions and whatnot. Because kids these days get a school laptop, on which I have zero admin rights. Because I don't want to be a jail warden, I want to be a parent.
  - spacechild1 2y ago
    Yes, I understand all of that. What I meant was: refusing smartphones as long as possible. For example, as long as only ~50% of your kid's friends have a smartphone, it should be possible to still resist. Just don't be one of those parents who (unknowingly) help create the problem in the first place by succumbing to Big Tech on the first occasion.

cardanome 2y ago

I would have strongly agreed with you if we were talking ten years ago but with everything using two-factor authentication these days it pretty much a requirement to have a phone. Even for children to do school work. Like there are parental control systems and all that you could set up but that requires you to be pretty tech savy as a parent. I think you are already doing great if you keep your child away from phones and tablets until they are of school age but keeping teenagers away from smart phones seems very unrealistic if you don't live in a remote commune or something. I really, really wish it weren't the case.