DO NOT give your kid a smartphone this Christmas

It's the main problem that people aren't parenting.

Letting anyone spend 5 or 6 hours a day on a phone, whether child or adult is a really bad thing.

As parents our job is to help our children learn how to become adults. And in a modern society that includes putting sensible parental controls on all devices and limiting their usage.

I have just finished reading The Anxious Generation (really recommend it!) and caught up on on Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones (bit of a misleading title) and tbh I am bloody terrified of my daughter getting on TikTok/insta etc . Really hoping they are banned in schools by time she reaches secondary.

Both sides have some level of naivete

excellent post!

One issue that I don't think nobody pointed, I feel biggest difference that makes people not agree is due to how each side raises their children.

I noticed that in particular due to some saying it's naive they can give children a smartphone, how parental control doesn't work and so on, which I have to admit there is some merit.

Parental control done poorly is effectively worthless, it's also useless if the boundaries and rules are not kept over how much access the children have to their phone.

Thing is, banning smartphones altogether is equality naive.

I ask this to every single people here against smartphone, and I want you to tell me honestly, when forbidding something ever worked?

All it does is create a tempting forbidden fruit, just stop and think to the times before the internet, when parents where more hands-on thanks to more free time and less stressing life, when families had more time to be close, many would forbid and outright demonize smoking, alcohol, drugs, forbid their daughters to see a boy they thought it was bad, forbid to see some tv program, read some book, videogames, the list is infinite.

And did that ever really work? In a few cases yes, but how many children actively looked for those things exactly because it was forbidden?

What a child can't get at home they'll get from their friends, the more forbidden the more they'll want it.

Both sides have some level of naivete, I argue you can't really be your children friend, sure you can be super close and have their complete trust, but at the end of the day you're still their parents, if you don't keep the a firm hand they'll simply do whatever they want cause there's no consequences, smartphone is a good example of that since many parents don't really control their children access even when they think they are.

But the people against are also naive because you all act like your children are morons with who you can't have a reasonable talk, to who you can't treat like a person that will listen to you, who will lie to your face constantly, they're your children, not criminals, if don't have a soft touch all you'll do is teach them to lie better and think of how to more easily break the rules without getting caught, banning smartphones is perfect example of that, banning is useless because effectively everyone around them have one, they will end up having access to it independent of the ban, you simply can't stop them from using a smartphone.

A child should be pushed aside with the left hand and drawn closer with the right hand, both sides make good points, but if it's not a balanced approach the children will only suffer in the long run, banning things rarely worked in the past, it sure as hell won't work now.

100% agree with you OP

Dh and I both have trackers on phones and our car. We both find it useful and reassuring, nothing creepy about it. My eldest daughter also wants a tracker she can keep with her at school (phone isn't allowed out of dormitory), as it makes her feel safer.

In various aspects they absolutely are backwards, which is why arranged marriage is still a thing even today, especially when it comes to old and powerful families, just because they're great in various aspects doesn't mean they're not backwards in others.

Mental health is a perfect example of what I mean, they have a massive stigma against getting professional help, they're also extremely racist and xenophibic at times.

Get offended all you want, but in some aspects Japanese society is backwards like it or not.

@RedToothBrush
I might rant a little so i won't quote you lol

I find funny you mentioned with gaming community, I believe you're half right, I say that because I believe you're technically wrong, it didn't start with gaming community, it's simply one place you can easily notice that issue.

A lot of the complaints about technology are not new, they started with the radio, yes I know how ridiculous that might sound lol, but everything changed with long range communication becoming widespread, first it was the radio, then it was tv, then videogame, then internet, then cellphone, then smartphone, all complaints done about smartphone are something that happened before with previous technology.

I feel the issue is that technology advanced too fast and society couldn't keep up, doesn't help that a lot of parents are lazy and use technology to raise their children, it started with tv and became more convenient with videogame, internet and then smartphone.

I feel that banning smartphone doesn't work because everyone around the child will have smartphone, yeah, your child won't have one, but what stops them from using their friend smartphone? All this does is create a forbidden fruit which they'll want even more.

Also, everyone against smartphone ignores one big issue, if you don't give your children one, don't teach them how to be responsible with it, they won't know what is good and bad about it, won't know what to avoid, which they'll inevitably find or even actively look into when they use their friends smartphone.

Pandora Box (actually a urn) is open and there's no closing, we simply won't go back to how things were, never ever, it won't happen no matter how many parents talk against smartphone because you're the minority.

I do agree that smartphone could be banned on school or something, or i don't know, teacher keeps the smartphone while class is in session so children can't use it.

I also agree that parental control on a smartphone can be useless if not used right, I feel we needed a smartphone model explicitly aimed for children so parents could really control what they have access to, but then that doesn't fix the issue that 99% of the children will have regular smartphone.

I also have to second that the issue is not smartphone, but a social issue, which I believe is two things.

One is that as I said technology advanced too fast, we have a past generation that grew up when smartphone was new and nobody knew how to use it properly, now their children are growing with smartphone even earler than they did in part because everyone having smartphone is simply the norm.

The other social issue I argue is because we are breaking down as a society, cost of living is rising, more and more both parents need to work, children are not having as much of a social life as before, no sitting together to eat, barely any time to be together, life being stressfull, leaving your child to be raised by tv, videogame and internet is just easier and more practical for far too many parents.

I feel that a lot of people, both young and adult, throw themselves at online world because they don't have much going in the real world, you can't fix one side without fixing the other.

Only alternative is try teach them to use smartphones respinsible, try give them a life outside of the internet, and hope for the best, because fighting against it simply won't work.

Also, a lot of our social issues is simply due to rampant capitalism going completely out of control, which are almost impossible to fix too, so either we prepare our children for the world or they won't have the tools to deal with society and technology.

Japanese society is not 'backwards'. I have lived there and it's a fabulous country. It's different to the UK, they place value on different things, but it is absolutely not 'backward'. How incredibly offensive.

I don't see why everyone gets so militant about this topic and tries to get everyone to do what they want.

If you don't want to give your child a phone, don't.

If you are happy to give your child a phone, do.

As I've said on this thread already, I'm very happy for my children to have phones. They use them responsibly, I monitor them, we discuss internet safety etc.. and I think my children's phones have been very positive for them. Overall, far more positives than negative.

I do wish people would judge less and just allow parents to parent their own way. The phone police are too much.

@Bontonbonbon
I do agree that there's absolutely issues with technology too, be it Japan or not, my point is just that in Japan case technology is the least of their problems, it might sound offensive, but compared to west they're really backwards socially in various aspects, smartphone isn't even a blip when it comes to the causes of their problems.

As for the last part you wrote:
"high cost of living + unrealistic career expectations + immersive online world= social collapse"

It's true that depending on how bad it is, immersing themselves in online world is absolutely one of the causes of declining birth rate, but I see that as a sympton of bigger issues, because they simply have no reason to focus on the real world due to their social issues, so they throw themselves online because it's all they can do.

Absolutely. Comparisons with Japan only go so far because there are massive cultural differences.

To add to my point about it not being smart phones being the problem though, I would note that this started not with smart phones but with gaming and gaming communities.

If you are going to ban your smart phones you need to also ban technology across the board. One of the parents who is most vocal about smartphones in my son's parent group actively uses a tablet and gaming to pacify her son who has a lot of SEN needs rather than parent him. This included her demanding it during school when he starts playing up and the school are struggling with his behaviour which the school have agreed to.

I was part of the first wave of online communities and I know how obsessive and unhealthy they are. This was long before smartphones.

There's a real blind spot on this - the obsession with it being all about smartphones misses the point really. It's about social interaction being lacking and the inability to have an actual conversation. And that isn't a problem restricted just to smartphones. It's a much broader thing. Parents don't have the time to sit down and talk to their kids. Nor indeed the space - lots of people don't have a dining table. Meals are eaten in front of the TV.

The research points to well being related to sitting and eating together at a table. It doesn't matter about educational levels or economic levels. It's the act of having time and communicating.

The research points to well being related to how much time you spend outside. Again gaming and our car culture are part of the problem. People don't walk anywhere anymore and it's good for us on multiple levels.

I genuinely think it's too easy to blame smartphones. It's a wider, bigger problem of which smartphones are part of, but they are NOT the sole primary cause. This is a causation / correlation misunderstanding.

How is that too late? Christmas is days away. Or don't worry, just screw up your child!

@Tsama

You make some valid points about social expectations which I agree with. But I hear from my Japanese friends that there is a big technological aspect fuelling this as well. No one wants to grow up to be a salary man anymore. Even salary men don’t want to be salary men. Sexism is very much rife too.

However, even when I lived there in the mid-2000s there was already a growing escapist trend for the younger generation (who were becoming known as freeters then) to opt out to spend their lives online where there was less pressure. Which is very much what is happening here: high cost of living + unrealistic career expectations + immersive online world= social collapse.

It was already a conversation amongst friends in Tokyo as early as 2005.

@Bontonbonbon
"Japan experiences this well before we did because they had earlier access to the technology. Their falling birth rate is fuelled by two things: the high cost of living and growing numbers in two generations of people opting out of society to live in an online world."

It is true that high costing of living is one of the reasons birth rate is falling, but you're wrong about the technology side, if anything what you said about technology is inverted.

One thing with Japanese culture is that even now it's extremely sexist with massive focus on gender norm and social expectations, plus shame culture, you need to marry and have a family even if it's an arraged marriage without any love.

On the side of men many effectively live to work themselves to death, especially if they're salary man, they pretty much don't participate in their children life, sometimes not even wife life, because they work so much, and if any of you don't believe me google "Japan black company".

On the women side they're expected to have children and become housewives, they don't have any support to put their children in daycare and such, they have to become housewives and their lives will be 100% about taking care of the house and the children.

Women expectations are so bad that many effectively don't get promoted at their jobs because everyone expects them to marry and stop working altogether, never getting back at it, and just to make a point, any of you search "Japan medical school scandal", multiple universities literally rigged the exams so women would fail, because they believed most would eventually stop working to have children, with some even saying they only entered med school to find husbands.

Japanese people started to get into online world because that's literally all they could do since they had no life besides work or take care of the house, it's one reason for example Japan has a massive amount of mobile games, gacha in particular, because you can play it anywhere at any time if you have 5 minutes free, because they simply don't have time to something else in their lives a lot of time.

Another reason young generation don't want to marry isn't just the high cost of living, but because many simply don't want to live like that, Men don't want to work themselves to death but have no choice, so they stay single because at least in their free time they can use their own money for themselves, women don't want to marry because they don't want to become a housewive and have no future besides taking care of the children.

Also, unlike in the west women are expected to completely be a housewive for the rest of their lives and have no career, at best most get a part time job because it's all they can do, it's not like in the west where women have a lot more freedom.

Japan has a lot of social problems that justify the declining birth rate, technology and smartphone ain't even close to be one of them, a lot of people throw themselves at online world exactly to escape the crushing expectations of society + many times it's all they can do with the little free time they have.

@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea

It was like this before the pandemic. All the pandemic did was super charge the amount of time they spent locked onto their niche online communities. It is not all the uncommon now for children to only have online friends. This makes the school experience so much more stressful for them. This tread has been building for the last ten years at least.

Phones rob them of real social interaction and therefore make it much harder for them to cope with face to face, real life situations. There are about a thousand symptoms of this but the trend in School refusal is the worst. Why would they want to come to school when they only feel safe with online interaction? So many of them
just cannot cope anymore

Japan experiences this well before we did because they had earlier access to the technology. Their falling birth rate is fuelled by two things: the high cost of living and growing numbers in two generations of people opting out of society to live in an online world.

@Startinganew32
I teach 18-21 year olds. An increasing number of them are too anxious to attend classes face to face and cannot cope with direct questions even if they do come to class. Assessments like presentations are out of the question because of the anxiety it causes such a huge number of them (we’re talking a third of the cohort). Time keeping is very poor as is taking initiative. Study skills are shocking for a high ranking institution. So I would say that we already have a generation who will at least struggle in employment

Do you not think that for this generation,
a lot of the problems have been caused by time spent in isolation during the pandemic with schools closed and not being able to spend time socialising with their peers in person? Hence a much increased amount of time spent on computers/phones/the internet.

Young people slightly older probably had smart phones in their teens but had other things going on and so didn't spend such a great amount of time being reliant on them. Certainly that was the case for my DS.

How did the tracker help in this situation? Were you following the chase in real-time and able to intervene?

An awful lot of kids have those phones though. Pop on over to the xmas board and look at the number of iPhone pros being bought. And they don't know what you've got til they've mugged you for it anyway, and are often keen on seeing if they can use your Gpay regardless.

(I mean I was mugged at knifepoint for my Nokia brick but that was in 2003 so).

Thieves are there for the stupid kids with Samsungs and iPhones.

They really aren't interested in a £35 none branded phone with limited data.

They're worth enough that the phone thieves know which schools to hang around outside to nick them, that's for sure.

Yep of course some apps are useful but I'd question whether most 11 yos desperately need access to any apps really at all times and it can't wait until they get home. They're not managing their ISA contributions on the bus to school, are they? If schools are appifying everything then they shouldn't, and I think a lot are starting to stop. In a neighbouring borough to us every school has banned smartphones.

We've also got a little mp3 type player for DD which has spotify on but no other internet access via apps or browsers and no sim card which solves that one.

This sounds like an unusual situation, but as a thought experiment, what would you have done 15 years ago? She probably would have just have to figure it out, no?

Kids have been travelling across London for school for a looooong time, including getting themselves to swimming/music/whatever. That is not a new thing at all.

You know how much a smart phone costs these days right? You don't need a branded one.

You don't get apps on dumb phones. Some apps are useful for various purposes. These apps are not social media.

You are tracking your daughter's phone, not your daughter.

There's an important difference here.

If you're going to lock it down so much it's essentially a dumbphone you could just...get a dumbphone and not have several £100s of redundant tech?

Not all schools use apps for homework. I'm a governor at a phone-free secondary and we don't. I think we'll see more schools doing this; as multiple pps have mentioned the sheer amount of time dealing with phone-related issues is epic. We've not lost one on the bus home yet for want of a tracking device.