DO NOT give your kid a smartphone this Christmas

That's a completely separate issue.

Teens and headphones have always been a thing. We're talking about kids walking home whilst looking at a screen of a smartphone then stepping out into the road. 1 in 5 secondary pupils have either been hit or had a near miss due to using a smartphone. Kids need to put the phone away to walk home.

Yanbu to choose not to give a smart phone to your child.
Yanbu to highlight research and get the awareness out.

Yabvvvu to tell other adults how to bring up their children, and what is or isn't appropriate for them.

@scalt

This is entirely different. The scale of grooming, sexually explicit material, bullying, doxxxing and harassment via smart phone is unbelievable. I work in a school and it is almost all we deal with- kids who access the dark web and send videos to other kids. Kids who sell pictures of themselves online. Kids who have watched so much violent porn by the age of 14 that they have no concept of healthy sex lives. It is unstoppable once they have access.

This isn’t like the panic about video games. It’s about kids as young as 8 ending up in situations where they are viewing adult material because of unrestricted smart phone use. Kids with deeply
messed up world views because of things they have accessed on social media platforms.

It takes so much school time, police time, social services time, justice system time just so parents can have their own time to stare into their own social media feeds. It’s fucked up.

Well, we manage to keep children away from alcohol.
There are ways, but people clearly don't agree yet on whether and how harmful screens are for little ones.

Totally agree OP

Only give your kids smart phones when you’re done with them accidentally seeing hard porn.

If you don’t believe me then ask any kid with a phone how many times they’ve been added to random WhatsApp groups full of nudes or sent graphic gifs.

I would love a total smart phone and social media ban for under 16s

Those are genuinely worrying statistics, however, I do feel that those stats could be reduced by some parents being more involved in the safe educating of their children. Kids will always be kids and some will go against even the best parenting advice, however, there are far too many parents who think it is the responsibility of teachers / the government / someone / anyone else to keep their children educated about, and safe from, the dangers of smartphones and "the internet". Whereas a little more parental involvement might be beneficial, teaching children right from wrong which would help both in terms of raising the people who put out the "bad" stuff in the first place and the people accessing it.

I mean OBVIOUSLY if your child is diabetic it's a medical device. That's not what people are talking about here. My nephew relies on his not to die, but that doesn't therefore mean all kids need access to snapchat.

And when poor little Lisa Simpson tried to do this, when she travelled to a museum by bus, the driver tapped the sign saying "Do Not Speak To Driver". 😄

Sadly, however, moral panics sell newspapers — or, in a rather ironic recent development, get people (presumably adults, ha ha) clicking and tapping on the sites, apps, and Facebook pages of media outlets.
Exactly this. New technology has always been "bad for us" in some way. I remember in an English lesson in about 1994, when I was in year 8 or 9, studying an article about how video games were "making children violent", with language such as "combat games are the big sellers, and young boys' favourites", and that "video games contain almost exclusively male images; males are the heroes, while females are pawns, rewards and accessories". (This was before Lara Croft came along, with her guns.) At the time, I remember thinking that it was ironic that we were reading about violent computer games at an age when we were still not supposed to be playing them; might the debate itself put ideas in our heads? I didn't come across Grand Theft Auto until I was over twenty, and I was quite shocked.

As for other "evils of technology" debates, does anyone remember how the year 2000 was going to begin with humanity being wiped out by its own technology, with the Millennium Bug (with some groups calling it a conspiracy of Satan, or a punishment from God)? And not long after that, we were all going to have our brains fried by using our own mobile phones, because of those evil phone masts and microwaves? Did this ever actually happen?

Let's remember also that television was given a bad press as a means of entertaining children ("it will give you square eyes!"); and then in 2020, the blond buffoon spoke to us out of our telescreens televisions, and told us to stay at home; and lots of people hung on his every word, and completely lapped up the fear and panic deliberately spread by his government; and dutifully stayed at home, destroyed their children's social lives, and made their eyes squarer than ever. I think if we're going to start moralising about children and smartphones, somebody needs to be grovelling pretty hard about subjecting children to months of the isolation and pure cruelty of lockdown, which accelerated dependency on smartphones among adults, never mind children. At one point, you were basically doomed to be a societal outcast if you couldn't show a clear vaxpass on your smartphone, and this was so ingrained in popular culture that Tesco made it part of their Christmas ad, with Santa showing such as pass; and wasn't there one "Santa tracking app" that showed Santa wearing a mask? (Covid lockdowns are another issue, I know - but it's one which I feel did much more damage than smartphones ever will; and it is notable that lockdown was only possible because of the extent of social media and internet use.)

That's ships sailed ...they are to far ingrained in society
Plus ..It's like alcohol
Some of us can have a drink and be ok
Some of us end up alcoholics
Can't ban it for everyone because a few can't control themselves..

Exactly. They are the main route to sexual harassment. Young teens being sent dick pics and the like.

I had to do bus-tube-bus to school in the era before smartphones. I coped just fine! If an issue came up, I asked someone, like station staff. Something kids are too scared to do today, as they never need to.

Erm, I don't think smartphones are the safeguard against sexual harassment you think they are.

You should never encourage anyone to post someone’s picture online.

@TwinklyAmberOrca do you have a DD around the same age as your DS? If it wasn't for the ability to make men's pictures go viral, instantly, there'd be a lot more sexual harrasment of school girls. Until the girls at our local high started to film the men hanging around the school at home time, the police was in complete denial that it was happening. Teens with headphones on have always been a risk crossing roads. They were in the 90/2000's when Ipods came out.

@Kibble29 yep diabetic, without his phone pinging off blood sugars & calculating insulin he'd be dead within a week.

Technology is constantly moving forward and if we don't move along with it, going forward you may struggle.

A little example is, we used to be a paper society, applying for bank loans by filling out a form to post back, but now everything is done on line and a lot of the older generation cannot comprehend this and really do struggle applying for things online and honestly feel like they are being penalised and companies being ageist.

Alot of banking is online now, most banks are not open outside of office hours so can be a real struggle to just pop into your local branch.

I don't like social media myself or the stuff that can be quite easily found online but I would much rather educate my children in these types of things rather than see them struggle in the future because I have shielded them from it.

Yes kids will be kids and as much as we can eductlate them, the stuff is still out there and their curious minds may get the better of them. However I would much rather they learn these things now while they can be guided.

Ultimately I would never tell another parent what they should or should not do. I will teach my kids how I believe they should be taught and I will give them things if I feel they need it not shield them from it because of some Instagram or tik tok influencer thinks differently!

Diabetic?

My kid needs a smart phone to keep him alive, it's literally life support.

Stupid post.

Not all kids with smart phones have social media on it!!

Mine has a smartphone. We have parental controls installed so usage is limited to certain times.
To get to school, DC has to use the bus. The bus company ONLY issue e-tickets and they only work with smartphones.
If we could have a paper ticket/termly pass that was in another format we would but we can't. So smartphone it is.

Actually was just talking about this with a relative who works in the school system and has seen the evidence first hand (you can read studies yourself) as well as talking to friends with young adult children who are all really struggling with mental health issues. We also have relatives who work in children's hospitals and they are seeing the same thinks and are very against sm. A lot of kids struggling and in some cases commiting suicide.

You can have a phone to text your kids without net access.

Also hasn't the number of dumbphones sold rocketed and the number of smartphones being bought for kids gone down? Vibe shift coming...everyone is fed up.

Just so you are aware, there are phones coming out next spring/summer that have the tracking/travel app capacity without a lot of the harmful internet access/social media stuff

DD has SN (ASD) and that's the reason she won't be getting one (she's in year 6). The safeguarding issues are huge- and they're even bigger for children who can't make sound social judgements. She'll have a dumbphone and an oyster card; her secondary will be smartphone free.

It's massively icky to be tracking your kids, isn't it? No wonder they're all so anxious. Why would you assume your child was dead in a ditch? There is infinitely more danger on their phone than there is outside.

I think lots of people are defensive because a) it feels like a criticism of their parenting and b) they are aware (even if they won't admit it) that their own phone use is problematic. I'm not even on any SM really (unless you count here, on a laptop) and I think mine is problematic.

www.brightcanary.io/parental-control-apps-easy-to-delete/#:~:text=Qustodio,Browser%20or%20VPN%2Denabled%20browsers.