DO NOT give your kid a smartphone this Christmas

[Firey40]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDd86TftyNT/?igsh=MTZueGVicm1udDllNw==

The evidence is overwhelming.

Their brains are only young once.

We might not have known before….. but we know now.

STOP GIVING KIDS SMARTPHONES

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

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

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.

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

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..

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.)

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.

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.

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

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.

@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.

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.

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.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the op
I'm just saying...it's already gone to far in society
Tweeking round the edges by banning in schools or a few parents saying no ,won't make a difference .
Like when each family had a car ..but now each person has a car
Society moves on ,and it's no going to turn back

My older two were part of a big study via secondary school - they were in a minority of kids with smart phones but no social media.

At end of study they sent a link out to research- basically they found earlier exposure to social media lead to more incidences of serious anxiety and depression in later teen years.

I do think people conflate a lot of things together as the often occur together but don't have to.

Most of this thread is people bemoaning the world being like it is with increased phone reliance and I have huge sympathy for that but my teens have to live in this world. Then parents of young kids saying well we plan this - and they may well find the plan and reality don't mix or they may find current push back means they can do what they want. Then rest saying this is how we navigated this - with as much teaching and mitigating as we could manage and our older teens seem okay.

DD2 school gone no phone - after years of pushing apps and increased phone usage- but they are still in hiccup phase pushing out messages in school day to kids via app they use then surprised kids can't see the notifications as no phones allowed. I had to get DD2 a watch - she used to use phone as in Y11 if you have an appointment they have to remember and get down to reception and the classroom clocks are frequently not working or wrong.

OP I'm with you. Clearly by the tone of responses on here people have their heads stuck in the sand as usual. Yes, phones are convenient. Yes, it's more convenient to be able to give in because everybody else at school has one. That doesn't negate the negative effects and the fact that society is glossing over these at our own future detriment.

Just so everyone here is aware, I had a laptop when I was about 9/10? My big brother had one so I wanted one! So I got one. Not many restrictions on it I must say but there were some. Within a couple of months I'd seen torture, beastiality, violent pornography, gore videos aplenty, and had been on chat websites. One man said to me and my childhood friend "I want to piss hot piss in your mouth". This is pre secondary school mind. By secondary school at 13 years old? I had seen EVERYTHING. I'd been pressured to send naked photos of myself and had done so, I'd bullied someone online which I would never had done in person but behind the veil is easier, I was reading about drugs (on a website that would probably get past restrictions by the way) and knew quite a few girls that age who had gone on webcam and been exposed with their photos all over Facebook. Mid teens? I was on cam with random strangers doing sexual things and so on, and been desensitised to gore and the like so much that it darkened the mind quite a bit.

My parents were decent but also wanted an easy life. I don't hold it against them, now I have my own I know it's easy to take that road. But that is a warning for anybody who is blase about phone and internet access - if you aren't restricting it completely, and constantly, and keeping tabs of everything your kids are up to, it's completely possible and almost a rite of passage for them to see or get involved in the things I described above. If you are one of the parents who doesn't pay it much mind, it's likely your child will end up exposed to at least some of what I've mentioned, if not all of it.

And that was 20ish years ago - today social media is 100x more of a sesspit. Now the stuff I had to go onto special websites to access, you get come up on your homepage on tiktok or insta if you so much as look at one single thing that can link into that kind of content.

Spare it a thought before you wave off early phone and internet access as "not a big deal".

You can do that without a traditional smartphone though... There are lots more options on the market now.

YANBU OP.

I think there's value to that but I also think it doesn't necessarily mean that phones themselves are the problem.

Firstly we don't have a control to say how widespread none phone related bullying is. Is a problem in schools just transferring to another location.

In terms of accepting friend requests, I know lots of adults who accept requests from people they don't know. This is about education of both adults and children to a degree. It should be lower. But it raises questions about parenting as much as phones themselves.

I also think the sexual stuff to an extent was going on when I was a kid, though not on the same scale. It took different forms though.

Creeps will find a way to creep whatever the technology. They will target the weakest links and the most naive. It's almost an arms race. You can't stop.

You have to prepare your kids for the world not shield them from it. Because you can't.

Do they not!!

I'm sure most do and it’s feeding into a mental health crisis amongst young people. Anxiety, depression, comparing themselves to others.. and not forgetting this changing gender rubbish

edit- and also what PP have said re bullying and sexual content. there’s more harm than good imo

It's not the smart phone it's poor parenting, unfettered access to the devices capabilities and unlimited Internet access that's the problem.

A lot of the actual research from psychologists, neurologists in the field doesn't agree with, say, Jonathan Haidt or the claims made (and many academics doing that research are parents themselves, don't forget, so it's not just "real parents v academics" - as has been posted above, Pete Etchells' recent book is good on this, and there are others). Many seem to be trying to point out, with increasing frustration, that a lot of the current claims being made about "smartphones" being the source of all evil, rewiring kids' brains etc, causing mental health issues in fact have a pretty shaky evidence base.

For instance, the evidence on direction of causality with mental health just isn't there, despite the time correlation, so no, we don't "all know this" to be true and it isn't what's "creating a mental health crisis" in itself; the evidence suggests it's more that kids with mental health issues are spending more time online partly BECAUSE they are not finding what they need offline. Correlation not being causality and all that. Banning smartphones wholesale isn't necessarily focusing on the most important problems in any case and is quite a puritanical approach. Is that going to magically make the entire digital world disappear or send us to what feels to me more like more of an ideal of some fictional past edifying time of childhood like the one we (allegedly) had back in the good old days?

It's worth noting that the same language (about addiction etc) has also been used for every technological/media advance for decades, if not centuries. Like radio was once met by the thinkers of the day and all over the then media expressing anxiety about - guess what? The dangers of addiction to it for children, that it was inescapable, was filling their heads with "addictive" unedifying dramas, disturbing sleep, invading their homes etc etc. Ditto comics. Ditto TV.

And of course it's all relative and it doesn't mean there aren't different and major challenges we all face with this (esp re quality of info, privacy breaches and social media) but smartphones ARE just devices - they aren't in fact the new smoking or heroin, neither of which has any demonstrable benefit beyond "pleasure" and that's debatable with smoking anyway. Not the case with smartphones. Not everything, or even "most" that can be found on them, is harmful junk or unedifying. Some obviously is. I don't think responsible parenting and child mental health was made completely impossible by radio, TVs and computers simply existing - but lots of people did in fact think so back in the day, even though we don't tend to agree looking back that they were correct. So how did we navigate those to prevent harms? Isn't it more to do with who is using which available content for what purpose?

Correlation isn't causation.

DH and I have a strange point of view. I'm older than him. I was actively online from age 18 meeting people. He was from age 14.

We've seen the dregs of some of this first hand. Absolutely awful stuff.

But equally we also know that real world connections are important and theirs huge questions about parenting.

In our 20s we were seeing 14 year olds having contact with adults in situations we thought dodgy. We raised questions when others didn't.

We are now in our 40s. DS is going to have to go some to get around our understanding of things and the experience we've had.

We have friends who remain at a state of naïvety that we had at 18 and 14. We are jaded and cynical.

We've lived this from analogue and digital worlds.

My kids are young adults now. I feel they were in an experimental generation. Knowing what I know now I would not give a child under 14/15 a mobile phone. We know what damage these devices do. We have to do something.

Yes, I suspect that those who think it’s fine for their 8 year old to have a smartphone and that anyone not on Snapchat will be bullied to death have no clue of what children actually look at. And they do not tell their parents - even if you think you have the closest relationship with your DC, they won’t tell you honestly what they have seen or gotten up to.

My friend has done a study for work about internet porn and it’s horrific. They are so so young when they become exposed to it and they grow up thinking it’s normal to send nudes and engage in anal sex.

Also nearly all parental control apps can be circumvented fairly easily so those people who are reassured by having them have no idea what their kids look at.