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

Yup. Absolutely defensive as fuck.

My 5 year old goes on mine and his dads (supervised) and also does ABC mouse on his iPad. I’ve told him since he could understand he won’t be getting a phone until he’s 13!! He’s quite happy with that. I’ve bought him a Vtech smart watch for Xmas which has tracking capability. There is this little mini phone on Amazon/SM that says it’s designed for kids. Looks just like a tiny mini iPhone. But it’s not a phone!!! The amount of family members who’ve said “shall we get him this?” And I’m like “NO!”. It’s more or less a smart phone and we are on that slippery slope. My other 4 had iPhones from about 9 and I won’t be making that mistake again!!!

Dodgy stuff can be sent via what’s app it’s true. But it could also be sent via normal text. This is where you need to step up as a parent and make some difficult decisions.
Currently (and until / if legislation is changed) kids are using what’s app to communicate. You have to balance risk V reward with your kid seeing something dodgy versus communicating with friends and being part of their social group when out of school.
This balance will include age of child, your child’s friends, the school they go to, the area you live in and other kids they are likely to meet, if the child doesn’t live with you full time, how responsible the other parent is at monitoring phone, how much you trust your child to tell you if they see something they know is wrong, how you have brought them up for the last 11 years (for example) to be respectful and trustworthy.
Yes of course kids are always going to push it, but if I felt any of my 3 children were that untrustworthy that they would be seeking out porn and getting round phone controls to that extent then the phone would be taken away.
If you know what you are doing with restrictions and you make sure you keep on top of checking phone regularly then they wouldn’t be got around.
Any kid who is buying or sealing phones to have a secret phone for example has far bigger problems than seeing porn on the internet.
Smugly and snidely saying well your kids seen porn so ha is extremely unhelpful.
Parents of teens and tweens now have an incredibly difficult job. It’s not as simple as ‘just don’t give them what’s app’ because that in itself can have very negative consequences.

unless you currently have teens, with the greater respect you literally have no clue.
Its like someone before they get pregnant tell you exactly how to look after a baby and what they would and wouldn’t do. You literally have 0 clue. It’s not black and white.
If the tide turns then great. But that won’t give you the same experience as a parent as I’m currently having.
Even if the tide doesn’t turn, in 10 years the tech landscape will look different to today. It may well be worse than today with even more harmful content and less endurable / working restrictions. 10 years ago snap chat, what’s app and tik tok weren’t even a thing. Many young teens and tween didn’t have smart phones at all.
It will be different again in 10 years, however I don’t think it’s going to get any better somehow.

Also, what did you mean then that kids can access porn without social media? Of course they can use the internet but my point was that can be locked down?

This. Why do people assume their smartphone= unrestricted access to apps and the internet?
The phone can be as smart or as dumb as you want it!

But we’re also talking about OTHER CHILDREN’S PHONES that don’t have those restrictions on. Your child doesn’t operate only in your little parental bubble. Jeez. What don’t you get?? You control YOUR CHILD’s phone but you don’t control all the other phones your child may see. And gauging by this thread, there are definitely parents that are a lot more slack about parental controls.

That's what it is in practice for many.

Haven't read the entire thread yet but my older 3 children got smart phones when they were 11. They had restrictions on them and no social media till they were 13 apart from Whatsapp. We monitored and checked their phones until they were in Year 8.

Honestly, I understand where this debate comes from but where I live, it'd be quite uncommon for a child to not have a smart phone and I think we have had benefits from our children having them too. My twin 15 year olds and 13 year old son are not completely addicted to them whatsoever even though we don't have screen time limits although we do sometimes check their socials still and they don't really mind very much. My 13 year old only just got social media and he's not even very interested in it.

My 9 year old is getting her first smart phone for her 10th birthday in August just before she goes into Year 6. My children are fine and I'm not saying they live in some bubble but it is your parenting skills more than not allowing a child a phone. I'm genuinely confused as to how banning a child who is 16 a phone is going to help them when they go off to uni etc. Honestly, ban whatever social media you want but let them text their friends and grow up.

Ok, but firstly two things.
It’s not ideal. But there is absotlely no way in the remote near future this is going away. No way to stop other childrens access to the internet. Even if smart phones were banned for under 16’s how do you think that would actually work? It never ever would. Not unless smart phones were banned for everyone and not sold here, North Korea style. Kids can use adult phones and frankly anyone who doesn’t have restrictions on their kids phones and allows them to access and share porn isn’t going to be bothered about the law anyway.

1. Bring your child up right to know when something is inappropriate. They may get sent something but if you can’t trust them to delete it, tell the friend to stop, tell an adult or block the friend then maybe it’s best they don’t have WhatsApp or the ability to receive photo text messages.
2. Monitor your own child - who are they with, how do they get to school and back and who with? What’s the schools policy on phone use and how do they enforce it. No phones should be even remotely got out of bags in school- my DD’s school uses yonder pouches with very strict monitoring on putting them in- not many kids even in y11 can get round it.
3. Block your child’s access to anything harmful to limit their own viewing and no internet until 16 unless supervised.
4. personally snap chat is a no from me until 16.
5. Any friends they go out with without me I know. I have them round, speak to the parents (yes even in secondary school) and make a risk assessment from that.
6. They go to school on a bus so I guess stuff could be shared then but there are many many other school kids on the bus and they all seem to know what know what others are doing. It would be obvious if that’s what was happening with the younger teens - older teens I’m not sure as mine are younger.

The bottom line is, no, kids should not be seeing these images but you will greatly reduce this by firstly limiting completely what they can access and secondly getting them to talk to you if they do see something they feel uncomfortable with, and you not flying off the handle if that happens.

Also my two 13 year olds do exist in my parental bubble. Why wouldn’t they? I know what they are up to every moment, know what’s on their phones and trust them to tell me if they see something inappropriate. They tend to stay away from the sort of kids who have unfiltered access to porn and try to share that around.

DENIAL! My kids are fine so it isn’t a problem. Let me stick my head in the sand. Fantastic stupidity.

You wouldn’t know if a child in your kids school had any issues with social media or online grooming. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean it isn’t rife.

They don’t need to text their friends constantly. They need a break from each other to spend time with their families.

Did children not manage to grow up before they had phone and constant contact?

Not sure about you but I spent hours on the home phone as a teen. Clogged it up for everyone else and racked up huge bills.
Also we are not in 1993 anymore. Pretty much everyone under the age of 80 communicates differently now.
Im not condoning phone necessarily, and yes they come with big problems, but you can’t hark back to the good old days. The world has changed.

@WhiteLily1

Genuinely, as a cost benefit analysis, are the tens of thousands of terrible incidents involving social media and smart phones outweighed by the benefit or kids being able to contact each other 24/7?

Because people seem to be arguing that smart phones are so deeply necessary that any and all negatives are washed away by the benefits.

All the porn, grooming, bullying, sexting, doxxing, harassment is apparently not bad enough when weighed up against children having to be without the possibility of social contact from a friends at their finger tips.

The growing evidence is that this is what leads to teen anxiety. They can’t get away from each other or the opinions of their peers for long enough to develop some sense of themselves as individuals. No wonder so many of them struggle with it.

If we are going for anecdata, a growing number of my older pupils are opting for no social media and dumb phones. I asked my tutor group the other day and many of them said openly that they don’t really like social media and they wished they never had it but they feel like they have no choice.

This is what we did to our kids. We need to be the adults and say no for their own good.

@WhiteLily1 But the parents can make it better. Why you've decided you've got no control over this thing?! You are the grown up not your children's friends. May be if you are clear and firm so will be their parents?

There were a few posters saying people's minds will be blown if they found out that having a smart phone doesn't mean they've got SM accounts (you agreed). That's why by the by I mentioned in brackets (was not my main point, so surprised you keep quoting this) that not having SM doesn't mean they don't see porn or violent content. But as we've established your children do have WA and Snapchat I.e use social media.

Children are not ready for all the pings, for constant dopamine highs, for the anonymity (often meaning users not adhering to social norms), for the likes/ cancel culture. Children miss out on character building activities, language and communication development, using their memory skills and creativity.

I know you want only the best for your children.

But, if it hasn’t been said already, we are adults…our kids’ brains are still forming

@SpinningTops No whether they are “always on them” is down to parenting. My teen has one and he’s averaged 19 minutes a day on his this week. It’s perfectly possible for a child to have a phone and have controlled use. My son’s phone shuts down at 7pm so it can’t affect his sleep. I say which apps he can and can’t have and I can set time limits for each one. There is a middle ground.

I didn’t get past this utterly naive comment. What a load of tosh. The whole point is they’re addictive!

As a GP I used to see children with anxiety and behaviour problems once in a blue moon.
Now I see someone every single surgery.
All I can do is refer them to the already overwhelmed CYPS .
I'm 100% certain it's smartphones to blame.

Bloody awful things...here's me on mine!
Wish the damn things had never invented!

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately my dd has been told they need one at boarding school, although its use is heavily restricted to certain times, and they aren't allowed in their bedrooms at night etc. I plan to parental control down to being a dumb phone that has a few games on it until she's much older. Absolutely no social media.

My son is getting one. He wont have social media and the cobtaxts will be his immediate family.

Who has landline these days in homes. He needs to learn to use a phone responsibly, and we feel its better he has a cheap smartphone that wont be used outside home with no social media and guidance from us rather than wait to him being a teen and copying from his peers later. Parentshield is a brilliant way to see what is happening however his contacts will be us, his grandparents and family in Australia/Spain.

Phone, no problem. The problem is with the apps and internet which he wont have access to.

Apple tag if you really must track them, and a non smart phone for if they need to call you. Nokia 8210 or similar.

No need for a smartphone!

Two of my children are at secondary school and do have phones but we limit the amount of time they can use them through family link. They also do not have any social media other than Whatssap. It’s really hard as a lot of homework is now set to be completed on the app (which is an absolute faff on a laptop and have no idea why it has been done this way!) and I like that they can contact us if needed/ and we can look at location if they are late home and out of contact. There has been a recent programme on the harm of smart phones on children who are becoming addicted to social media at such a young age. My youngest is 8 (and does not have a phone) and I really hope things have changed by the time he moves to secondary school. We really try to limit phone use and I think it helps that neither of us are happy to stay indoors for long periods of time so spend a lot of time at the weekend outside as a family without phones. It’s going to get more and more difficult for parents and children if something doesn’t change.

I think rather than banning/not allowing young people to have phones, we should be educating them in using them/social media
The fact we are probably all on our smart phones reading mumsnet shows phones are a huge part of life.
If banned or not bought then they become like anything that's banned..
Children need to be aware of what they can use the phone for etc.
Schools ask children from y7 onwards to use certain apps in certain lessons.

Oh the irony of posting this with the evidence as a link to instagram. Anyhoo, what about just parenting your children so they can have a smartphone but with no social media, no access to the internet and text messages are monitored regularly? That’s what our 13 year old has and what our 11 year old will have when he gets a phone. They need it for their homework admin, and to keep in touch with friends albeit he uses it more as an old school phone, but I do let him play Pokémon go on it (1/2 an hour limit per day although he doesn’t always use that) and he listens to stories on audible too on long car journeys.

We go a step further than no phones in bedrooms and our rule is no phones upstairs and ask before you use them at home.

So for me it’s not about the smartphone, it’s about the parenting.