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

They very much can both be true. It really depends on area, your friendship group and demographics of where you live.
One of my children go to school in an area where parents are strict on social media generally so not having it doesn’t create a problem. Kids use what’s app.
Another of mine is fairly far away in a different school and if she didn’t have snap chat she wouldn’t be chatting with any friends at all.

I think it's capitalism actually.

Yep, because using Snapchat is indeed the same as using heroin.

By all means, let your child be outcast and laughed at. You’re kidding yourself if you think that any of their peers will give them an easy time on things like this.

My cousins are just a couple of years younger than me.

They grew up without a television in the house. They lived in the middle of nowhere.

It really affected them as they a) had a total disconnect with their peers because they didn't have any shared cultural knowledge. b) they had an inability to cope with normal things. Watching even PG stuff was traumatic.

I remember they didn't know who Tom and Jerry were and I remember them aged 10 and 8 getting very distressed and upset at watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. They had very little in common with other children.

So even when I was pretty young, I understand that sometimes these things are more important than you realise in building relationships and being able to function as part of society.

This DOESN'T mean you have to be giving full unfetted access to the whole world on your smartphone either.

Its a bit like a bad workman blaming his tools for cutting off his right arm.

Hitting 16 and THEN getting a smartphone without learning how its not always good and not learning moderation is potentially a hazard in its own right for various reasons.

You can't escape the world you live in. You can try, but it doesn't work.

My cousins are doing ok now - one lives in buttfuck nowhere in New Zealand with sheep for company and the one lives in buttfuck nowhere in the Highlands of Scotland. Both have struggled with society throughout their lives. Its limited them in its own way.

Capitalism! Right 😁

Now all you have to do is film a documentary and there'll be a MN thread in days insisting that parents are failing their children of they haven't engineered a communist eutopia.

Like I said my kids don’t have social media (and neither does DH who has a brick phone). I have just asked him aka the teenager if anyone has ever mocked him and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, erm no???? And he has several friends who also don’t have Snapchat and insta and what not.

So as someone living this life, this idea that my teen who has plenty of friends (in our neighbourhood, in his school and in his two major hobbies) is somehow a weird outcast is so alien to me.

Feel free to let your kids have these apps. I have no wish to influence how you parent. But don’t assume that kids without them don’t exist or are leading a miserable existence without them.

I’ll just tell my 16 yr old he can’t have his because some random on the internet said he can’t

Yes this! And being a responsible parent.

DS12 has a smart phone. He can't add any apps without my permission. Tiktok and other social media sites are blocked.

He calls his friends on it and plays games. He's currently learning Japanese on Duolingo.

We have regular conversations around e safety and I check it regularly.

My eldest DD is in year seven. She has an ‘dumb’ phone, just texts and calls, no internet. She wanted a smartphone, but there is no way in hell we’d ever give her one. And I’m staggered by the otherwise seemingly intelligent parents who do give them to their kids. DH & I both have policing backgrounds, and some of the offences we dealt with that were facilitated by kids having smartphones made my blood run cold. Not that you need a career in policing to be aware of the dangers. It’s common knowledge.

My DD was taken for an evening out last week with a friend and her family. When she came home, she said, “I’m glad you didn’t get me a phone actually. I’ve just spent all evening with [friend’s brother] and I still don’t know what he looks like!” 😆 Apparently he didn’t look up from his phone for a second.

Agree with all of that.

There'll come a day when these extremely sheltered kids have free rein on things like phones and social media. And they’ll have zero experience as to how to deal with it.

Similar to banking and money management. So many kids have no exposure to any form of financial information because their
parents do it all for them, then grow up and are hit with terms like APRs, interest rates, tax, NI and have no clue how to navigate it.

I don’t think complete removal is the answer at all, like you say, we can’t escape the world we live in.

Absolutely, but we don't actually have evidence this tracks solely to the impact of phone use.

I work in children's mental health and it worries me that many families become fixated on external issues like phones without really looking at all the other stressors young people experience. I guess I don't accept the answer is as simple as this, I think there are more complex issues in our society we need to look at.

'Simpler chatting to friends and socialising can hardly be compared to drugs.
Imagine every single friend you knew is socialising on an app that you can’t have. They don’t communicate via any other method. Literally just think of it now. Imagine for example you have no mobile. No telephone at all. Someone comes along and says ok, you have to communicate via postal mail only with all your friends and aquatiences. You would be cut off from everyone.
It’s pretty much that.' @WhiteLily1

How are these children your friends if you have no other way of communicating with them? How strong and important or two-sided are these friendships when the people are so young, immature, learning social communication (which is much more than text)?
The whole point is that children are not mature enough and need to learn what adults before them have learned before using smart phones - finding joy in things that don't give you instant satisfaction, failing and feeling disappointed at things you can't replay/ retype/ delete, learning patience and self control, learning social cues from real interactions.
It's not just SM, there's so much more, (and you can access porn with no SM.)
Your children are not going to use the phones for what they are meant to be used for I.e. information.

My point is that grown-ups need to be in charge with this one - much more involved and restrictive than they are at the moment.
Not giving in, because all their friends have one.

But learning money management doesn’t alter children’s brains?

It’s not really a parallel, is it.

I mean, you could argue that it’s more like getting them used to vaping, the modern way of smoking…

🎶🎵🎶 There’ll be no smartphone this Christmas

For me to hold …” 🎵🎶🎵

This was Mud’s rather disappointing follow up single to their 1974 Xmas no.1 ..

My kids are 4 and 2, I’ve worked in schools for nearly 20 years and I see the damage a smartphone does- they have never even been on a iPad yet, and they won’t for a long time. However, I think we need to be realistic. Once they’re teens, they will want a smartphone- and tbh I’ll probably let them have one for reasons mentioned above: mainly monitoring/ tracking where they are.
however I totally agree, under the age of say secondary school age- do kids need a screen? Absolutely not.

Such as? What are the new stressors that have appeared in the last 10-15 years?

No thanks.

My kids have had smart phones since y4. It means they can go and about, catch bus, check timetables for public transport, stay in touch with family who live hundreds of miles away. It gives them freedom and keeps them safe.

My son needs his to see his school homework and timetable, and often to submit school homework.

Smart phones since age 8. Smh.

😂

😂

I think everything you say here shows a balanced attitude.

When I, a grown adult by this time in my mid 40s, told my line manager in work that I don’t bring my phone to work - this was circa 2018 - , she said WHY???!!!! in the most incredulous voice as though I’d said the most preposterous thing ever !

It always astounds me that people think smartphone = being able to have full access to the internet. DD has a iPhone, she needs approval to download any apps, can’t be contacted by or contact anyone who isn’t in her contact list. I’m not sure those sort of safety features come from a “brick phone”. There is such a thing as children owning a smartphone with sensible parenting that works fine.

Quite!

Yep, because using Snapchat is indeed the same as using heroin.

By all means, let your child be outcast and laughed at. You’re kidding yourself if you think that any of their peers will give them an easy time on things like this.
@Kibble29

Parents need to try and influence their children more than their peers. (And the wide spread of drugs among the young is absolutely a result of peer influence).
Parents love their children unconditionally (usually) and don't mistreat their children because they have the wrong coat, bag, or no phone.
Teach your children you are always there for them, you accept them fully, and they will not let their peers' cruelty get to them.

And if many parents teach their children good values and respect I don't see why their smartphone owning, cool ones should be anti-social to the rest. (Or is the internet in their pocket going to teach them that?)

I disagree OP.
I feel there is a LOAD of virtue signaling over this.