To be a parent without a smartphone?

[AccidentalLuddite]

[This thread isn’t about children having smartphones. As DC get older I will need to understand more about that, but I’m not there yet!]

I don’t have a smartphone, never have. It’s just never something I’ve needed or wanted enough to be worth the expense.

DP doesn’t either. We have basic mobile phones for calls and texts, and a house admin computer on the kitchen table for everything else. This works for us.
But we worked out how to do the essentials of life before smartphones existed. Our DC are primary age and we recognise life is very different for young people now.

I wonder if we’ve unintentionally become the equivalent of the family without a TV in the 80’s?

I don’t want my kids to miss out on anything worthwhile. Its only come up a handful of times so far when I’ve not been able to join things like whatsapp groups. But we’ve not missed out on anything from not being on those and I’m glad not to be part of the drama they can attract.

What might DC miss out on if their parents don’t have smartphones? Could us not having them limit their opportunities? Anyone else in a similar position?

@WanderingWisteria haven't been abroad since before DC so hasn't come up recently. Before kids we did bike touring holidays - we'd book transport at either end, carry all the travel documents, maps and kit we needed and perhaps a guide book and work out the rest as we went, no phones. Any issues at the airport would need to get sorted out at the airport.
I'd hope we'd still be able to do that now (and I hope we will once they are a bit older!)

Up to you, but I couldn't 'do' life with no smartphone. I'd get one if I was you. I only got one in 2021, (as I resisted like you did, for some years!) But I honestly don't know how I did without it now. I LOVE talking to my adult DC on WhatsApp/Facetiming etc... I would never get rid of it now.

I went abroad last year and they changed the time of the flight 3 times between leaving home and getting the flight, sent an email each time.
In reality it would probably been less stressful if I hadn't seen the emails and just relied on the departure board when we arrived at the airport!

what I'm really interested in is things people have mentioned where there is genuinely no way to do them without a smartphone, vs things people prefer to do on smartphones

My dc’s school uses their app to send pictures. Without the app (no desktop site), you wouldn’t see them. Obviously these are a nice to have and not a necessity, but I like to see them and my son is always excited to know I’ve seen what he’s been up to. The teachers also tend to put a little ‘what we’re doing this week’, which is useful when my son conveniently can’t remember a single thing about his day. You can see a curriculum map on the website, but little things like ‘Roman numeral snap’ were on the list of activities for last week, it’s a good conversation starter with my dc.

Other than that, you can do pretty much everything else, provided you’re well organised, and not time poor.

The school is cashless, so lunches, clubs etc are paid for via the app. You can use the iPad in the main office. But it’s a 3 form entry, and the reception is tiny, so it’s not unusual to see parents queuing right out of the door at drop off/pick up (not for the iPad necessarily just to speak to the admin staff). Another school mam was complaining a few weeks ago that she’d needed to speak to reception, and had to wait in the queue for 40 minutes after dropping her kids off. So you couldn’t just nip in quickly to book things etc.

The only way to select your child’s meals for the week is via the app (either on your own device, or the school iPad in the office.) You can request a menu via email so you know the choices, but children who haven’t a meal ordered are prompted to make a selection when the self register.

Breakfast club/after school club are booked via the app. if you didn’t want to queue for the office iPad, you can book over the phone, but the phones are only turned on during the hours the wrap around staff at their. So they’re from 7ish-830, and then again 330-6. It can also take a couple of attempts to get your call answered, as the staff who answer the phone are the same staff who are looking after the children. You also can’t book as far in advance over the phone. The app allows you to book for a full term (and change it until the day before), if you phone you can only book the next 5 school days (so if you phoned on a Monday, you could book Tuesday to the next Monday). You can’t book on the day on either app or in person, so if you don’t do it via app you do need to be much more organised.If you want breakfast club the first day back after a school holiday, you need to book it before they break up. So without the app you’d need to book the first day of September’s clubs, by the end of the day next Friday.

As we are rural with no bank nearby, an unmanned station and scattered family I use my phone to book rail tickets and as a satnav. My car has an inbuilt Sat nav but doesn't have traffic updates. So, having a smartphone is necessary for me.

I prefer the keyboard and large screen of a laptop to fiddling about with a touchscreen of a phone, but there are just some things in life that I really need my smartphone for.

I belong to a hobby group and a charity and all communications are by WhatsApp. We are nowhere near a bank, and paying my window cleaner via my banking app is a lot quicker and easier than logging on using my laptop.

Personally I'd get a basic cheap smartphone even if you're not going to make it your main device or carry it outside the home. You can get a second hand one for peanuts. If nothing else, you can use it to set yourself up on the desktop versions of apps like WhatsApp* which are likely to be all but essential for communicating with school and with other class parents.

*Unfortunately I don't think you can use desktop WhatsApp without having a smartphone for the initial setup at least.

I am not as organised as you or I like doing more spontaneous things - not sure which! But my life isn’t set up to avoid it - too many things in my daily life require it, I have a terrible sense of direction and need the maps to drive anywhere, I need to be in touch with my daughter when she’s out on her own, I need to check the bus updates to get to the right bus stop - it’s a pretty endless list.

Am aware there’s a growing movement to delay smart phone use for children but it’s well and truly entrenched at my children’s school and I wouldn’t isolate them in that way. My daughter has enough challenges socially without taking her away from all the chat. She doesn’t have anything except WhatsApp to communicate with her friends but she uses that a lot and I’m glad of it. She’s in secondary and they definitely assume the children can take photos, contact each other, do bits of research online etc. They get school iPads but they don’t do everything.

I wouldn’t want to spend my home time on my laptop so am quite glad to just have all that on me to do things as and when required. And we got rid of our printer years ago to encourage us to use less paper. So glad I can just flash a QR code for most things now.

Good for you. Smartphones and social media are the scourge of modern society. Hold out as long as you can! (I’d also complain every time you can’t do something due to no smartphone, it’s unacceptable that people should be forced into buying tech that they may not want for good reason, or they may not have the money to buy - in particular these changes are excluding older and vulnerable people. Makes me really cross that schools that should be accessible to all are insisting on smartphones and/or restricting access to comms if you don’t have one.

You can normally sort everything out in advance and in a belt and braces approach you do so.

Where things like smart phones really come into their own though is when things go wrong when you dont have access to PCs. Because you have the ability to change stuff on the fly without having to lug a notebook around with you all the time.

It's a bit like mobiles. 99% of the time they are not that important. People use them a lot, but out of convenience more that necessity. But every now and then something will happen that makes them really useful. Like you are meeting someone and their arrival time changes or you can't make the pickup. Or you are stuck somewhere and need to order a taxi.

Having at least a mobile is getting more important because the number of payphones out there is rapidly decreasing.

Most of the time it is a convenience thing rather than a necessity thing as you probably already have found out.

No you didn't and it wasnt
WhatsApp hadn't even been invented twenty years ago! It didn't become particularly popular in the UK until about 2013, not 2005 as you are suggesting.

The main thing will be various apps you might need. However many can be used on a desktop. WhatsApp can go on there I believe. I'd take it one thing at a time and keep in verbal contact with the school to make sure you know what's going on.

I think this is a bit melodramatic and silly.

I'm very aware how damaging smartphones can be and I think its absolutely right to be vigilant about the way young people use them, but choosing to deliberately limit yourself (and by extension your children) like this is counterproductive. You are needlessly making your lives immeasurably harder.

Also by expecting everyone else to cater for the handful of people who refuse to use this widely agreed common standard you're just creating extra work for people. Teachers and school admins are stretched enough as is without having to create additional workstreams for people who refuse to use what is pretty much a universal technology.

Being cautious is sensible. Deliberately choosing to exclude yourself from a universal, mainstream and easy way to communicate is self-defeating.

I couldn't be witout my smartphone, as my work requires me to have a few apps to login, or authentication, approval systems etc. I am not a phone addict at all, and actually get annoyed with how often people are on their phones.... but I think not having a smartphone would be more difficult.

I have primary aged kids. Homework is set on an app. School send all comms via Dojo app including messages that need quick replies - it wouldn't be helpful for me to not see those messages until the evening when I log on the main family computer. Some things need quicker responses. School payment system for trips, clubs etc is all via an app now. It's actually so much more convenient as I can quickly just click and pay there and then when I think of it, instead of having to note down to do it later - ApplePay means not needing to dig my card out, and its all paid and done within seconds and I can move on with my day.

One child is a bit older and plays out with friends, and will be walking to school and back in Sept onwards. We have an airtag on his bag, so I can see on my FindMy app on my phone where he is if I need to (he doesn't have a phone himself as too young). This will be comforting once he has to do the longer school walk himself.

I find a smartphone essential for travel these days tbh. Flight boarding passes etc all on apps, paying for tube journeys, train tix on Apple Wallet etc. Some of our work travel means the option for collecting tix at station isn't available, so we have to have a smartphone for this. I commute by car on some awful traffic roads to the office, and always use my phone for checking out traffic and rerouting me on other roads to avoid accidents/traffic - I can't imagine not having this as I rely on it all the time. Apple CarPlay in the car means I can listen to Spotify/Audible/Podcasts and enjoy my commute too.

Another thing to think about is how expectations (from schools, employers, society in general) have changed with smartphones. For example, my daughter’s school has occasionally cancelled after school clubs (like football or art, not wraparound care) at very short notice - sending an email out mid-morning or even lunch time, with the expectation is that parents will have a smartphone and see that email straight away. Twenty years ago that wouldn’t have been the case, and the school would probably have rung all those parents to say it was cancelled, but not now.

Your later posts do make it sound as though you are a low-tech household (not a criticism - we are low-tech in some ways eg: no smart TV and no Alexa), like your comment that you didn’t use computers at school or university (which is surprising- I was at uni in the late 90s and using computers was just becoming more widespread then, and with young children you’re probably younger than me), and that you didn’t realise things had changed much in schools. I think that this will disadvantage you when you’re trying to keep up with your kids and technology.

I’ve read all your posts and clearly you’re fine where you are with your kids being the age they are.

The only things I would say that will definitely rear their heads are party invitations, and secondary. You say you don’t mind if your DC miss out - but they will mind and their friends will mind. But you can get WhatsApp on desktop and now iPad.

Although we’ve had smartphones for a while we were late coming to them and even later using all the conveniences they come with but wow, some of it is a game changer. And though you say you think it’s useful for your kids to learn to do things analogue, as it were, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more useful for them to know how to do things in the modern way.

You need a smartphone to scan the QR code to initially set it up to use it on a PC. So you can't install WhatsApp for web without a smartphone.

Even just little things like using google/apple maps when driving even if it's somewhere you've driven loads of times before because of there's a crash/road closure whilst in transit it will redirect you.

People who don't engage with the basic tools of life make more work for other people to bear.

DM is a proud luddite... she doesn't need the internet in her life... apart from all the logistics that she's then shunted off on to friends and DB. I can only contact her by landline... except she's deaf so usually doesn't hear the phone, and calls are a right battle to communicate if she has picked up. If she had engaged with phones 20 years ago, I'd be able to send messages and pictures of the DCs.

Parents that don't join the group chats/ pages and expect personalised messages/ emails to be sent to them are a bloody PITA. It then dumps all the communication on to the organiser who has to look up the email address/ phone number, and other group members can't add relevant information. In an organised activity that might involve having to log in to bureaucratic databases on top of remembering which parents need special communications rather than the default.

People that don't engage with communications are within their rights to potentially restrict their own life, but it's not fair on their dependents or people who get lumped with additional admin.

With the DC's primary school, paper communcations didn't resume after Covid lockdowns and the app and email became the main sources of information. Sometimes messages would be sent in an emergency and need to be picked up quickly to avoid issues.

At secondary school there are several apps for communications, homework and payments. There's also the app for the bus (bonus, it's cheaper than cash and less for the DCs to co-ordinate). It's easier for us to communicate when we can send images and locations, especially if something is not to plan, like the time there were trees blocking roads and causing chaos during a storm.

They are increasingly managing their own lives and the reality is that it's a world that assumes you have a mini-computer in your pocket. It's a world I need to keep up with, manage and adapt to with them. I can't pretend it's 1998, and the tools that we had then have often phased out in recent years (maps, timetables, leaflets, directories etc) and they're often not avaliable by default any more.

@BogRollBOGOF I have a friend with whom I can only communicate by old fashioned text or email. It makes arranging any group stuff a PITA as I have to play text hockey with her separately from everyone else.

You are correct in stating that it creates more effort for the instigator. In my case it is for just a handful of people

My secondary kids aren’t issued with a paper timetable anymore - it’s all on an app, along with homework, absence reporting, messages from school etc. payments for trips and school lunches are also done via the app. There is probably ways of doing it with the apps, but you would be saving the school and awful lot of time and hassle by just buying a cheap, basic, smartphone

I couldnt do this, my childs life depends on a smart phone.
i think your making it harder work for others as you wont have access to the school apps etc needed.

Two factor authentication is the kicker.

@EllieQ Yes, I'd say we are a low tech household (although I've no idea whats 'normal'!). At home we value outdoor, in person, analogue stuff. I wouldnt say we are anti tech, but anything we have has to earn its place. Professionally we are more high tech (science fields) so we are not totally out of touch, more that we don't know much about more everyday uses. Perhaps theres something there in wanting our home set up to be different.
I left school in 1998 so computers were about but few people had them. No piece of work had to be handed in on a computer, although some used word processing for project pieces.

At uni very few people had their own and I think apart from one report that had to be written up on a computer, everything else was handwritten. We used shared computers in a computer room to email etc. Certainly a lot has changed.

Can you use whatspp on a desktop without a smartphone? I use whatsapp web, but regularly have to log back in via the app by scanning the qr code as it boots me out. Otherwise my phone is off in a drawer until I need an OTP for online banking!

As for parties, invites etc I suppose I'm pretty relaxed about not knowing about everything and being left out sometimes? I find we've got more than enough going on to not want to be included in anything more

This is interesting. I wonder if your children will always feel as relaxed about not knowing things and being left out when they hear school friends talking about things they all did.