Any year 7 without a phone?

[lighttherapy]

DS started at secondary school in September and has settled in happily. His school is a fifteen minute walk away and he has made new friends both at school and on the walk. He's a social butterfly!

He doesn't have a phone as we see no need for it. The walk is a straightforward route in a residential area, well lit, about 10 minutes straight on one main road (just houses on both sides, no shops, no roundabout) and then turning into our quiet side road.

He recently met up with old friends from primary school at a birthday party (communicated via mums whatsapp) and came back saying all of them have phones and they want to speak with him. He also said that before school broke last week his new friends at school and on the school walk have spoken about coming to each other's place during half term for playdates. Now he has no way of communicating with them to arrange any of this. I have no numbers either as they're all new friends.

What should I do? I recently read on the newspapers about some schools / parents commiting to avoid giving them phones until Y9 which I quite agree. I intend to leave him phoneless and use all his social skills in person until then. He's not really begging for it but part of me feels guilty for not letting him be with his friends outside school.

Anyone else with a phoneless Y7-Y9?

Jesus Christ. How on earth do you think we all coped/survived in the 80's without a phone!

Anyway. My daugher has a brick. School ask them to get them out in school time in lessons - that's the problem. So we've agreed a smartphone for xmas that is simply to go in her school bag so she doesn't look like an idiot in front of her class and then she uses the brick at home which she actually loves and doesn't want to let go of! She does have her own laptop I might add for schoolwork.

My DD has her iPhone which is linked to my iPhone. Everything she does is monitored through mine.. if she wants to download any app request permission from me first and I get to decide. I have put time limits on everything. I take her phone off when she goes to bed. And I check through her phone regularly. I also think it’s important that she has a phone as a way of contacting me whenever she likes. I feel better when she’s at sleepovers and I know she has her phone that way if anything happens, she can ring me herself.

You haven’t made any suggestions as to how you’re going to help your son to be able to be in contact with his friends and build relationships with them, this is important at his age. As a PP has stated. The days of phones in the hallway and payphones are gone. We have to roll with how it works now. Just make sure he understands how things work and that he uses precautions on social media etc or give him a phone With limited social media access. But he won’t have friends for long if he continues with the way it is.

All the stats I've seen back up that kids are not more unsafe outside without a phone. You said you had stats showing otherwise. Please could you direct me to those?
My stats all come from 'The Anxious Generation' book.
Bizarre that you then added a screen grab also suggesting that young people are most at risk of crimes from people they know... inside the home.
Repeatedly calling me naive doesn't make me so. You don't know me, and you don't know where I live.
If you do actually have stats showing young people are less at risk if they have a phone, I'd love to see, please? It might make me change my mind.

Use AI. Goodnight naive girl

Interesting to see how agitated the posters who have gotten their kids a smartphone are on this thread. Perhaps they realise that there’s no way back.

In my view, not getting one’s 11-16 year-old a smartphone is the rational thing to do. The harm of not having a smartphone is either marginal (eg missing out on some chats/having to learn to travel without GPS) or speculative (smartphones won’t save you from serious crime). By contrast, the harm caused to young teenagers’ mental health by smartphones is serious, very probable and well documented. Why take on a big risk when the alternative is a minor inconvenience?

So you don't actually have any. OK then. Got your kid a smartphone I guess.

My y7 has an iPhone, but with basically minimal apps and no social media including WhatsApp. He just uses messenger. He gets the train to and from school and has a walk at either end.

His school have pointed out that WhatsApp is already causing problems in his year group and that their preference would be that they don't have it.

Smartphone free childhood is worth a look. We all have phones in our family, but I often wish we didn't!

The harm of not having a smartphone is either marginal (eg missing out on some chats/having to learn to travel without GPS) or speculative (smartphones won’t save you from serious crime). By contrast, the harm caused to young teenagers’ mental health by smartphones is serious, very probable and well documented.

How is missing out on chat marginal? Remember so much of their communication is via text or group calls.

You can't rely on other kids to keep going to the extra effort to keep yours in the loop.
I'm also giggling at the idea of mums arranging their secondary aged kids social life. That's just not going to happen.

We know kids MH has taken a dip and phones are dead easy to blame what about the zillion other things that's wrong with society?

Constant testing in schools?
Lack of hope for the future?
Few apprenticeships, your either destined to a minimum wage job or a degree with huge debt and no guarantee of a decent job at the end of it.
All the big industries that provided decent paying jobs have gone

If you don't have help to get on the housing ladder you'll struggle?
The attitude don't have kids you can't afford people are programmed to want children.

But phones are the blame because they are easy to blame and easy to put the blame on parents.

My child’s phone is linked to mine on Apple. She can’t download anything without my permission and you can’t download WhatsApp until 13

The fact that other things also impact negatively kids' mental health does not entail that the impact of smartphones is negligible. And unlike these other things you mention, a parent can mitigate/cancel the risk posed by smartphone by simply not buying one (or failing that, put in restrictions).

You seem to have a different sense of the harm a kid suffers if unable to co-ordinate with friends via WhatsApp. I have to admit that I wouldn't know as my DC's friends all have brick phones. But any such harm would likely be practical inconvenience, rather than harm to a kid's mental health. And in that sense, I think it is marginal.

Give me evidence that phones are the cause of MH decline?

Prove to me it's not the crazy stuff like transwomen in toilets.
The lack of hope.
Did they even monitor MH in the 90s?

Just blame phones because they are easy

Well I wasn’t alive in the 80s! & the world isn’t the same as it use to be back then either!!

There's increasing amounts of evidence of the harm done by social media, and smartphones. There's a case against TikTok in the US right now, I guess they feel they have evidence? And lots of statistics to back it up in The Anxious Generation. The evidence is there.
Are you living under a rock?

@dairydebris having a smart phone doesn’t equal access to social media though if you’re a responsible parent.

There is definitely a change in thinking, my ds is year 5 and there is an active group of parents involved in the Smartphone free childhood movement who make presentations and raise awareness of the dangers. No one has a smartphone yet in the year but I know this often happens in year 6 or when they go to secondary. I have spoken to a lot of parents who say they won't go down that route so think it is becoming more common to have this attitude.

Exactly it's a whole lot more going on than having a phone.
Boys in girls toilet but we'll blame phones for rise in anxiety even if we never monitored it before.

I think the generation of kids born between 2005 and 2015 were the experimented-upon generation with tech. In terms of being given too much access, too young, and also in terms of data privacy - unwitting parents and even schools publishing childrens’ personal data, eg photos, for clicks on to private tech companies whose business model is selling data for ads for profit.

People are wising up. Parents are becoming more educated. Governments are regulating. The tide is turning and I think future generations will benefit. I am hearing already from older teens who see younger siblings being more protected from tech/social media, and wish they’d had the same protection.

Whether it is a brick phone or smartphone, conversations about social media, the use of fake news, scams, etc should be discussed from Year 6 onwards. There is a lot of junk out there but also good contents. DC loves the cooking recipes and Book Tok, which are book reviews on Tik Tok. Dualingo for German. No phone overnight in bedroom.

Mine has a Nokia, she calls her friends to chat and can message anyone - just arranged for 4 of her new friends to come over this week to watch a film. I'm aiming for y9 without a smart phone, the mendal
health issues associated with it is just not worth it imo

Can't he have a brick phone so he can still take their numbers, call and message?

I intend to give my kid a brick phone next year in y7, and I’m seriously thinking about swapping to one myself.

Yes! My year 7 had no phone!!

And we're 6 weeks in & the world didn't end!

Great decision.

I let my daughter use my phone to keep in touch with her friends a bit, which works fine. So she has a (my!) number to give out to people so she doesn't look too "different" (IYSWIM).

She also has an old iPhone handset without a sim so that she can play games etc with friends at weekends, and send messages on WiFi.

There's much less obsession about phones - asa result I think.

• has, not had

All this crap about them being isolated without a phone - it's rollocks!

Also, this crap about "oh they'll be so embarrassed without the latest iPhone" - what utter BS. It's like anything - trainers, clothes, bags - maybe teach children that this surface level rubbish is irrelevant! It's what's inside that counts.

So sad.

That's assuming that the child's friends are only texting and not using WhatsApp.

When DD started secondary school in 2011 she had a phone because we are rural and the school bus often broke down and sometimes caught fire. We also had torrential rain and flooding a couple of times and I had to rescue her on more than one occasion.

When she made new friends they would text each other all the time as she didn't live near her friends and it was before they all had Facebook.

DD was the last of her group to have Facebook because we stuck to the wait until 13 rule.

All this crap about them being isolated without a phone - it's rollocks

Hmm, I'm not sure that having no means at all to communicate with your friends outside of school is a good idea. I agree that it doesn't have to be a phone, but a tablet or laptop would do. Aren't you also assuming that the children all live within walking distance of each other?

I think this is a difficult one because I agree that there is too much reliance on social media, but on the other hand you don't want your DC to miss out socially.