Not having a smartphone

[aNameyName]

Thinking ahead a year or two to having a teenager: My child is already in a small minority in not yet having their own smartphone, and since reading 'The Anxious Generation' by Jonathan Haidt, I'm minded to hold out against giving my child a smartphone until they can get one themselves, if they want to because the massive developmental opportunity costs were shocking when laid out so plainly.

If you have teenage children with a dumb phone or no personal phone at all, what are the worst negative impacts for your teen of not having a smartphone? Has your position on smartphones affected your relationship with your child? At what age / event do you intend to give your child a smartphone, if at all? What other factors should I consider in weighing up if / when to give them a smartphone?

Neither of my 3 ever needed their phones in school. Their schools were actually mobile free, you had to hand the phone in at the office and although some homework was online or on teams they all just did it at home on computers or laptops.
DS2 only just left school after GCSEs a few weeks ago so although some schools may require phones I know for definite not all schools do.
If they're recording experiments then it's usually the teacher who shares the recording on teams so everyone gets a good view of it.

Thanks, @shams05 that's interesting to know. Access to IT at home isn't an issue, so unless a school is using a platform that can only be accessed via a mobile app, or is poorly optimised for desktop, I'd much rather my child establish a habit of setting aside some time for work and doing it using an ergonomic set-up.

@FunnysInLaJardin My child currently doesn't want a phone. However, I am considering beyond the current point in time. I'm anticipating that within a couple of years, they may either think they need one, or feel social pressure to fit in as 'everyone else has one'. Other parents also think my child should have a phone, but when I ask them why, the 'needs' they come up invariably turn out to not be needs, or are needs which can be met in multiple different ways, one of which would be using a smartphone. See this thread for examples.

@RampantIvy Hi, yes, I had assumed that few people would be in a position to actually answer my questions, and that lots of people would offer opinions regardless of not being in a position to answer my questions. There're some helpful and interesting responses here.

@aNameyName I have to admit that I am very pro technology as if you hadn't guessed!

Purely from a personal perspective my DS1 would not be going to uni in September if it wasn't for tech. He is bright but hates academic study. He has been composing EDM for years and has a big following on Youtube and Spotify. He is also a professional video editor and makes lots of money editing for YouTube content creators.

If it weren't for technology he would never have been able to create music and get a place do study electronic music production at degree level. They dont teach that at school.

He secured an unconditional offer purely based on an online audition. He has no music qualifications other than his pure talent. Although he did play piano and guitar to grade one 😁

DS2 wants to be a pilot and spends hours engineering planes online and flying using his software.

It frustrates me that tech is seen just as TikTok and SnapChat when it is so much more than that. In the right hands it is a tool for learning.

Denying a child the opportunity to discover what tech has to offer beyond smart phones and Fortnite is rather short-sighted and rather luddite

Anyway that's it from me. You get my drift!

And you don't think you can do the same via Google Family Link?

Remember schools have found it cheaper and easier to do homework online.

There’s a lot of great advice on here and id agree that you can give a phone with restrictions on it. Mine have Snapchat but only for 15 mins so they aren’t totally excluded but I limit the time wasted on it. There is a sort of middle ground

No idea. We have never used anything like that. DD is nearly 24 and apps like this either weren't around when she was a teenager or they weren't needed.

What a stupid comparison.

A better comparison would be a great bug sharp kitchen knife 🔪 children should be taught how to use them safely, even if it's illegal for then to purchase a knife.

As they get older you of course need to model the non phone use to them - so you need to stop using your phone too. Teens are very quick to identify hypocrisy.

@Needanewname42 It would be an objectively worse comparison, given the example relates to my child who currently has a need to use a big, sharp kitchen knife as the tool of choice when making dinner for the family once a week. As I have encouraged them to use sharp kitchen knives to chop veg from when they were three, it would be a really poor example. I'll stop short of describing it as a 'stupid' example, as that type of language could be perceived to be pejorative, and I have no need to use it.

@TheaBrandt Quite, so I'm using a computer.

We share your concerns. With a few other parents, we raised it on the class's WhatsApp group and the vitriol we got for it. It was just a casual question about mobile phone use and access. I find it fascinating so many parents are so strongly in support of it. We are primary school level, kids are too young to walk from/to school on their own, etc so there is no real need for a phone (brick or smart) at all. Homework is all on paper.
So far, only a handful of kids (4 or 5) have them. They have managed to exclude kids from WhatsApp groups, bully other kids and apparently one random man was found to belong to a WhatsApp group created by one of the kids! I'm really not sure what benefits parents think their kids are getting from having a smartphone. Yes, there are educational apps around but you can access them with computers, tablets, parents' mobile phones, etc. you wouldn't want your child to spend hours on these anyway. Given research points at how dangerous access to smartphones can be, I don't think the pros outweigh the cons.

Can you imagine your child trying to make dinner with a butter knife because you don't want them using an kitchen knife incase they stab themselves?

Your by choice trying to make life hard for your child by withholding a smartphone and the tools of the 2020s

A smartphone is a tool to be used correctly.

Simply, they'll be ostracized without obe as they use it to communicate. Get one while they're younger (we did the summer before secondary so they had it to share details with their primary friends). Then you can have parental controls on it and educate them. Also you can have a phone tracker so you can see where they are.

NB their smartphones have been useful in so many ways as well as staying in touch with their primary friends:
*Dropping a pin to me to tell me where they were when they got lost somewhere.
*Telling me if they were staying later at school
*Using with permission in class for research
*Accessing revision sites (both have used their travel time to school to revise)
*Occasionally they've needed extra money which I've been able to ping over
*Using to complete homework (sometimes changes get made to HW on the school homework app which they've had to hurriedly make a note of)
*DS13 plays 2 musical instruments and uses his for a music app

No primary age child should have WhatsApp. There is a legal age for a reason. Why do parents allow it? It’s one of the main causes of bullying.

Totally agree holding off is good shocking if primary aged kids have phones and iPads. Ours had neither until 13 but for teens with social lives phones are key. Thought of this thread on hearing dds friends father threw his dds phone into the garden pond.

My oldest is 11 in a few months and he's really pushing for a phone and I'm kind of agreeing with him as he's just starting going to his friends houses a bit further afield from our immediate vicinity but still only about 5 mins walk away. He also wants to walk to and from school which is just under a mile away. I'm tempted to get him a refurbished iPhone SE because Dh and I have iPhones and I want to be able to see where he is. It's almost more for my peace of mind than his at this stage! I'd be putting on restrictions left right and centre though and no snap chat or TikTok nonsense. Maybe WhatsApp but I'd be checking it.

In the UK the legal age to use WhatsApp is 13.

Also you can have a phone tracker so you can see where they are.

You can see where their phone is.

@Needanewname42 The present situation, if you look at my child's requirements, and the potential use cases for a smartphone were they to have one at the present time, would be more akin to giving a two year old a swiss army knife to butter their toast.

This is madness not allowing an 11 year old a phone?

Whatever!
Come back and tell us when you cave in. I bet you wont make it to Christmas

My understanding was that the OP wasn't against a dumb phone. She just doesn't want her child to have a smart phone.