The Internet is demonic but at the same time you can't expect to keep kids off when all their friends are on it. I'm lucky that my kid is in a tight knit school where all the parents know each other so I've been meaning to make a class pact to do no smartphones until 7th grade or something. It only takes one.

I honestly think the majority of people don't fully comprehend what they're fucking with when it comes to this stuff, social media in particular. The fact that most of these kids will end up face id'ed in a database before they reach the age of consent is horrifying. Let alone the addiction potential, higher value activities bypassed for mindless scrolling, cyberbullying and like legit stranger danger.

I will probably end up getting a desktop PC in the living room for research and homework assignments etc. but when it comes to carrying a computer around in your pocket the bad outweighs the good.

It feels dystopian when I see children today so young they can't speak yet, already hooked on a tablet watching the crappiest content imaginable and a myriad ads in between. Capitalism has left kids with the cheapest to produce entertainment while also being scientifically designed to be as addictive as possible, terrible for their attention spans and development of critical thinking, with a touch of capitalist and atomistic propaganda.

I don't have kids but if I did I would also try to delay any access to the internet for as long as possible. Maybe until 13 at least idk, I can imagine that they get very frustrated if their friends are allowed while they aren't. It's important to show them as many activities as possible so they can find interests aside from that, it might keep them from having such an urge to get a mobile device.

This subject is easily one of the biggest and most frustrating realities of doing parallel parenting that I have to deal with being divorced. Kiddo is 9 and unlike mom I straight up refuse to give him smartphone access at my house until 11, at the earliest. He has access to electronic devices for his hour of screen time a day which are heavily moderated and controlled at both a device level and router level. PG-13 content is totally acceptable to me and I'll even allow R rated depending on the circumstances and provided we can engage with it together. I am not a fan at all of trying to shelter your kids entirely from the outside world and definitely believe in talking to kids about difficult subjects like violence, sex, drugs, et al.

Straight-up though: I think you're making a huge mistake if you give your kid a smartphone and let them raw dog the internet when they're in single digits. There is just so much goddamn awful trash, gross inappropriate memes, and parasocial relationships which are going to give them tons of weird ideas about all kinds of shit you'll eventually have to work with them through. Media literacy is a complicated subject even for a adults. That isn't even getting into all the shit designed to fuck with their dopamine levels.

I do think the comparison of giving a kid a cellphone to giving them a cigarette is probably a bit hyperbolic...but I definitely would liken it to giving them a soft drink or ice cream or something. At a certain age its ok and totally normal to have it...but the internet and smart devices are treats which as the parent makes you responsible for handling moderation until that blasted prefrontal cortex comes in.

the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette

Pretty much yes. Like you I was lucky enough to be on the internet before it turned into an engagement-maximizing hellhole so my brain had time to develop its defenses as things deteriorated and I matured. It wasn't without its mis-steps, I got hooked enough on an MMO to fail some of my classes in university but managed to recover and permanently swore off multiplayer games. Throwing kids right into the deep end of that pool is honestly bordering on criminal neglect.

These are my guiding principles on the subject:

1. Kids need to not be alienated from their peers by excessive restriction
2. Kids need to be educated on how to safely and smartly engage with the internet and tech, which they can only get through experience and regular guided discussion
3. Kids need to see digital hygiene modeled for them by their parents

They sometimes conflict with each other and they can be hard standards to meet, but the more ambiguous parts are things we can feel out as we go since that’s de facto what everyone is doing on the subject anyway.

I’m skeptical of the narrative that tech companies push where they’ve created mind control rays which force people to engage with their content. Super convenient if your entire business model revolves around content engagement. If your kid is at risk of addiction (mental health, family history, etc) then yeah don’t let them download the slop machine apps. I authorize intense parental controls for my kids stuff. I also have Pihole set up to block ads on our entire network. I also tell my kids that it’s not healthy to enjoy something so much that it makes other things boring. And then I model taking breaks.

why don’t people just lean into it? I mean, heavily regulate/limit devices until they can really understand them (maybe 12-15 years old), and then start just teaching them full on about nerd shit. Turn them into Linux nerds, teach them about dystopian social media algorithms, get them hooked on nerd shit like compiling their own software and programming scripts for menial work. I can’t imagine a kid getting hooked on Cocomelon if you’ve managed to instill in them a reflexive disgust of the entire YouTube content farming industry

Start them out with a lan-only Linux install that’s properly set up to prevent them from using the internet, but has access to few pre-installed games and all the apps needed for development and tinkering

Isn't that a Gorillaz song?

I feel really bad criticizing other parents ways of raising their kids (I know I'm not perfect) but I do want to say something when parents just hand their kid a phone at restaurants and let youtube autoplay them to hitlers playhouse. We stood firm and now our kids can sit at the table for a while and worst case they get a piece of paper and some crayons to keep them distracted if we're being too boring.

I don't plan to give my kids a phone for as long as possible. I think our friends are on the same page too but someone's going to make the first move at some point. I'd like to keep it down to simple messaging apps so they can talk to each other but we're not even at that stage with our kids so I have no clue how it'll go.

What's the app for reading/writing letters that yours use?

I think it might be negative. But I also think it's even more negative for a kid not to get the same experiences as their peers, it leads to bullying and problems socialising if they do not. The safest option is probably to allow it but be careful, and to make sure they're getting a good education from you outside of it to inoculate them to the worst aspects.

The biggest problem with smartphones with young kids, as opposed to other devices, is that they’re much harder to to monitor. If your kid is only allowed to use the device around you, you can keep an eye out, clamp down on content you don’t want them to be looking at, but more importantly you can explain why it’s problematic. The real danger isn’t in the possibility of seeing problematic content, it’s the explanation and context coming from someone with ill intent. That’s the problem with sheltering kids, if you don’t explain it to them then someone else will. And it’s much easier for that to happen with a smartphone.

Now as far as general behavioral impact from the devices, yeah I do see the bottled up energy/withdrawal issues once the device goes away. Everything in moderation, including moderation. But I do think parents, teachers, adults generally can fall too easily into a knee jerk mentality of “modes of my youth were good, modes of current youth are destructive.” I remember my boomer mom back when fretting about the negative mental effects of the Internet We Grew Up On. Even today, I hear the refrain of “oh get them reading they’re not going to learn from watching videos.” But, while my kid reads plenty, he’s also learned a ton of stuff from videos. And I’m not talking about dumb pop culture shit, we’re talking about history stuff on a level way above his grade. There’s also an inescapable element in that a lot school work is tied to apps, my kid has to use them in order to get his work done.

And, well, there’s also a heavy duty amount of “those in glass houses.” We can’t expect the kids to get off the devices while we’re constantly glued to our socials and content media.

I like the way China handles things by limiting screen time I think if your like really young you shouldn't have a phone period The older you get the more screen time you get

Had to figure this out this year with my daughter going to middle school and signing up for after school activities every possible day. The good news is that smart phones have tons of parental controls that you can basically make them function only for calls and texts.

Kids get them way too early though, by 3rd grade we were hearing laments that everyone had a phone but her. Naturally all those kids have like full access to tiktok and I'm assuming the internet 🤮

Kids with phones? They're taking over. It won't be long. They're mesmerized skeletons, those kids with phones.

I thought it was weird by Gorillaz to make a follow-up to 'kids with guns' since I'm pretty sure that song wasn't even a single, but I can't argue that it's not a hit.

The kid has a phone. He walks around town and he might need to call his mother, sometimes I take him out to do stuff in nature and he might need to call me if he gets lost, if he's at a friends house or at his dad's he needs to be able to call us, and both his school and the social services he is expected to interact with expects him to have a phone. It's of course a dilemma given how messed up social media is, but it is simply unrealistic for him not to have a phone.

Strictly control content while you educated them.

My son grew up up with iPad - they are incredible tools, but we made sure everything on it was educational or wholesome. Just alpha a math stuff. Gave him a massive head start at school.

YouTube got ahead of ahead us, but luckily he was into hobbies and things by then - cars, , history , cricket etc - and so the WHATSUPGUYZzz morons never really appealed to him .

Now he’s 13 and a dork, but when his report card comes home I take it to bed masturbate over it . Far cleverer than me already .

He’s not interested in other social media, but we’re not out of the wood yet by a long stretch .

I'm giving it a strong no, and I made my case in a response to another comment in this thread but the risks are too high and the benefits too small. It's simply not worth it imo.

Teach your kids how to entertain themselves and to deal with boredom in creative ways. Expand their horizons. Don't condemn them to a life of overconsumption of social media.

I don't think kids can be kept off what passes for the net, but you can make them paranoidn distrustful, and weird about it. Install a pi hole and teach them how ad blockers work and that they'll get a dollar for installing ublock origin on unmonitored school pcs. There's probably some "baby's first guide to how marketing demons weaponized bf skinner" out there. Line their crib with old copies of adbusters. Maybe you can scour the torrents, someone must have archived hundreds of hours of sesame street, old soviet media, lectures on mkultra, and other age appropriate content. You can set up your very own walled garden system for them with local content. Teach them tradecraft from a early age so they can do osint on their schoolmates.

Critically - kick them outside with no supervision as soon as they can walk. I don't think there's any way to really protect kids from the mind dissolving effects of social media but you can at least lock them out of the house until dinner equipped only with a pocket knife, a library card, a bus card, a bicycle, 10$, and a liter of water. Maybe a lighter, too.

Kids don't just get to be latchkey kids anymore, the world is too unkind. Gotta sort of kick them out in to the wilds to learn survival, Fremen style.

Counterpoint: everyone said the same thing about TV and look how we turned out.

Hmm, actually, maybe just flee human society altogether.