12? Those kids get phones at 8-9 around here as far as I saw.
Comment on What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation | US education | The Guardian
fosforus@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
I watched the first generation that got personal unrestricted mobile phones for themselves. Somehow I thought it was a good idea at the time.
Now I think that a parent who gets their under 12 year old kid a smart phone should be treated the same way if he gave them cocaine.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, I haven’t gotten to that point with my kids but he’s getting a flip phone first if I can find one. I see other kids on his bus (elementary level) with smartphones and I think it’s insane.
Hexarei@programming.dev 5 months ago
I lent my 8yo my old phone, heavily restricted and with Family Link installed; She’s only allowed 2 hours a day and isn’t allowed on stuff like YouTube. There are ways to do it responsibly.
SmashingSquid@notyour.rodeo 5 months ago
We got an iPhone for my niece who is 8. It’s locked down so all she can do is text, call, and take pictures/video and she can’t contact anyone not in her contacts list. She has some games but can’t use them for more than an hour per day and they won’t open during school hours.
A big issue is parents not bothering to learn how to use and set up parental controls.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Controls like these don’t work if the kid is smart, determined or the parents are too tired or uninvolved. There’s more to the cellphone issue than the actual cellphone.
erwan@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
It doesn’t matter if the kid is smart and determined, parental controls can’t be circumvented.
Unless the parent is stupid enough to leave their phones unlocked or lax enough to unblock the phone every time the kid asks for it.
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I think you’re being a little naive…
Circumventing parental controls that “couldn’t be circumvented” is what I did as a child that led to me being a computer programmer
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It depends on how heavy handed the approach is. A kid could learn about using a vpn or proxy service to bypass dns or dpi based content filtering but if you properly configure the parental controls on iOS or android there is pretty much nothing they are going to be able to do. If they are that determined, I think you need to have a conversation about making good choices themselves and trusting them not to consume harmful content.
I was able to bypass the content filters on the PCs when I was in high school because it was a shitty content filter that could be bypassed by killing the process in an unelevated task manager. My kids are going to have to be more resourceful than that