Smartphones won’t help you learn how computers work. They are dumbed down devices, designed to keep you on social media while maximizing exposure to ads. These things are way worse than TVs.
Comment on EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone
tal@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
EE is advising parents that children under 11 should be given old-fashioned brick or “dumb” phones that only allow them to call or text instead.
That sounds ridiculous. An 11-year-old is, what, a fifth-grader in the US?
If they have access to a computer or something in addition to their phone, okay, maybe. But for a lot of young people in 2024, their smartphone is their sophisticated electronic device. Maybe they tack on a keyboard or whatnot. But take that away, and they don’t have a computer to use. A computer is just too essential of a tool to not let someone learn.
Kids used to veg out in front of the TV, where material is generally not all that fantastic and the device is noninteractive. I think that it’s great that smartphones are replacing that.
I was programming when I was in first grade. I was doing computer graphics and word processing somewhere around there. Those are important skillsets to have. You want kids to pick those up. I’d get a computer into their hands at the earliest point that they can avoid destroying it.
If your concern is that you want to restrict access to pornography or something, okay, fine, whatever, set up content filtering. I think that they’re probably going to get at it anyway. But that does not entail not permitting access to the computing device. That’s a restriction on access to the Internet.
In May this year, MPs on the education committee urged the government to consider a total ban on smartphones for the under-16s and a statutory ban on mobile-phone use in schools as part of a crackdown on screen time for children.
That’d be, what, up to high school before you have one? And that’s not “I have parents who want that”, but outright “the government doesn’t let anyone do that”.
Ibuthyr@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Tasker says you’re wrong.
Ibuthyr@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
And I’d say the kid who learned to start a game on daddy’s PC is miles ahead of the kid who clicked on an icon in the play store.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Wikipedia. Google Maps. The store of knowledge available from search engines. I use those all the time. You want to cut them off from that?
That’s a bit overdramatic. Most kids have a laptop for schoolwork these days. I personally didn’t get a smartphone until I started university, got a Samsung S7 then. I had no issues accessing any of those sources. These days I have a comp sci masters degree, so it definitely didn’t “stunt” me in any way.
I read and certainly write way more text than I did in the pre-Internet era. Do you want kids reading and writing less?
Kids reading and writing skills appear to have been declining ever since the rise of the smartphone, so I doubt they’re reading anything of sufficient quality to hone those skills a bit.
Schools here have recently mostly banned smartphones, and the kids seem happier for it and their grades and concentration in school is improving. Sound like positives to me.
tooLikeTheNope@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Agree with your points on having a pocked PC to hack with, the issue here is then with mobile and their OS makers which mindbogglingly have omitted to design a working and hardly hackable “children account mode”, since what is damaging here is not what they can fiddle within their devices, nor certainly what they can read from wikipedia, but rather the unfiltered and unaccountable exposure to a profiling oriented social media storm which even adults fatigue to cope with.
I’m sure it isn’t unheard of OSes having a hardware locked managed kiosk mode, because that is what smartphones basically need.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Most kids aren’t improving their skillsets. They definitely aren’t programming on cell phones. I am a programmer. I have code editors that I paid for on my phone at all times. I’ve used them like 5 times at most.
Social media and misinformation is damaging for everyone but more so for children. Social media is what kids are mostly doing.
I agree that there can positives for using a cell phone. Their are educational software but most kids aren’t doing that.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Even if they are only figuring out how to ignore clickbait, they are improving their skill sets.
Social media is “damaging”, in the same way that all social activities are “damaging”. The solution is not isolation, but early exposure. The last kid to get a phone is the one at greatest social disadvantage.
pahlimur@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Firm disagree. Social media, or more specifically algorithmic short form content these days, is extremely damaging. It’s different from anything that’s come before and has nothing to do with connecting with your peers.
I graduated high-school in 2009 so I saw the beginning of popularized social media. Very few gained anything from participating in it. Mostly people who were good at marketing and building a following benefited.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Kids have always been evil little shits who get their jollies demoralizing and torturing the weak. Social media is just a newer avenue for old sociopathy.
Again, nothing particularly novel. Marketing, news, propaganda.
IllNess@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
You can still teach and prepare without exposing.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
You can try, but you’ll be teaching to deaf ears until they have seen enough to understand what the hell you’re talking about.