In my experience with kids, it's not a choice. It's mostly poor kids who have this problem. Their family doesn't have a PC, and an old/cheap smartphone is the way they access the Internet.
Just don't give your children internet access till they are old enough that they can be responsible enough to use it correctly? Why this is not an option?
I got a PC that was all mine and an ADSL internet connection at 16 years old, before of that I used the family computer, but not really used the internet a lot since back in the day it was quite expensive, and when I did I was monitored by my parents. I got a smartphone that was capable of accessing the internet everywhere at 18, before of that only a phone that did phone calls and SMS. And still grow up fine and managed to get a good career in IT.
There is no reason whatsoever for a child younger than 14 to use the internet on its own, without the surveillance of his parents. And there is even no reason for him to have a smartphone. If as a parents you are concerned about giving him a phone for emergencies, just give him a 10$ feature phone that can only do phone calls and SMS. It's as simple as that.
Nowadays kids are always in front of a computer or a phone, they no longer go out to play, instead they spend their time on Tiktok or other stupid social media. We must change that, not the internet.
Yeah, unfortunately kids having smartphones is very often a case of parental negligence. Just like some parents would buy little Jimmy GTA without even bothering to think about whether that's appropriate, some parents will get their young child a pipe to the worst parts of the Internet without thought.
My point really is that people get their kids' phones because they think they have to, but that's the root of the problem. We don't prevent our kids from being online - what we prevent them from doing is being online on their own, away from the house, with the internet in their pocket all the time. They each have computers.
This is perhaps a stupid question without context, but doesn't every kid of the age where this kind of things is an issue carry their own smartphone nowadays? With mobile Internet?
It's not at all the ideal "kids phone". Crippling the access kids have to the Internet, through parental control and the like, is part of the reason why so many kids have so little interest in porgramming.
I'm not sure it even really matters if you give kids a smartphone or not. The schools give them chromebooks, which basically allows the same problematic social media access. Sure, they try to put filters in place, but kids are resourceful. I hear regularly from my daughter about the things she does on that chromebook in class that I don't really permit (except in small doses) at home.
I would never let a kid touch a modern google or apple smartphone ecosystem. They can have one if they must when they are an independent adult capable of paying their own bills under a roof of their own.
I would however encourage laptops and desktops which require them to be offline periodically when they venture into the real world.
Eh, I and most of my classmates had unfettered access to the internet since at least the 4th or 5th grade and it didn't seem to screw us over. TikTok can't be more addictive than World of Warcraft, can it?
I think the bigger distinction is that I had a desktop PC not a smartphone. Parents can much more easily regulate computer use with the former, and withhold access if their kid isn't getting good grades. I think desktop PC use also lends itself to hacking and promoting exploration of technology. Modding and cheating in games is how I got into tech. What I'd do is give my kid a desktop and a USB drive with Gentoo and let them do whatever they want - I'm mostly joking, but only mostly.
And yeah, giving kids smartphones for use at schools seems extremely bone-headed. When I was in school, teachers were all about keeping phones out of the classroom not brining them in.
Smartphones are not a prerequisite for access to educational resources online. Having an old school computer in a public part of the house is great for such things. Kids should just hang out and focus on each other when they're out and about. No need for a smartphone.
So, there is no rule that you have to give your kids a smartphone. It won't screw them up no matter what those already addicted to their phones will tell you.
Our rule is the kids can have a smart phone when they can buy it and a data plan on their own. So far our first didn't do that until she was 18. The second was a little earlier at 17, but she was heading off to college and really felt that she needed it. Our 16 year old so far shows no interest in trying to save up for one.
"As old as"? More like, "as young as". Most kids that age shouldn't even be using smartphones. Ask yourself: Why do they need it? Why do they need a computing device with nigh full access to the Internet 24/7? It's unhealthy, and for kids staying in touch with friends; kids need _plenty_ of break from their peers in order to grow and develop as an individual.
Smart phones are poor computers. They also come with social media apps preloaded (the last cell phone I bought prevented deleting or uninstalling facebook) although that doesn't mean you can't order your children not to create accounts. They're also difficult to lockdown and monitor, and they continuously broadcast copious amounts of data about your children to third parties. Children would be much better served by having a real PC they can play with and learn on.
They probably shouldn't be on smartphones to begin with, rather than asking how to get them off smartphones.
Then again I'm not a parent who puts their smartphone in a stand with full-blast volume when dining out so their kids are distracted from... something.
I hear that most kids live on their phones. Phones are really powerful these days. If kids did their schoolwork on the same device they spent all their time on anyway, it could save lots of money, and latency switching. Plugging peripherals into phones isn't too hard. I don't think educational institutions are getting much value out of the near thousand dollar phones kids live on these days.
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