TLDR:
Making your kids go without smartphones could be difficult because their friends will most likely have phones and will most likely leave your kid out of events and conversations.
Yeah, even if the parents mean well, all this is really doing at the end of the day is putting the kids at a significant disadvantage compared to basically all their peers lol. Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, just like the personal computers/cell phones before them, and denying that reality is only going to make it harder as time goes on.
Not saying they can’t take any steps to try to curb the more negative effects of social media n stuff, but trying to go full amish about it is just silly.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there might be something to the fact that many owners, CEOs, and the richer PMCs are sending their own children to unplugged private schools with strict rules against wireless devices carried by the students, all under pretense of making them better communicators and better leaders in the future. I seriously wonder if there’s a “don’t get high on your own supply” mantra at work there. It may be something just as stupid as the “raw water” fad among techbros, but worth thinking about. :thinking-about-it:
Perhaps, but I personally think it’s more likely the latter and they’re just a bunch of fart-sniffing pretentious idiots with more money than sense.
I think your comment ties back into one further up the thread, where someone said that this is good as a collective decision, and extremely bad as an individual “choice”. If you send your children to a school where this is common, you get to reap the obvious benefits from your kid not having access to these harmful devices. Whereas if you make a “consumer choice” to be a responsible parent, you just set up your kid to be resentful of you, since you excluded them from one of the most basic activities that their friends have access to.
That paragraph about her dance group going on their phones instead of talking to each other is so depressing. It isn’t that common where I am because reception is awful and goes off frequently for long periods of time, so you’re often left with no choice but to socialize.
And the difference in social skills is kind of staggering. I’ve seen it between kids in the city raised on smartphones and rural kids who weren’t. The city kids are a lot more withdrawn and socially awkward while the rural ones are more outgoing and talkative. The rural kids also have better attention spans. Sometimes there are benefits to living in the mountains lol
really? honestly i’ve known exactly the opposite - myself and all 5 kids i knew spread out across my rural ass county had literally no way to interact with people our own ages except online (unless you were willing to walk an hour plus to the next village to see each other lol), whereas when i moved out and met city kids, they were people who’d been able to interact with other kids their entire lives and seemed much more social and less anxious
Yes, it really is a shame that texting seems to be not the way people communicate now. I mean, why would you communicate with your friends over Instagram or whatever? Doesn’t really make much sense to me. I feel like getting your kid a keyboard phone wouldn’t be a bad idea instead anyway though.
I think in the future small ‘anti-internet’ communities will be formed by parents like these. Maybe children raised in these communities will be better socially adjusted lol
The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
I was very late to the smartphone scene and have therefore not become cripplingly addicted to my smartphone, in fact it’s usually dead if I don’t need to go anywhere. Instead I’m cripplingly addicted to my pc.
