[slics]

As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no internet.

Looked here and looks promising: https://tello.com

For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You ask them to brush their teeth, they bring their toothbrush in the living room just to watch TV. Phone for a teenager it’s the worst thing a parent can do (outside of the emergency reasons)

[yodon]

The social ostracism and inability to interact with their peers will not strengthen your children socially nor given them a value system for dealing with the challenges of the culture around them. It will simply delay when they have to grapple with it from a time in their lives when mistakes are understood and expected by the world to a time when the world will expect them to already be experienced with how to manage it. A rule like you describe is not for the benefit of your children. It is a crutch designed to help you avoid the hard work of having to teach proper values around difficult things. Charting a path through social media is part of parenting. You haven't found a secret hack that makes it easy. You have created a fantasy that you can simply get away with not doing so.

[panpanna]

IMO, his kids will be just fine. Probably more than fine and more capable of handling real-life situations compared to other kids.

The positive effects of social media is highly exaggerated.

[impostir]

That's pretty much what my parents did, and I have mixed feelings about it. I do think it was good up to high school age. I would have said some dumb things when I was twelve I would probably regret today. But, as a teenager, it felt like just another way my parents were trying to control me. I would say that if you block phones, you have to counterbalance it with some other way your teenager can have agency. It doesn't matter too much what it is, just let your teenager have some freedom.

[tfandango]

They will create accounts on their friends phones, all of the apps have multi-user features now. I know what you are saying, but I eventually gave in and made some rules around everything, like unexpectedly asking for the phone to take a look at things, putting it in my room at night, etc. They (at least my kid) aren't diligent enough to cover up enough that you won't find out if anything is going on. Of course she then dropped it in the toilet.

[brokenmachine]

> Of course she then dropped it in the toilet.

Lol, clearly now there needs to be a rule of no phones taken in the bathroom.

[viraptor]

How do you plan to handle the social interactions? I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only. Not a criticism of the idea - just curious what's your approach here.

[NullPrefix]

>I expect they're going to be skipped on lots of invites / activities organised on platforms which are phone-only

Isn't that the intention?

[viraptor]

I read the intention as "limit the social media distraction", not as "make it harder to do things with other humans". There's lots of social activities you're either involved in via an online group, or you won't know what's going on. For example, planning for a canoe club I was a part of existed only on IM / FB group. FB is still available non-mobile, but WhatsApp is not.