[jaspax]

> You don't want your kid to be that kid who doesn't have a smartphone

Why not? If you think that smartphone usage is harmful to your child, then you absolutely are justified in letting them be "that kid". Being moderately socially constrained is actually a perfectly fine thing if the alternative is worse.

> Being socially excluded was the bane of my life in school, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a contributing factor to my child becoming a pariah

I don't know anything about you in particular, so I can't say whether this is a good idea or not. But we have to recognize the tradeoffs: unfettered access to social media from a young age with all of its downsides OR being the only kid without a cellphone and those accompanying downsides. Which one harms your kid more? Think about it and make your decision, but once you've made that decision you have to bite the bullet and accept the costs.

[lelanthran]

> Why not? If you think that smartphone usage is harmful to your child, then you absolutely are justified in letting them be "that kid".

It's a trade-off - is peer ostracisation worth the benefits from lack of tech?

Most people, myself included, would say "No".

> Being moderately socially constrained is actually a perfectly fine thing if the alternative is worse.

It is not a moderate social constraint, it's a complete and utter exclusion from the set of peers.

[lrvick]

I spent most of my childhood straight-edge and was thus cast out by peers for not joining them in their nonstop sex, alcohol, and drug addictions, and not being interested in sports.

Instead I made fast friends with the other outcasts like me. The computer nerds, the anime nerds, the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, and the artists. People that spent life chasing their imagination and not worrying about trying to be "normal". Those friendships helped me become the person I am today.

Kids without smartphones will be similar cast out of social circles that revolve around "app culture". Your kid will be better off without the influence of people that shallow.

People sometimes basically tell me "Oh, if you don't install snapchat, discord, or x app, we can't be friends". If someone can't figure out how to maintain a friendship with me without a particular app I have ethical objections to, then I don't consider it a loss. Your kid will learn not to either.

Ancedotal, but virtually all the nerds I grew up with are very successful now, and many of the popular kids that excluded me are still struggling to pay bills having never developed any specialized skills.

[lelanthran]

> I spent most of my childhood straight-edge and was thus cast out by peers for not joining them in their nonstop sex, alcohol, and drug addictions, and not being interested in sports.

That's a false dichotomy - you posit that those things are the only alternatives, which is incorrect.

I never did non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol (and ignored sports) in school, and yet I was part of a number of different social groupings in school.

> Ancedotal, but virtually all the nerds I grew up with are very successful now, and many of the popular kids that excluded me are still struggling to pay bills having never developed any specialized skills.

That's funny - I was never a nerd (computer or otherwise), and grew up fairly successful.

I think you might be missing the fact that your exclusions has lead you to believe a number of things that simply aren't true, like your first statement above.

[Mordisquitos]

> [...] and yet I was part of a number of different social groupings in school.

While I share your objection on GP commenter's false dichotomy (though honesty who knows, maybe their high school was a real life enactment of Skins!) and their apparently judgemental attitude towards their peers, let's not forget that they also said they connected with:

>> The computer nerds, the anime nerds, the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, and the artists.

I.e. they were also part of a number of social circles despite not engaging in “non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol” etc.

I think that the overarching theme of this discussion is neither the false dichotomy that you pointed out, nor the dichotomy of social vs "non"-social, but rather how intense and alienating are a given culture's expectations to conform to the mainstream or its implications that this or that interest is better as of itself. Multiple social connections will always exist, and some shared interests will be more or less common. That is normal and socially healthy. What truly matters is that interest or lack of it in this or that hobby/theme/lifestyle does not result in cliquey social exclusion which can be very damaging in the long term.

Anecdotally, as someone who grew up in Spain, my generation would often comment on how bizarre it seemed to us that American high schools in fiction virtually always implied such a clear dividing line between those who were popular/sporty/cheerleaders on the one hand, and those who were nerdy/band/theatre on the other. Of course we knew people in school who would fit one stereotype more than others, and people were somewhat divided into groups of friends. However, these groups were neither themed, nor was belonging to one explicit and either-or, nor was there any implied social hierarchy in them.

[floren]

> Anecdotally, as someone who grew up in Spain, my generation would often comment on how bizarre it seemed to us that American high schools in fiction virtually always implied such a clear dividing line between those who were popular/sporty/cheerleaders on the one hand, and those who were nerdy/band/theatre on the other.

I went to an American high school in the early 2000s and was also puzzled by the fictional divisions. A huge portion of the band was also in the football team; our half-time field show was full of dudes in their football uniforms.

The only people who tried to create those sort of divides were a couple music kids who maybe watched too many 80s teen movies or MTV shows.

[Mordisquitos]

I'm glad to hear that. Maybe the high-school-cliques trope is mostly the result of memetic spread across lazy scriptwriters.

[c22]

Growing up I never hung out with the computer nerds, the anime nerds, or the hobbyists(?) but the actors, musicians, magicians, and artists I knew were definitely not straight-edge folks who avoided sex, drugs, and alcohol.

[watwut]

That the parent poster created hateful caricature in his head about how majority of peers is strong argument against making your kids go through the same. Majority of kids are in neither of those groups, as you said. And also, you can be the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, the artists and be on good terms with other average kid - both inside and outside of your hobby. You don't have have to be outcast to like anime or make music.

But, the way OP socialized created false dichotomy in his head. He assumes all the kids not in his direct cycle are "non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol" kids. I mean, maybe he grew in some kind of hellhole being only one who did not ended up in jail. But even then, unless you are living in the same hellhole, you dont have to treat your kids the same.

[lrvick]

I am sure there are endless counter-examples to my point, which helps make it stronger if anything.

Removing any one popular activity from the life of a child be it smartphones, or tobacco, is likely to exclude them from some social groups, and perhaps make them more likely to land in others.

If anything the take-away here is that the idea that a kid not having a smartphone will handicap them in life is nonsense. There are so so many paths to success in this world, though sometimes traveling a different path than the majority can have some advantages.

[jaspax]

I'm curious about this peer group in which failure to have a cellphone results in "complete and utter exclusion". My nieces and nephews are in this age range (10-13 yrs), and none of them have cell phones, and none of them suffer total exclusion from their peer groups. As far as I can tell, they're all socially active and popular. Apparently it's different where you live, but I would take that as a bad sign on several levels.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays.

Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles.

The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare. The result is teenagers communicating pretty much all the time, but it's all done over social media.

[rglullis]

> > Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays.

There are messaging platforms that are not dependent on Big Tech. If communication via group chat is so key to the school operations, parents are more than entitled to ask the school to implement a proper platform for it.

> Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare.

That is your first-order problem to solve.

Giving kids a smartphone as a substitute for proper social interaction is a terrible band-aid.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

> That is your first-order problem to solve.

Definitely. Personally, I've taken steps to remedy it.

On the other hand, other parents I discussed it with now consider me a luddite, and visiting friends is still a thing of the past for most of the local kids. I suspect it will remain so until the fear of Covid goes down and interacting with actual people becomes uncontroversial again. :D

[em-bee]

good luck being the only parent asking for that when everyone else is fine with whatsapp. it's not just the school you need to convince but every other parent too.

[rglullis]

No one can compel you to use WhatsApp. If the school says that they need to have mandatory communication with parents and children through some kind of system, it needs to be universal.

In my kids' kita, I wasn't alone when I said that I didn't want to use WhatsApp. So we created a mailing list. Parents and teachers can still talk on whatsapp if they prefer, but any "official communication" needs to be through email.

[jcbrand]

I'm already the parent and "that guy" in various settings who refuses to join the Whatsapp group and it hasn't had any meaningful effect on my life.

Most of the time people already were sending out emails as well, and they (perhaps begrudgingly) continue to do so to accommodate people like me.

The signal to noise ratio in these Whatsapp groups is extremely low.

[mensetmanusman]

That doesn’t mean they need a device though, our family has an iPad mounted to the refrigerator for things like that.

[lrvick]

If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since you can't use X app?"

[Freak_NL]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

And some (few) would appreciate your effort, but quite pragmatically have to acknowledge that there is no way they can support a classroom full of kids with those solutions, and that even if they could, it would get in the way of the curriculum. In the Netherlands too, WhatsApp is decidedly not (or only nominally) optional in high school. This is not something that can be solved by going to individual teachers (and really, most won't understand why you can't 'just' use WhatsApp); you need legislation to break open those silos and technological support at a national scale for non-commercial alternatives. The former is happening in the EU (so give it a few years before you can chat with people on WhatsApp without a smartphone from a Linux laptop, maybe); the latter is a non-starter in many countries due to government IT projects failing constantly.

[lrvick]

It should be illegal (if not already) to demand children accept data sharing agreements with private companies to participate in public education.

That is what the teacher asking kids to use a Facebook product is doing. Speaking personally, if I end up with a kid in that situation, and they are limited in school in any way because they don't accept FAANG license agreements, I will take them to court and make a media shit show out of it.

Something being "normal" in education doesn't make it right, or unchangeable. Not washing hands in hospitals was once normal, and a small minority of people needed to challenge those norms to set appropriate healthcare hygiene standards.

[rglullis]

> This is not something that can be solved by going to individual teachers

Yes, it can. You just need to become part of the "intolerant minority" that refuses to give in. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

[2000UltraDeluxe]

It's not about figuring out how to do it in other ways that doesn't include Facebook servers. It's just that all the pupils are already on those platforms, as are the teachers, and asking everyone to switch to other platforms is simply inconvenient.

Most people simply don't care enough, and that includes most teenagers. People want convenience, and as little interference as possible. I'm not saying it's a good thing; on the contrary I suspect it will be outright disruptive for society in a generation's time or so. Still, people _like_ their dopamine fixes. Most enjoy being hooked to TikTok, and having a real-life attention-span beaten by goldfish.

We, as a society, missed that the hopelessly incompetent and oblivios people in Wall-E was a warning and not a manual.

[rglullis]

Still, it is not an either/or situation. If teachers want to use WhatsApp for their personal communications, fine by me. What parents are perfectly entitled to do is to go to the school board and say "*We don't want to use WhatsApp. There needs to be a proper messaging platform for school communication"

[maccard]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

Honest question, how many teachers do you interact with? I don't have kids, but I've got a few friends who are teachers, and most of their coworkers are completely tech illiterate. Getting them to use email rather than whatsapp would be hard enough, but setting up and running a matrix server is completely out of the question.

[rglullis]

The teachers are not the ones setting up the servers. All they need is to install a mobile app, and get a piece of paper that says:

  - Name of the server
  - Username
  - initial password, which needs to be changed upon login.

The element client is far from being perfect, but even my aging parents could start using it, join the family group chat and adapt.

[lelanthran]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

I get the feeling that your worldview is extremely limited, and you have not experienced the world of kids.

We choose schools based on how successful their graduates are. The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.

Once the school is chosen, you adhere to their rules. For my kids, some of those rules included online-only stuff. Sure, I could send my kids to a shittier school, but I don't want to do that.

[lrvick]

Online only is fine. The internet is not the problem. Forcing kids to accept data sharing license agreements with private third party companies with a history of abusing that data to get education at a public institution... is the problem.

It should not even be legal to do this and IMO parents in your situation should consider forming student privacy advocacy groups and legal funds demanding students not be discriminated against over legitimate privacy concerns involving third party private companies. I know I will if I am the parent of a kid in that situation and a teacher at the best school for them does not comply with polite help migrating to more accessible solutions.

Force the schools to self host, and use open source software. This is the norm at many major academic institutions in Europe. The US is just way behind because virtually no one is fighting for student privacy here... because most parents don't care about their own privacy so why would they care about that of their child?

[rglullis]

> The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.

Or it means that the elites managed to self-select themselves around that particular school.

[lelanthran]

> I'm curious about this peer group in which failure to have a cellphone results in "complete and utter exclusion".

Well the article in question has the kids blocked from google search.

Such a radical block will almost certainly block everything else that their friends are using.

So, sure, they may not need their own phone, but at ages 10-13, blocking the child from all popular tech makes them more or less unable to join conversations with their peers who are not blocked.

[lrvick]

When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet.

I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would say hi, show them a magic trick, do some comedy bits I had been working on, or share the latest anime I was into. Whatever. Making friends is the skill to build in a kid, not technology conformity.

Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.

[lelanthran]

> When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet.

Right, and that was before all the kids were on facebook, or twitter, or whatever.

You're talking about a time when the only online-networking being done, was being done on a desktop computer. IME, less than 1 out of every 100 children in 2000 were actually using desktop computer.

We are now in a time were 95/100 children are using some sort of portable personal computer that is with them all the time.

> I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in.

Which was perfectly possible when almost none of the kids were on computers. Now they all are.

> Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.

I'm afraid you're not a good example: you appear to lack some important skills wrt to the world as it is.

Think about it this way - there are people who didn't bother putting up with the hardship of a reduced social network, and they ended up more successful than you.

I don't think you have any interaction with children. I do.

[lrvick]

I used to help run after school programs, and mentor quite a few Gen Z people in software engineering, sysadmin, etc.

Also, I used to be a kid.

Not every kid needs to conform to social norms.

To your point, plenty of kids will be successful with and without smartphones, but I would argue those that don't will likely be less prone to endless hours of doom scrolling on apps literally designed with casino-like dopamine drip algorithms to keep them addicted.

I choose to believe someone is not a shitty parent for trying to delay a child from having constant in-pocket access to addictive and harmful things.

[BlueTemplar]

> less than 1 out of every 100 children in 2000 were actually using desktop computer

Depends if you're talking about pre-teens or teenagers. ICQ alone had 100 million accounts in 2001. And I would expect teenagers to be amongst the first to use it.

[watwut]

> Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect.

They dont worry about them being "popular". They worry about them being excluded.

> I would say hi, show them a magic trick, do some comedy bits I had been working on, or share the latest anime I was into. Whatever. Making friends is the skill to build in a kid, not technology conformity.

How do you show latest anime without device? Where did you met kids willing to go to your house first time they met you?

[lrvick]

Why do you assume lack of android/ios devices means lack of computers. I would 100% help a kid build a desktop computer and maybe give them a linux tablet. App culture, which revolves around the major smartphone platforms, is where the addictive data harvesting apps come from, many of which refuse to run on anything but ios/android specifically because they are far more limited in data harvesting in a web browser where one can install privacy plugins.

A kid can use Freetube on a laptop or tablet for instance with no need for a Google account, and without targeting or ads.

[cjbgkagh]

Don’t forget that those peers are also being damaged and may not make the best friends.

From my observation children are increasingly dysfunctional.

[lelanthran]

> From my observation children are increasingly dysfunctional.

Hasn't every generation complained about this? We forget that we were children once too, and pushed at the boundaries as we matured into teens.

This is what children do.

[cjbgkagh]

Just because people complain about it, doesn’t mean it is not true. I think there are objective measures in intelectual ability, physical fitness, and mental soundness. And those objective measures appear to be getting worse. The big win of sanitation, nutrition, and general education appear to be long behind us.

[tstrimple]

> “Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.”

~ Socrates

[cjbgkagh]

Socrates; the guy famously sentenced to death for corrupting the youth. He himself encouraged the youth to do exactly those things.

Decadence is nothing new. Society goes through ups and downs. There have been numerous reformation periods did yield substantial benefits. I don't think anyone is arguing that things have always throughout history gotten worse in all places simultaneously.

It's my opinion that the exploitative power of machine learning with mass surveillance in the hands of profit incentivized corporations may not lead to the most conducive environment for developing brains. Even my mature brain has a hard time with it.

[watwut]

Some generations are worst then others. Some are more violent then others for example. Tho, afaik, children of our generations were way more dysfunctional then we are willing to accept in these debates.

[hans1729]

>Why not?

Because it sets them on a track of social disconnect and isolation. No therapist in their right mind would support that path.

The adequate response is culture. Teach your children how to cultivate their own attention. Teach them about the way dopamine works. If you can't, you don't even know what you're talking about yourself. Creating social outlaws never, ever ever ever achieves the intended goal. The opposite is the case, you're creating damage in areas that you apparently don't even realize, probably because you project your personality model and own experiences onto a kid that simply doesn't grow up in the world that you became neuroplastic in.

> Once you made your decision, bite the bullet and accept the costs

...Or be open to rethink your decision?! That's just bad intellectual culture. It's perfectly fine to change your mind about something that you can't fully understand. And you can't fully understand this, because you can't see the world through the eyes of a now-12-year-old. Everyone tries to do the best for their kids, but almost no one knows what is the best for their kids. Setting them on a path to isolation and lack of connect certainly isn't the way, they'll never, ever, fully recover from it.

[yoz-y]

I guess it's too early to tell. But even when I was in uni, "not being on facebook" (back when facebook was relatively new) was heavily penalizing. And we were adults.

[raverbashing]

"Smartphones are harmful" are the new "videogames cause violence" (a bit justifiable, but blown out of proportion)

And on average most people will use it, so a kid that can use better than it is already on top of the pack

[lrvick]

"Smartphones are harmful" is the new "Smoking is harmful".

Smoking and football were once both pretty much required if you wanted to be popular, but time eventually revealed the interests of the cool kids often ended with lung cancer and brain damage.

Teach a kid to build computers, write software, design and solder their electronics. They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.

[raverbashing]

The analogy doesn't stand.

Some uses of social media can be "as harmful" as banging your head on a wall, but a smartphone is much more than that.

> They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.

Life is not only about technical skills. And I've had plenty of these "technically minded" people spewing complete BS about vaccines here on HN, so I guess they think they're technically minded but aren't

[lrvick]

When I say I would not give a kid a smartphone, I am saying I would not give them an iOS/Android device which is what everyone today thinks when they hear "smartphone".

They would certianly have access to a portable device with a web browser like a small form factor linux laptop or tablet.

I also don't have a problem with the concept of social media. Neutral social media and messaging services that has no profit motivated data harvesting and behavior manipulation algorithims like Mastodon, Matrix, etc, I have no problem with. I would never allow a kid to use TikTok or a Meta/Facebook product however, as doing so is literally allowing strangers to pay to manipulate my kid towards any desired behavior change. That is just lazy parenting, IMO.

[mechanical_bear]

Not at all the same.