| >> my friends and I would have pooled our cash and bought a used phone. one phone shared between a bunch of friends is not the problem. The problem is a phone "owned" by you, and then used to access social media.
ie the phone is just a conduit to social media, and social media is the root of the problem. >> Maybe I was just a bad kid, but if my parents had done something like this, my friends and I would have pooled our cash and bought a used phone. Cigarettes and alcohol were (and still are) banned from kids, and yes kids certainly got them when I was growing up (and I'm pretty sure still do.) That doesn't mean those things should be accessible to kids, used at the dinner table, or in bedrooms at home. >>Any parent-driven solution would be seen as the parents being ridiculous and unfair by the kids, at least at first. This is not a suggestion I am proposing. It's an approach I'm seeing being implemented, and the kids are better off for it. Given the very clear harms we are seeing with children using smart-phones, and social media, for the last 15 years or so, I expect this will gain momentum. Clearly you can parent your own kids however you like - I'm just reporting on what I'm seeing. |