[thw_9a83c]

> As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15.

I see no logic in the above statement. You gave your kid a smartphone when she was 14. By today's standards, that's very late, and it's basically just one year before Denmark's proposed ban on social media. You can ban your child from having a smartphone for an arbitrary amount of time, but they are a future adult. Adults use smartphones. You can either prepare your child for the potential negatives of smartphone use, or they will learn that through their own experience later. There's no escaping smartphones and social networks.

The only way to deal with this is to talk to your kids, warn them, and educate them. I gave my kids smartphones when they were 8 and 9 years old. Those phones were fully managed by me, and the only web pages they could access were their school pages and Wikipedia. Every year, I relaxed these restrictions and frequently talked to them about the dangers of social media. Now, they have almost fully unrestricted phones, and I don't think there's anything to worry about.

The problem with social media for kids and teens is constant comparison. Any kind of comparison, but predominantly about visual appearance. Most people will never win this fight, and I believe it is a parent's role to explain this to their children. Banning smartphones or social media won't save anyone from facing the reality later on.

[martin82]

"adults use smartphones"

Is this so?

I think of it like the time when Hong Kong was flooded with Opium.

"adults smoke opium"

If you find that too crass, there are countless other ways to put it:

"adults eat sugar"

"adults watch TV"

Just because everyone in the mainstream does something, DOES NOT mean that this is a good thing or a smart thing to do.

In fact, we can easily observe that the few adults who are at the absolute top of their game, the most skilled, the most wealthy, the most powerful... well guess what? They DO NOT use smartphones. They don't tweet. They don't have profiles anywhere.

Except for GPS directions, there is actually very very little actual need to use a smartphone. At work, you have a computer for access to Google. At home, you have a tablet or TV or books or a Kindle for media consumption.

You can just swipe a credit card for payments.

A smartphone is not at all needed to be a highly functioning adult.

In fact - it actually prevents you from ever unlocking your fullest potential by removing any chance for your brain to ever catch a breath and just be bored for half an hour and hear your own thoughts.

[thw_9a83c]

> "adults smoke opium"

That's a bad comparison. The main reason for importing opium to Hong Kong at that time was to use it as a sedative drug. Smartphones, on the other hand, have many legitimate uses for every user. The addiction to social networks is not a primary motivation to sell smartphones.

> A smartphone is not at all needed to be a highly functioning adult.

It depends on your definition of "highly functioning." You probably also don't need a Google account, a tablet, a TV, books, or a Kindle to be a highly functioning adult. I guess I can just go on. Arguing this way is meaningless.

When your kid reports that 90% of the other kids in their classroom already have a smartphone, you either give your kid a smartphone or make them feel like a loser in their social group.

Besides, having a smartphone doesn't mean having access to social networks, the open internet, or the ability to install any application. It's up to parents to properly configure parental controls for the respective age group.

> Except for GPS directions, there is actually very very little actual need to use a smartphone.

It conveniently replaces many things, usually in a more secure way. For example, paying with a phone is more secure than paying with a plastic card. And most importantly, kids listen to music on their smartphones, just as I used a Walkman/Discman in the past.

[greygoo222]

> In fact, we can easily observe that the few adults who are at the absolute top of their game, the most skilled, the most wealthy, the most powerful... well guess what? They DO NOT use smartphones. They don't tweet. They don't have profiles anywhere.

Terrence Tao regularly posts on Mastodon, and Geoffrey Hinton on X/Twitter. Sam Altman has a huge X presence. Elon Musk, no comment.