[japhyr]

This is great, but it's also easy to go too far in this direction. This can work through elementary school and into middle school, but I don't think it works in high school.

It's really hard to be a high school student without your own phone. I know some people who have kept their kids from having phones into high school. It avoids some of the addictive and distracting issues that come from having phones at a young age, but it's way more isolating than people realize. You might have a landline, but if no other high school age people are making voice calls to communicate, no one's going to call that landline. And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.

We have plenty of conflict in our home around devices, so I don't criticize any particular approaches. I'd just say that if you're taking this approach, it's probably a good idea to figure out how you're going to transition to kids having devices as they get into their high school years.

[masterj]

Protecting your kids from dopamine-drip algorithms and the effects of social media and short-form video during their most formative years and gradually letting them take over as they mature sounds like… parenting.

[anthk]

I've been there, but going to cybercafés instead of having an internet connection at home until very late. A simlar case with a mobile phone, having to use the one from my dad until I had 18.

I nearly ended up alone, as anynone would expected. Parents understood too late the value of sharing common culture points, up to the point to apologyze and feeling really desperate on the consecuences.

Cracking up wifi and such saved me up a little, but not much. I missed TONS of stuff and experiences. When I could finally got all the media and proper skills, it was really damn late.

Don't do this to your kids, then. Time doesn't roll back. Ever. Don't be a shitty narcisist parent and let your kids develop their OWN tastes.

[masterj]

I’m sorry this happened to you. However nothing in my reply implies cutting your children off from the world. Helping them avoid the harms of algorithmic feeds until they have developed the maturity to navigate them helps them be more connected to the world, not less.

With all due respect I think you are reading more there due to your own experiences, which sound like abuse, not parenting.

[anthk]

Indeed. But in the skills case, ahem, formally, in paper. When I did a finished and advanced trade (pre-University IT, syadmin role), I aced the results as I had plenty of time to even make small patches to BTTV to support my $ELCHEAPO Conceptronic TV card. Having no internet at home made me really 'roguery' on how to achieve stuff, from cracking cable TV to inspect DVB packets, hack cable modems and pirate wifi. No formal education, just by myself, and I could do a trade from age 23 to 27 being lazy as hell because everything was trivial as I could read tons of the bundled books in the Debian Sarge DVD's.

I became really competent on how to 'survive' offline and Unix skills, far more than even the best ones in the grade (and even some math skills from a first year of College, among Lisp), but with really bad social skills but better since I met my SO at age 23 which convinced me to earn a trade. But I'm still a bit depressive for what I suffered.

Parents, listen to your kids, listen to your kids instead of sending them to a therapist, that won't work. Help on their tastes, support them, don't be a hardcore Mc Scrooge Cheapskate. Spoiled kids are bad, OFC, but the polar opposite can be pretty much as dangerous if not more.

I coudn't even spend the money I had on Christmas on my own preferences since age 14 to 18, and I had to return a Chinese Megadrive console clone I won in a holyday lottery bingo in 1997 because you had to actually buy a separate cartridge.

I coudn't even buy cartridges for a NES I've got from my parents' friends because that was 'wasting money'. So, yes, I played all the games my peers got... about 7 years later, feeling myself more and more disconnected from the world and having to do huge efforst to switch from PC gaming and such back and forth. It was tiring. That would really burn you because you are like having to swtich back and forth from totally opposite cultures, my parents' one and my uncle/aunts' one.

[rightbyte]

Yeah I feel you. I didn't experience it as extreme as you, but it really sets its marks.

When I go to a store with my kids nowadays I let them spend 10% of what I buy. I whine a bit about buying too crappy plastic toys but that is it.

If they want some silly fruit or bouncy ball they get it.

I hope I don't overcompensate...

[anthk]

Well, you are overcompensating a little. Just let spend their earnings from allowances on anything they want.

[rightbyte]

How old are you? The internets were way more nice when we were kids. Not in the no 4chan edgelord way but the not toxic algorithmic way.

There is no way feeding YT etc. to kids is at any way good for them, their parents, humanity and so on.

edit: And yes, I agree with you.

[mohamedkoubaa]

Or: if you do this, go live in a community where this is the norm. No, it's not possible for everyone. But then again we can't all have nice things.

[kefabean]

I purchased Mudita Kompakt phones for my kids when they started secondary school. There has been some pushback but overall it’s been a success.

The fact that they occasionally forget to take it with them or they leave it downstairs when they go to bed, makes me comfortable that it doesn’t have addicting properties.

And, because it’s android any apps demanded by school can easily be side loaded.

[picofarad]

That costs more than the last seven phones I've bought. Not total, but each. I was expecting maybe $100, but $400? Is this a joke? A $400 dumbphone that isn't gold plated?

[contingencies]

I know some people who have kept their kids from having phones into high school.

In Australia this is normal. The distribution of phones increases slowly during high school, not before. Kids don't really use phones anyway, they use some combination of online games and messaging apps so they can do it from a computer or tablet without a phone.

[perilunar]

> Kids don't really use phones anyway

My kids used the home phone for many years before they got their own cell phones. They would call their friends and grandparents. (The grandparents loved it)

[contingencies]

That's great but nobody has a 'home phone' anymore.

[Bratmon]

I don't think enough parents have internalized that if they're the "I don't let my teenager have a phone" parent in 2026, that also means they're the "I don't let my teenager have friends" parent.

[kraquepype]

There's a line to toe - each kid is different, but with my daughter she went from a flip phone in middle school, to a smart phone in high school.

We didn't turn on mobile data for her smart phone (hand me down pixel) until about a year ago.

She is very responsible with it and it hasn't been much of an issue. She had no problems making friends, and if her phone was filtering shallow people out her friend pool a bit that probably wasn't a bad thing.

Now, my oldest son is dying to have a smartphone but really he just wants to use it as a tablet. I installed lineageOS on an old D821/Nexus5 and it can run some mobile games, and we have a chromebook.

We'll try the same flip phone in middle-school route for him. It fulfills the basic needs of emergency contact, and is a good test of responsibility with lower stakes.

[AuthAuth]

I like lineageOS but it feels cruel to give a kid who is dying for a smartphone a nexus5 with lineageOS on it.

[kraquepype]

He's fine with what it can do, he got it when he was 7. Some mobile games, music, streaming apps.

It's about as cruel as the 10yo MacBook I gave my daughter when she was younger. She loved that thing.

[mystifyingpoi]

My gut reaction was "well, you can give them a phone, just lock down tiktok and other crap" but then I was thinking "well, in the end that doesn't matter in practice, they can buy a used device from a friend for pocket money and hiding it from me will be trivial", so... it all comes down to my relationship with the kid. Nothing else will work.

[lukan]

If .. many parents would do this (like you imply), then there would be many kids without a phone who can be friends with each other?

Also I doubt the "not being able to have friend without a phone" in general. But surely harder in most areas.

[obviouslynotme]

This is a symptom of not encouraging children into extracurricular activities. If all you have to bond over is social media, your friendship is empty. That's how you create terminally-online, mentally ill people. Everyone needs third spaces like sports, scouts, music, church, clubs, and the like. They get you out of your house and head and surround you with people who share similar interests.

[john_strinlai]

my kid's extracurricular activity groups like to chat outside of club-time, too. being the only one of the group not able to do so would be ostracizing.

[obviouslynotme]

I understand deeply. My parents delayed my driver's license until I was 17 because of financial tightness at the time, and that distanced me from some of my friends at the time. You know what I gained from that? I got to see who my real friends were, and even more importantly, I learned that not all friends are the same in a visceral way. I learned how to confront my parents in a way to communicate my viewpoint in a way they could understand. We learned together how to compromise and renegotiate our entire relationship, helping transition from child/parent to adult/parent.

You have two jobs as a parent: create a safe environment for your children and prepare them for the adult world that is wildly unsafe. Unfortunately, these two goals are both required and contradictory. A line must be walked. Too much deviation to one side or the other will cause severe problems.

That line cannot be prescribed. It's different for each child, but there's a big problem with how you put your point. You aren't trying to prepare the child for a dangerous and difficult world, you are trying to protect them in a different way, minimizing the other dangers. I completely understand. It hurts to see your child hurt. All you want to do is make the pain go away.

Instead of helping them avoid the pain of learning about relationships, you should guide them. Help them understand. They won't at first. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum that you won't let them stick objects in wall outlets, parents have to be the "bad guy" from time to time. Eventually, the toddler will grow up enough so that you can explain dangers to them and you won't have to do it for that thing anymore. The same applies here. They won't understand at first. Help them understand the dangers. When they do, you can teach them how to safely use the metaphorical wall outlet. Then you don't have to be the bad guy anymore.

[john_strinlai]

this comment has a lot of assumptions about me and my children, based off of two very short sentences.

[obviouslynotme]

You're right. If you think you are walking that line for each of your children, then you are the authority. It's just a common argument I hear from parents who want to avoid feeling bad, so I did make some assumptions.

[anthk]

My extracurricular activities were full of nerds (martial arts) with Play Stations and internet at home. So, as an owner of no inet or a console at home was pretty much hell from 2001 to 2005. Oh, and no cell phone until ~18.

The outcome? Really shitty social skills until I hit 27 or so. My dad really regreted what it did, and my mom become aware on how utterly shitty was to let a nerdy kid disconnected from their peers.

[LiteUser]

It hasn't been a problem for us. Our child has a cellular enabled Apple Watch (it has its own phone number). At home, the iPad satisfies all the other needs, and is restricted with Screen Time and Downtime. YMMV (kids are different)

[jjulius]

>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.

How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

[creaturemachine]

Pick-ups and drop-offs? You walked yourself home, used your bike, or took the bus. This getting driven around is most ridiculous.

[japhyr]

So many areas in the US are much less walkable and bikeable than they used to be. I say that as someone who bicycle commuted for years. When I rode my bike to school as a kid I dealt with 25-35 mph traffic. The traffic was much lighter, the vehicles were much smaller, the drivers weren't perfect but they were way less distracted, and the shoulders were in better shape.

We can try to raise our kids with values that are consistent with the ones we grew up with. But trying to give them the same conditions because "it's what we did" doesn't always match up with reality.

[trumpdong]

Is it true that pickup truck drivers often threaten to run over bikes to assert dominance or is that just one of those myths about how crazy America is?

[japhyr]

It depends on your definition of "threaten", but the short answer is yes. I live in a mountainous area that's a destination for road bikers and mountain bikers. There's lots of sources of tension between cyclists and drivers.

On a regular basis I see people racing past cyclists, rolling coal at cyclists (I can't believe that's even a term now), blaring horns, and a number of other behaviors that fall under "threatening".

US vehicles, especially pickups, have outgrown a lot of rural roads that had their origins as footpaths and horse paths. Even with well-intentioned cyclists and drivers, it's often times a setup for conflict.

[wl]

I wear Lycra, ride a funny-looking carbon road bike, and average about 3,000 miles a year. In college, I rode a beater bike everywhere for transportation instead of owning a car. I’ve never experienced that kind of thing, though I’ve heard occasional stories.

Drivers don’t pay attention and seem like they’re trying to kill you, but that feels more like recklessness than malice.

[wffurr]

I got honked at and told to get out of the road today, on a quiet neighborhood street I ride on every day.

[masterj]

This is true, but it varies a lot based on local culture. "Let me buzz 'em / roll coal to teach 'em a lesson"

but you're not really going to see that in, say, Seattle

[creaturemachine]

True, but the solution isn't to put another car on the road. Show that it's still possible, be the change and all that.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

With a lot more difficulty.

[nkg22]

We used to use payphones and call collect, then say a quick message when the collect service asked for your name.

"Who is calling?" "Hi mom practice is over come pick me up!"

[mystifyingpoi]

Ah, beautiful times. I remember that me and my friend abused Orange's feature to send voicemail messages directly to the voicemail inbox, without calling the other person at all. Since it was billed by the second, if you spoke very fast, it became much cheaper than SMS.

[floren]

"I'll be done with marching band practice at 6:30"

"Ok, I'll come get you then"

[OkayPhysicist]

Works great until your kid's the one that can't join their friends on, say, grabbing dinner after band practice, because they have no way of telling you "hey, change of plans".

If your kid can only participate in things that are planned well in advance, your kid is going to be missing out on ~80% of gatherings. Because everyone else is in the habit of making spontaneous plans, made possible by interconnectivity.

[floren]

Are we talking about 8 year olds, or 15 year olds?

I think it's fine to give your 8th grader a flip phone. A third grader isn't "grabbing dinner after band practice".

For sports practice, I'd just take the sports bus home; the 30-60 minutes between the end of practice and the time the bus left was perfect for a little quiet reading or homework.

For band practice, I'd call my parents from the office phone, or plan to get a ride home from an older student who lived nearby, or just accept that I might miss out on something when mom picked me up at 6:30 and that's ok.

[OkayPhysicist]

Where I live, marching band is exclusively a highschool thing, and that's the example that the comment I was replying to gave. So 14-18

[tayo42]

You can just borrow a phone

[dredmorbius]

Pre-arranged times. Be there or else.

Payphones.

Time still exists. Payphones not so much.

And: payphones were ubiquitous. Car parks, bus stops, restaurants, bars, other businesses, random street corners, airports, bus depots, train stations. Probably several at a given high school at different locations. So long as you had loose change they were a reliable option. These started to disappear in the late 1990s, though support continued generally through the late aughts, and in certain locales (e.g., NYC) through the late 2010s.

There's some interesting technological anthropology in The Paper Chase, a film set at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s (released 1973), there is a payphone on the dorm floor, and it is the only phone available. That and a number of other elements date the film in ways that other set-dressing (costumes, architecture, cars) don't convey as emphatically.

[fuzzzerd]

The issue isn't that it couldn't be done without technology. The problem is when everyone else has moved on to the technology based solution (mobile phones) if you don't you're just out of luck.

[deepspace]

We used landlines of course, and it was an utter pain in the behind.

There was no way of letting anyone know that you were running late once they were already underway to pick you up.