Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fragmede 14 days ago
> Nobody is saying kids shouldn't have phones

I'll say it. Kids shouldn't have phones until the age of 16.

5 comments

The smartphone free childhood movement is explicitly saying children shouldn't have phones (until 14). I'm broadly with them although with nuance.
I got my first bug bounty at 16. Not having access to compute would've drastically changed the direction of my life. I wouldn't have been able to afford university & would likely be working on a farm right now like my cousins
Access to a desktop computer vs a smartphone that they bring to bed with TikTok on it are different though. What was your bug bounty for?
As a kid I was using my PSP to browse the web at night. Will you also restrict a Nintendo DS, a Switch, and any other device that comes with a web briwser?
IOS and MacOS priv esc.

Yes I needed a smartphone to test on

That's awesome! Testing on, with a non-zero amount of adult supervision isn't the same thing as being given a phone with Snapchat and TikTok to take to bed at night though. I'm open to setting it to a different age. I didn't do a ton of research before picking 16. But also it's not like I'm actually in charge of anything either.
AFAIK a nontrivial (5-10%?) fraction of population own a smartphone without any bigger computing device.
I would doubt many of them are using those smartphones to collect bug bounties.
Well they didn’t say 16 years olds should not having access to compute so your point is irrelevant.
Pretty sure that to get a bug bounty one needs to study things first, and this takes quite a bit of time.
Yup. I started learning at 10 mostly messing about with modding and dumb script kiddie stuff. You don't just get a computer one day and get an exploit out the next
This is what aannoys me about all the discussions on these issues.

People come up with all sorts of random scenarios, that aren't even related to "prove" something...

I got my first legal threat for reporting a vulnerability at 14 :(
Don't your kids go anywhere by themselves? Or do they stay at home / only get ferried by the parents?

A bus-tracking app on my phone completely changed how I interact with public transit, and made it significantly better. I remember waiting for the bus when I was 14, and I would not wish this to anyone.

A maps app is great when you are going to less-familiar places - either into the big city, or into large parks (although not every kid is ready to be hiking in the parks before 16)

I spent all of my childhood with a (large and ugly) digital camera on my belt. Phone is much smaller, and for the kind of pictures I was taking, the lower quality does not matter that much.

I once nearly had the police called on me for being missing as a kid.

Hadn't got the bus straight from school to my grandma's house, needed to go home first (walkable) and pick up something.

Missed the bus then that was due, and waited over an hour for the next one.

So I was now best part of 2 hours late, and I didn't have a phone yet....

Limited, locked-down smart watches is what most kids need.
That is the solution my sister and brother-in-law chose for my 10 yo nephew. He can call home and a few family members and do whatever other limited things an Apple Watch can do. I wear a regular mechanical watch and have never used an Apple Watch so I’m not exactly sure what else it can do, lol.

F2P games with dopamine drip loot boxes and things of that nature seem super unhealthy for kids, I can’t even imagine what it’s doing to their impulse control. I am unable to tolerate games like that myself, probably because I grew up with regular video games that didn’t use psychological tricks and pay to win ecosystems to induce people to spend money. If I had grown up playing them I probably wouldn’t know any different, like the fish asking “what the hell is water” when asked “how is the water this morning?” By an older fish.

Not unconditionally, but some truly benefit from them, if the parents teach them not to use social media in a harmful way.