This has been so good for me and my kid. If they are out and feel like they need adult help, we are a watch tap away. If they want to come home early from a friend’s house, send me a code and I’m there. If they want to go to their friend’s house after school, I’m a text away.
We have a no phone until you’re 13 rule so while the watch is a stripped down phone, it’s not a phone so easy for us all to understand, plus it’s already stripped down, no hassle no fuss.
What a weird rule. You are intentionally destroying your kid’s social, developmental, and interpersonal opportunities because you’re unwilling to actually put in the time to parent.
The least you could do is give them a dumb phone, so they are ostracized less. Or better yet, actually teach and parent them how to use a phone, and then give them a phone with locked down permissions to block tiktok/etc that are actually problematic, while still allowing them access to things that allow them to relate to friends and their community. Trust but verify.
You are really telling everyone how little you know about parenting. This is what parenting looks like. You parent the kids you have with the skills and tools available. It doesn’t look the same for everyone.
You should probably sit back down.
13? How many of their friends have phones because I would assume their using phones, just not one you gave them and I know from experience other parents do not do the most basic of filtering in their kids devices.
I’m pretty sure the goal behind the no phone rule is not that utilizing a phone is inherently bad, but that you’re trying to avoid building the habits and behavior that comes with having a smart phone on you, like doom scrolling, constant social media access, constant distraction etc. And in that case, the kid having some limited access to other kids phones (If they even do. Who among any of us just lets someone else use our phone unrestricted) isn’t going to undermine that effort.
Yes there are a multitude of reasons, not least that filtering only does so much and constant surveillance is unrealistic.
The raise your child to use a device appropriately. Waiting until they are a teenager is far too late to form the appropriate habits around self limiting screen time.
I get that no one wants to blame the device but this is clearly a parenting issue and I say this as someone who has on average raised far more children than anyone in my generation.
But go ahead and lean into the articles that blame on the evil algorithms and the evil corporations. Personal and parental responsibility is hard anx blaming outside influences is easy.
Raise your children or someone else will do it for you.
Waiting until they are a teenager is far too late to form the appropriate habits around self limiting screen time.
Given that smartphones didn’t even exist until I was a teenager, going to go ahead and call bullshit on that.
this is clearly a parenting issue
Sure is. Too many parents handing their developing children smartphones long before they should. Luckily OP hasn’t made that mistake.
And nobody needs articles to tell them the corporations and algorithms are evil. Some of us are old enough to have lived through the advent of them.
Raise your child to smoke meth appropriately.
But they are raising their children.
Without a phone.
The algorithms have been proven to be addictive. Do you really think Facebook is your friend? You are their product, not their consumer.
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None of their friends have phones.
I stopped smoking cigarettes. I’ve moved on to cigars.
I mean you say that as a joke but cigars you don’t usually inhale into your lungs. Like you’re still at risk of mouth cancer, but if you switched from Cigarettes to cigars, you wouldn’t suffer the myriad of negative health effects that comes with being a cigarette smoker which would objectively be a huge improvement.
Parents turn to smart watches? Not in my household! Not one more fucking non Linux piece of shit spying screen more.
A modern day equivalent of “we don’t own a tv”
Can I interest you in an IBM WatchPad? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WatchPad
Children’s smartwatches are a stripped-down version of a typical smartwatch, and they allow parents to restrict app downloads, usage and calls from an approved list of contacts.
All of that you can do with a phone too. I do admit thought the argument of not losing it as easily since its on your arm makes sense.
I think you’re far less likely to spend a lot of screen time on a watch, hence the article
If you restrict the crap out of the phones so there is not much interesting to do for kids, it will have similar effects. E.g. they complain about YouTube on their kids phones, block it. Complain about games, don’t let them install them.
I’m sure, but a watch is 1000% more convenient if you don’t need any normal smart phone functionality (social media, games, internet access, media player, etc…). Its simpler to not have the option to use those features at all than to blacklist everything.
On top of that, it’s less likely to get lost or dropped/damaged like a flip phone. Probably has better battery life too. For small form-factor messaging + GPS its the most functional package.
It’s best when they don’t have an option to install and use this stuff to begin with, if it’s a problem. Mostly because I’m sure kids will find a way to bypass restrictions (because most these apps aren’t that good)
My kid’s been walking to/from school and roaming the neighborhood since he was 7. Apple Watch FTW. It has its legit uses.
You know there are cheaper watches that do the same thing right
Name three.
As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.
In five years: “After global ban of smart watches in schools, parents are increasingly turning to bodyguards and private chaperones”.
We do this, 2 timex family family connect watches, the older green ones off eBay. It’s perfect and it opened up the privilege of walking home from school, walking to the park, and walking to friends houses as long as they keep it charged and check in. The newer ones look like an apple watch which I felt made them a theft target but the old ones have changed the family’s life. Then, we can ask them to do chores when they get home from school, and if they do, they can ask us to unlock tablet.
Good, kids are super easy to rob.
