It’s true. My daughter didn’t have a phone until 9th grade, which she just started. She had talked about getting a dumb phone because she wasn’t very into the smartphone thing, which I was supportive of. However she now takes public transit to high school, and really wanted the Transit app so she could easily navigate in the city. So, an iPhone is where we landed.

And I have to say, it is astounding how quickly that thing got its hooks into her. I naively thought she might have been immune to it, given her habits and attitude. Boy was I wrong.

It's a real addiction, no matter how resistant you are.

I'm 44. I've never had social media accounts. When I was 18 or so, I had a Palm Pilot with a cellular modem cradle that let you actually go to (mostly text-based) websites. It was the first smart phone, really. Amazing for finding information, for someone who didn't even have dial-up internet until 5 years earlier. But eventually I put the Palm Pilot away. It wasn't really addicting (and it was insanely nerdy to walk around with a computer connected to the internet, in your pocket like that).

I militantly avoided owning anything beyond a flip phone again until I was 36 (2016), when I finally caved in and grudgingly bought a cheap Android phone to work on a mobile game. (For the first 6 months of development, I'd just written and tested it under emulation, but bug reports were getting too hard to reproduce). Six months after that, I found myself doom-scrolling on the damn thing every time I had a free moment.

What I noticed during my smartphone-free years of watching people play with theirs were a few things: They weren't considered nerdy. They weren't considered computers. The social awkwardness of looking at a device in public had changed into a shield for people against the social awkwardness of looking at their surroundings or acknowledging other people. People forgot how to interact and how to sit and wait without doing something with their phone. Doing something with the phone was more than passively sipping a drink or smoking a cigarette; it was a way to show other people that they didn't want to interact. Or a way to hide from interaction.

I think this has to do with the way apps are structured. The vast majority of people never needed a computer in their pocket. Computers were for information and for work. I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.

> I think of smartphones and the current app ecosystem as more like a swiss-army-knife of spyware and ad tech shoved into a package with as many sensors as possible, to monitor the population. And so, it had better be addictive. Because the underlying act of looking at one and spending so much time with one is, and always has been, antisocial and therefore somewhat repulsive. It took a great amount of marketing to normalize it, and people still rebel against it.

I just wanted to highlight this section of your post for anyone skimming to have more of a chance of seeing it. Excellently put.

I would add - and think it's essential - that yes it took a great amount of marketing, but also a great amount of people who could have said or done something turning a blind eye and not sounding the alarm. I'm thinking mainly of developers who were happy bringing home a fat paycheck, and governments who were happy to have more information about their populations.

I'm happy to say I never built a free-to-pay game. I was only interested in casual arcade stuff you could play in 2 minutes while waiting for a bus. I considered anything with virtual goods to be unethical. Hate me if you must.

Still, I think gambling can be ethical. If done right. Giving a fair shot at a 97% average payback to consenting adults is at least as good as selling them garbage tokens.

So a bit of a side-track: I did design a slot machine (Flash, online) back in 2010, that let you build up bonuses and see how many multipliers you had built up until you were ready to use them on the next spins. That was when I was running my casino. I thought it clever. A player could use them at any time.

I tried to get that slot machine design approved through the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and they told me it would be illegal. A machine couldn't have a "memory" like that, which would entice players to keep adding money to get back their built-up bonuses. I countered that the player could run the bonus feature at any time, but, apparently even that violated the rules. If the player ran out of money, they'd still need to add more to trigger the bonus they'd accrued.

Flash forward to this year, I'm in Vegas and basically every slot machine is some variation of the fireworks/dragon machine where 3 separate bonuses build up over time... but not in any clear way, and where the last part of the bonus could take forever to actually be hit. Nor can the player force their bonuses into play. I dumped $700 on a machine, $100 at a time, explaining to my partner why this type of game was illegal 10 years ago, until I gave up on the SOB.

I'm mentioning this because, as a dev of casino games, I myself would have considered that type of game to be completely unethical. I don't specifically blame the devs; I think regulatory capture by companies like Bally has a lot to do with it. We had laws that prevented the worst kinds of addictive stuff from being peddled to the public, and those have been directly attacked and chipped away at.

I only have to look at my own phone habits to know that expecting any better from my children is probably unreasonable.

This is a great point. Kids can detect hypocrisy a mile away. Parents cannot, with a straight face, tell their kids to not be addicted to their smartphones when they themselves are addicted to their own smartphone.

Out of curiosity, what are her phone habits like? And, as others have mentioned, you can turn on parental controls to limit what apps she can have on it. Have you done this already?

I started describing the situation and then realized doing so is a breach of her privacy, so deleted my comment. I did have parental controls on it in terms of the apps she has access to, but had not limited the time spent (my mistake). I wish there was also a way to limit the number of pickups.

No worries that you deleted it, can understand that you want to be cautious with your child:)

Btw, I actually don't have a child so haven't used parental controls, but just found out that they do have an app time-limit setting: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-screen-time-ip....

yeah, I have an app blocker on my iphone to block news websites/apps called Freedom. Essential these days to staying productive - although, don't think this app would work for your child, because it is not very reliable and needs to be restarted every few days.

I use the built in iOS controls for my kids and they are generally sufficient

Just took a look at the app limit features in parental controls, seems really useful:)

That’s sad but probably inevitable. Is there room for something like a personal Garmin navigation device? Does that already exist?

Either Android or iPhones can be customized. The parent has to take the time to sit down and set it up.

The iPhone has a lot of parental setting customization. You can disable certain built in apps, prevent installing anything from the App Store or just prevent making purchases, set screen time restrictions, and a whole bunch of other things [1].

Android has similar settings with Family Link [2].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121

[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-parental-controls-e...

Isn't this what Family link [1] is for ?

Or you can get an iPhone and use parental controls. My kids has a tablet and I get to decide what can be used and for how long, and nothing gets installed without my approval.

[1] https://families.google/familylink/

Apple is really dropping the ball here, there are serious issues with parental controls on iOS.

No way to revoke install permission. e.g. child got ahold of a parent's unlocked phone, turned off parent approval for their own phone, and then installed a social media app. We have uninstalled the app, but he can re-install without requesting permissions. We have resorted to a 1-minute (the minimum) screen time limit instead. (Only work around would be to create a whole new iCloud account for the child!)

You used to be able to delete the purchase from purchase history, but now you can only hide it, hiding it should just retrigger the approval process?

There are well known / well documented ways to circumvent screen time limits.

You can't add additional pass code / authentication for the settings app or the parental controls

No way to prevent deletion of messages and call logs (and 3rd party tools just do a remote sync on Wi-Fi, after the kids already likely deleted them)

Parental controls are often janky or laggy and sometimes just don't work at all. And often require multiple re-authentication (iOS 18 / Face ID does improve this to be fair)

Your comment reads a bit silly to me. It’s like your child has control over this situation instead of you, and you’re trying your hardest to negotiate a good position for yourself.

If your child doesn’t use the phone in the way you want them to, you could take the phone away.

Had the exact same reaction, this seems like an IT administrator parenting through IT controls at work.

Do you have children yourself?

I have one child who is not yet of relevant age.

Nothing gets installed without 2 approvals, and 3 confirmations with your passcode. I really wish they’d fix all that duplication.

That is the worst thing to do as it means at least one parent and as many kids need to have google accounts.

> some wants Google Maps

There was a Java ME version of Google Maps. I had it on my flip-phone in 2006/2007.

I doubt it still exists, though.