I find it fascinating, that hacker news, the literal community for people tinkering with stuff seems to be full of people who want to gut their kids instead of teaching them how to use stuff responsibly.
Probably tons of people here know how to code since they've learned on their own.
Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone. Also kids have a lot of time that could be used to learn stuff. And even playing games is... not that bad.
But I guess kids should learn chinese or what is the current fad now or torment the kid with 50 extraculliculars.
> Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone
I grew up in the 90's and my parents were strict, particularly compared to a lot of my peers. Things like watching television was heavily restricted. I remember making similar arguments to my parent's deaf ears "I won't fit in, all the kids at school will be talking about what they watched on TV last night, I'll be a loser" etc.
My experience was that most of the kids didn't care that I couldn't understand their Simpson's references or whatever. If anything they were sympathetic, I would get a lot of "man your parents really suck" and then kids would shrug and move on.
I did resent my parents growing up. Looking back I think they were pretty clear examples of "tiger parent" stereotype. I felt immense pressure and stress to achieve good grades and it honestly felt like nothing I did was enough to make my parents happy. I get along with my parents now as an adult but as a teen my home life felt very unhappy at times. I can remember the relief I felt when I left home to live on my own.
So I think it is more likely your child will resent you, then them being ostracized by their peers.
> Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone.
That is supposition, not reality, and there are parents here who have shared their experience with kids having a healthy social life without a phone. More importantly, a very important role of parents is to make good decisions for their kids when the kids are still too immature to do that. "But all my friends are doing it" is literal child reasoning and should not be the only factor in parenting decisions.
>and there are parents here who have shared their experience with kids having a healthy social life without a phone.
And there are others who have shared their experiences of responsibly teaching their kids how to coexist with technology. There's probably a lot more that aren't willing to say so, because they'll be roasted in the comments for being a "bad parent".
I don't let my kids have unfettered access to social media. But I let them have a smartphone. And I took the time initially, and continually, to have conversations about having a healthy relationship with technology.
Somehow this debate is always completely lacking in any sort of middle ground or nuance.
I think it's more important to talk about the services they use than what device they're on.
And most problematic services already have an age limit. It's the parents' damn job to make sure their kids are prepared for the usage of those services.
I'm more worried about the youtube-consumption on the PC than chatting with class-mates about school-related questions via smartphone.
Probably tons of people here know how to code since they've learned on their own.
Reality is that the kid will be a loser / outsider due to no phone. Also kids have a lot of time that could be used to learn stuff. And even playing games is... not that bad.
But I guess kids should learn chinese or what is the current fad now or torment the kid with 50 extraculliculars.