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More Americans now support banning phones all day at school, not just in class (www.techspot.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 21 points 3 months ago (12 children)

as a parent, I would say what matters is geo-location and text to coordinate pick-up or plans. there is no need for younger kids to have a full fledged phone if one could be developed that serves those functions. I'm thinking 90s flip phones with GPS. It really sounds like a gold mine for some company to supply these limited devices given the market for them.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Someone is downvoting everything but I agree. I try and keep my helicopter parent impulses under control, but it is nice to know exactly where my kids are. My son (12) has a locked down old iPhone and Apple makes it pretty easy to make it practically a dumb phone. We literally have it set up so that he has to ask for permission before using any apps, with the exception of calling and messaging. (Even messaging is iffy; we want to be able to text him but it opens up texting with friends.) He doesn’t need it at school so he doesn’t bring it, but as he gets older, I’m sure it’ll start to go with him and I’m not upset about it. If he wants to go somewhere with a friend right after school instead of going straight home, it’s fine with me as long as I know about it. Without a phone, it’d be hard for him to make such plans on the fly, and let’s just say that planning ahead isn’t my ADHD-kid’s strong suit (yet—we’re working on it). As long as the expectation is set that he doesn’t use it during school, I think that’s okay; it can just live in his backpack until school is over.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    What's wrong with a 12 year old texting their friends? I had unfettered internet access by then and I turned out fine.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Good question, if you've turned out already you did not grow up with the intense constant social media environment. I haven't seen anyone mention kids filming each other in school with the associated prank culture and social judgements. Remove that from the learning environment.

    Texting is not the problem, it's addictive apps and the fact that they are filming and posting each others childhoods. I'm too old to understand how that can be made right.

    I actually have hope gen z and gen alpha will have constructive ideas how to moderate these forces while retaining what is beneficial, like connection to friends (texting).

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, nothing inherently wrong, but we’ve already had a couple of incidents of bad behavior. My kid got mad about something and sent some angry messages to a group chat that included racial slurs. It was a big learning experience to say the least (for all of us). Since then they’ve learned to unsend their messages, it seems, so while I can say my kiddo learned something, I have to hope that he also learned the things I needed him to learn. Being a parent is so much fun!

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    There are options for that. Like Gabb phones and such. No Internet or social media mostly just talk, text, and geolocation.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    I'm completely ignorant of "Gabb" phones. I'll have to investigate. Also, I should probably add that while I'm a parent my kids are now grown so my opinions on this are dated. They all have full fledged smartphones at this point... and jobs... and lives. LOL

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    No kid wants that.

    Ban the phones and make the kids do as we always did. Hide it and use it strategically when the teacher couldn’t see.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    thats fair, but of course its not the kids who are buying them.
    Flip side is that kids are resourceful - given a dumbed down device that is only supposed to be able to do texting, it wouldn't be a month before every one of them was running custom firmware to connect to fully encrypted peer to peer social networks run by kids with audio alerts set at a frequency that adults can't hear and multiplayer games LOL.

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