I think its not just kids anymore, it’s adults too. Everyone is glued to their screens these days. But kids are more vulnerable to influences from “social” media and don’t have any defences to the psychological warfare going on. Of course they feel like shit.
she bought
Asshole move, regardless of intentions
And if she bought crack with her own money, she should be free to use that, too.
I kind of agree. That’s why I don’t let my kids buy stuff like that. My kid said he wanted to buy a phone, and when I told him it would be subject to our same computer policy (<2hrs/day, they earn time by reading, etc), he suddenly wasn’t as interested.
But yes, if you create a bunch of new rules after they buy something, you’re a dick. Let them know what the rules will be before they save up for it.
The child from the article got the phone in sixth grade. If she bought a large bag of candy with her own money is it right to let her eat as much as she wants without boundaries?
Setting healthy boundaries and discipline at a young age is a good move. From how she was behaving with the phone I would have done the same.
So set fucking limits on the phone? Is ‘all or nothing’ somehow the only option? It’s not hard to set time limits, restrict apps, and generally be involved in your kids lives to help them understand and learn moderation and healthy recognition of bad habits forming. Simply taking shit away also doesn’t help cause there’s no opportunity to make mistakes and learn. Where’s the fucking middle ground?
Also…
Everyone is glued to their screens these days.
What a boomer comment.
It’s not a simple story of just taking away the phone.
I discovered she’d circumvented the screen limits and had been using social media into the wee hours of the morning.
And later, after she did take the phone away, she found her daughter had kept all old phone that was supposedly sold.
It does seem to be a pretty extreme case, but there was lots going on here.
How to make frustrated and untrusting children 101. I am sick of this authoritative parenting bullshit
It’s our generation’s cigarettes.
“I don’t know, everyone was just doing it” is what we’ll say and what prior generations have said about smoking everywhere all of the time.
The stimulation from and addiction to nicotine or social dopamine … it’s the same shit. The weird marketing, branding and business capture big tech has now could look just like the marketing and wealth of cigarettes in the past.
It’s worth noting that cigarettes are physically addictive and cause cancer.
So no. phones =/= cigarettes. It’s embarrassing that I have to say this.
Gambling is not physically addictive, but for its worst addicts it’s as ruinous as cigarettes.
Social media is similar in that the dependence is psychological, and the harm caused can vary from basically none, to tremendous psychological and material damage (up to and including suicide as a result of self-esteem, bullying or body issues).
I would agree that it’s our generation’s cigarettes simply because it’s ubiquitous and the impact on both health and society is unquestioned by the masses. It simply is. We don’t smoke on a plane anymore because we don’t want to give everyone cancer, but we don’t take the same precautions to protect unconsenting individuals, like children, from becoming mush-brained iPad babies manipulated by the TikTok and YouTube algorithms.
Let’s not forget that social media, Facebook to be specific, is blamed for fanning the flames of multiple ethnic conflicts in Asia and Africa that have ended in genocide. It’s likely that cigarettes do more harm to the individual user, but social media does more harm to society. This is something we will have to reckon with in the future, and once we establish sensible controls and norms we’ll wonder how we lived like this for so long.
I feel sorry for all the kids who grow up their entire lives under the influence of social media. There has to be a stronger effort to shield children from these platforms and it definitely starts from the parents. Especially with these “iPad” kids–just glued to their screens all day! What would the attention spans of this generation in the future be like?
