| ▲ | jameskilton 7 hours ago |
| My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one. As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental controls to do everything for me. Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by Nintendo and Microsoft. I got that working but it's by far the worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single player. |
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| ▲ | Angostura 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one. It’s all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they’ve actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter’s case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-world activities is tough. In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple parental controls offered a reasonable approach. |
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| ▲ | ecshafer 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to text, but keeps them off of apps and such. | |
| ▲ | SkyPuncher 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep. Even 20 years ago, phones were basically necessary to have a social life in high school. It’s where everything got planned. | |
| ▲ | zoklet-enjoyer 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I had a cell phone before my parents. Paid cash for a TracFone when I was 16 or 17 and used that to sell weed. Where there's a will, there's a way. | | |
| ▲ | Bluecobra 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Heh. When I was in high school, cell phones and pagers were banned based on the assumption that only drug dealers could afford them. | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | adastra22 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My daughter is 14. Still no phone. You can make this work. | |
| ▲ | alisonkisk 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | nicoburns 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My parents did the no phone until 16 rule, and it was awful. Completely cut me off socially. |
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| ▲ | Someone1234 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The "socially" part is the problem though. A lot of bullying occurs via those social media platforms that teenagers are using. | | |
| ▲ | nicoburns 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's true, and it can definitely be a problem. But I wasn't getting invited to in-person events because I wasn't contactable. Kids don't ring doorbells in 2025, they text people if they want to meet up. | |
| ▲ | SkyPuncher 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Social media is not the same thing as social communication. | |
| ▲ | squigz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A lot of bullying occurs in any environment teenagers exist en masse. | | |
| ▲ | Someone1234 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right; which is why allowing teenagers to be safe at home instead of exposed to it 24/7 is a smart choice. | | |
| ▲ | squigz 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Allowing these teenagers who are being bullied to explore spaces where they feel safe and comfortable seems like a good idea too though. As someone who was bullied in school, being online did not make that issue any worse, and allowed me to find friends I couldn't otherwise have. | | |
| ▲ | Someone1234 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yet in the broader sense online bullying targeting other teenagers is a commonly cited problem, including in incidents of teen suicide. "It didn't make it worse for me" doesn't counteract what we provably know is occurring[0][1][2]. Young Teen suicide (10 to 14) has increased from roughly 1 per 100K in the early 2000s to now nearly 3 per 100K in the last five years. Older teen suicide (15-19) has increased from 6 per 100K to 11 per 100K over the same time period[3]. [0] https://www.jmir.org/2018/4/e129/ [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12230417/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32017089/ [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm | | |
| ▲ | squigz 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | 1 and 2 do not seem to suggest that cyberbullying is more harmful in this regard than other forms of bullying - and in fact only 3 seems to contrast these concepts at all. > Sensitivity analyses suggested that cybervictimization only and both cyber- and face-to-face victimization were associated with a higher risk of suicidal ideation/attempt compared to face-to-face victimization only and no victimization; however, analyses were based on small n. In prospective analyses, cybervictimization was not associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later after accounting for baseline suicidal ideation/attempt and other confounders. In contrast, face-to-face victimization was associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later in the fully adjusted model, including cybervictimization. In fact, reading 3, it looks like the highest prevalence of cyberbullying capped out at a whopping.... 16% of 15 year olds, with a sharp drop down to 7% just 2 years later. I have to say, there's lots of things to worry about with kids going online. I just don't think bullying in particular is one of them. | | |
| ▲ | stackskipton 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | As someone who was not popular and got bullied some in school, I think cyberbullying would have been worse since it comes home with you. I was in school when SMS was finally becoming widespread and something of the bullying happened through it, it sucked since I'm at home and getting reminded of shit at school. I can't imagine today with 24/7 social media apps on the phone. |
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| ▲ | mothballed 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social experience. This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids. |
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| ▲ | dwb 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as it meant I wasn’t quite such a weirdo outcast. |
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| ▲ | hnlmorg 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed. Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not. |
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| ▲ | adastra22 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah I’m pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is setting you up for worse trouble. | | |
| ▲ | hnlmorg 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A better way to frame this is supervised vs unsupervised access. And it depends on their age. At 11 I wouldnt expect them to have unsupervised internet access. At 16 I might, but by the time they’re 16 I wouldn’t need to monitor their online activity so closely because they’ll have several years of trust and experience built up. | |
| ▲ | linksnapzz 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If they're 10, tell them that literally anything they type into their device is being stored for parental review. No expectation of privacy. Obviously, this'll have to change at around 16, but those conversations need to happen anyway. |
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| ▲ | squigz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed. Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very effective way to create trust issues in your kids. | | |
| ▲ | hnlmorg 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Of course they do. You should be open and honest. For us, it’s a system that’s worked well. So well, in fact, that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they see something concerning in a group chat rather than waiting for us to find it. And in return, we’ve learned to trust their judgement a lot more because they’ve demonstrated mature behaviour online. | | |
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| ▲ | whythough1234 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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