Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an unrestricted one?

By high school there is definitely an expectation that everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a normal method of communication between friends and classmates.

They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it and just become "that one guy in our class."

The last time I mentioned this several people argued that, "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if you already have those friends. But if you're in high school and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them yet.

A lot of both communication and organizing of social events happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the reality.

Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their computers were actual desktops in a single office in the house.

We never used filtering or tracking software. The one exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.

	▲	throwway120385 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is just generally true even as an adult. A lot of social events used to start out on text threads in the early 2000's and then moved on to Facebook Calendar by the mid 2000's and then Instagram and I don't even know how it would work now. But if you wanted to be in any particular social group you probably had to deal with the icky features of all of these social media apps just to do that. We needed a public square for our little villages everywhere and instead we got a man screaming at clouds and occasionally handing out invitations.
	▲	4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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patmorgan23 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone? Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a reliable means of communication to their parents in case they need to come pick them up.

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iamnothere 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I agree that being this age doesn’t automatically warrant having a smartphone, any kid who has an allowance can buy a bargain-basement Android phone to use over wifi. And smartphones are very concealable.

(IMHO, once a kid has figured out how to do this, they have earned the privilege. It’s part of growing up.)

A responsible and forward-thinking parent could provide a Graphene OS smartphone if the kid absolutely insists on having one, to limit the privacy damage.

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theshrike79 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not having a phone will most likely make your child a social pariah.

They MIGHT be one of the few hyper-social ones that thrives despite being left out of online circles but they are the exception.

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watwut 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cause practically speaking, school requires that. They will pointificate about devices, but simultaneously create rules that make them necessary.