When I was a kid my parents wouldn’t give me a cellphone. I wanted to call my girlfriend. Well, really, my girlfriend wanted me to call her. A lot.

They didn’t give me one.

I ended up finding a way to get my own through a more apathetic adult who I could pay cash to cover my bill (only an extra $10/month on a family plan).

I certainly am not telling you to just cave in, but perhaps this story can be a reminder that technology you control is potentially better than technology you don’t.

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bawolff an hour ago | parent [-]

What age groups are we talking here, because if we're talking about a 7 year old, giving them unfettered screen time is probably bad parenting. However if we are talking about someone old enough to have gf/bf its probably also bad parenting to not let them develop their own self control around technology. They have to be an adult eventually.

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hamburglar 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I started my kid at 12 with an extremely locked down iPhone. She fights the restrictions at every turn and I have to make sure that she understands that finding loopholes is fun but also if I catch her violating the spirit of the restrictions there will be consequences. So she proudly tells me about clever workarounds she finds but still puts the phone away at the appropriate times. It’s kind of fun that she’s developing an instinct for subversion.

	▲	JoeBOFH 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That’s how we handle it with ours as well. He found a way around a certain control and we opened a bug report with the vendor and it was acknowledged and fixed. He then realized he locked out other kids with that and laughed and tries to find more worth reporting.

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was a teenager, if that wasn’t clear. But I was more of the mindset of lending a story, I can’t say whether or not it’s relevant to the parent commenter’s scenario.

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szundi an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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