My kids are 6 and 2. Right now the wife and I are trying to hold off getting them phones until they are driving. I'm sure that could change when they're in middle school and high school, and whining because all their friends have phones. But, I'm going to try my best to hold the line.
You start teaching them at an early age how society may see it as no big deal, but society is wrong and it's a very big deal. Show them through your actions that life is better lived without such distractions.
And be prepared for everyone to call you a conspiracy nut. But you eventually let that roll off your back when you see how happy your kids are just being kids.
What brutal modern life problems require smart phone with unlimited access?
Most problems we face in our lives haven't changed a zilch - its simply interacting with people for whatever reasons. You don't need phone for that, in fact you should first work on handling face-to-face interactions and only then move to remote ones.
Kids can grok how phone and app works in few weeks through and through and much faster than you or me currently, so that they are not missing anything if they start later. There is very little to 'learn' by further usage of it, just feeding addictions.
I'd love that option, but highschool mandates a smartphone, go figure: let's give attention deficit teenagers an always on distraction device and then complain about how hard it is to keep them focused.
Granted I’m still very early in my parenting years but if my child’s high school requires a smartphone I feel like I’m going to be viewed as a kook because I’ll turn up to meetings shouting at them about how they’ve failed the kids from a social development standpoint.
Not only that, many of them will be themselves glued to the phones while you execute your elaborate speech about child development, missing your point entirely and consider you some medieval crook during those 2 seconds they will be focusing on you.
Lets not act like parents are stellar in this, because more often than not they aren't and most issues with kids come from this direction (as a parent of small kids I really can't blame anybody else if we mess up something, not at this age)
