One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early.
I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.
> you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age
Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.
There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women.
There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
> There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.
This sounds like a really good way of approaching it. From what I understand the argument against is clear but enforcing it in the face of peer pressure a little more complicated!
My nephews school allows basic 'dumb' phones but not smart phones which seems a fair compromise.
Yes, the peer pressure is exactly the point. The older your child is, the more his peers will influence his behavior. I hope by the time he goes to middle school, I'll find a school with this kind of restrictions.
I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.