Because kids lack almost all control when it comes to entertainment and talking to friends and their brains aren't fully formed. I have a screen time timer set for my phone. After 1 hour each day I don't use it for anything fun after that hour is up. My kids aren't going to be able to handle that with personal discipline. Before you ask, yeah I've tried, the only way is to force them to surrender their devices at a reasonable time at night like 8pm.

So it sounds like you gave them an opportunity to use their devices productively, and they couldn't, so they don't get to use your phone. Had you not been able to do that, your screen time would kick in and do the same to you. Seems reasonable to me?

I did, I watched very closely (and took estimated times) for a couple weeks and they were obsessed a couple years back. All they wanted to do was be on the phone or switch. If you close some doors then other doors will open up. Board games, actually sitting down and telling their day to me (and their mom), playing with the cats and dog. Etc. I give them a lot of freedom until around 8, everyone needs personal time that they own, including kids, then it's back to business of being a family and homework.

You are aware impulse control is something that takes a decade or two (or more) to acquire? Most kids simply can't use them just in those similar ways.

Because they are children. They get to have fewer responsibilities in return for having fewer freedoms while they grow up and gain experience.

I know if I was a child, I would be upset that you get to take your phone into your bedroom and use it for useful things. I understand that this is OK for some parents, but the whole point of the comment above the one I was responding to was that children react positively to consistent applications of the rules, and the comment was basically "I have valid uses for my devices (but this is not true for my children)".

It's not that you have valid uses for your devices. It's that you trust yourself with the self-control to not to use the devices improperly or in ways that could be self-harmful, or, if so, to be able to bear the consequences. Adults can also drive, but children can't. There is no inconsistency there, either.

Writing as a parent who has had to deal with children staying up late at night, way after they should be sleeping, and looking up things on devices that I would consider inappropriate for both children and adults.

> It's that you trust yourself with the self-control to not to use the devices improperly or in ways that could be self-harmful, or, if so, to be able to bear the consequences.

This sounds like something an addict would say. Not calling you out as an individual but instead highlighting the dangers of “I can stop anytime I want”.

Were you upset that your parents got to drink booze and you didn’t? That they got to watch nighttime (e.g. adult) TV? Drive the car? Stay up late? Have sex?

Adults have myriad privileges that children do not. It is not unfair.

Of course that's unfair. Always has been.

Please explain, because IMO that is a ridiculously stupid statement: to paraphrase your claim, “of course it’s unfair that children don’t get to fuck/fly airplanes/etc. Always has been.”

Surely you meant something else.

First, even if you think everything is handled perfectly now, things can be unfair and still be the best possible option.

Try to see things from the perspective of a child. Or if that's too far away, a teenager. Didn't it always feel unfair to you that the adults could do all these things, were free to decide what they do and especially what they didn't have to do? Althewhile you were literally forced to go to school and could decide almost nothing? Especially later on, when you felt like an adult but just weren't on paper (not even talking too much about myself here, I had more freedom than most).

And that wouldn't have been completely unjustified. The way society forces teenagers, young adults even, into these states where they get no freedom about their lives is not something that's necessary natural, not necessary the right thing to do. I mean, for something easier, look at the utter harmless jokes of PC games that were censored back then for non-adults (and effectively even for adults, depending where you lived). That really was unfair and ridiculous. Heck, one of the most influential games I played back then was Deus Ex, would be seen as completely harmless today, it was rated 18+. Crazy.

Being completely unjust with things like phone usage can't help with all of that. Do as I say, not as I do can't be a great guideline for how to handle these things.

Society says some stuff is bad that's not actually that bad.

Children and teenagers should not be able to do some things that adults are allowed to do.

These are not mutually exclusive.

An 18+ rating on Deus Ex is dumb for a mature 16 year old. Cannabis should be legal for adults.

I'm also glad that 12 year olds can't drive cars. Even if I wished I could drive at 12.

In other words, the rules can be set up unfairly AND still have room for just differentiation between children and adults.

Try 12 for DX1.

But exactly:

> In other words, the rules can be set up unfairly AND still have room for just differentiation between children and adults.

That's the point I wanted to make. The other that some of the rules just are unreasonable. And that the whole years of pseudo no responsibility (because that's never really true) and no freedom isn't as straightforwardly a fair deal as some comments here want it to be.

I guess I'll reveal my boomer age but yeah, as a little kid that shit was 'unfair' and we all made an effort to find the nudie mags and watch the scrambled cable TV porn channels and lament the fact that we weren't adults and able to drink and smoke like James Bond or Clint Eastwood. I mean shit Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry smoked and drank all the time.

Kids don't understand life because they're kids, but they do intellectually develop to observe hypocrisy and contradictions. And if you spot one contradiction then the whole house of cards starts falling down. So our parents went out of their way to hide their vices from us. We were kids, we didn't understand at the time, but it was the thrill of finding something 'forbidden' that drove us to do it more than anything. The twisted little perverse curiosity of childhood. :)

I think you’re inadvertently propping up another idea, that all rules apply equally to children and adults. This is obviously not true.

Were you upset that your parents could drive the car and you couldn't? Parents and children are not the same and do not abide by the same rules.

Because, when it's my bed time, I go to bed. I know that I have responsibilities that require me to get a full nights sleep. The kids? It doesn't matter if they know that they have to diffuse a nuclear bomb in the morning. They will stay up all night on their devices if given the chance and then let the world burn. Their brains are not ready yet. That is why they have parents.