Are you aware that there is a dose-response relationship observable between adolescent smartphone and social media usage and mental health issues?

If you’re going to make a claim that strong please provide evidence.

He probably read it on social media.

Not OP.

Here is evidence for screen time being dose dependent after more than 1 hour, but it is old so none of the kids in that study had grown up with smartphones https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283687526_Dose-resp...

This is a summary article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012622/ you will find the dose dependt point is the first paragraph under the heading "Key Points".

> I predict these children will have more social issues in adulthood and thrive less well than those who had smartphones when they were younger.

As if banning phones until 13 is really going to have that kind of impact. Come on. Those poor kids, can't get on TikTok.

> As if banning phones until 13 is really going to have that kind of impact. Come on. Those poor kids, can't get on TikTok.

When did you first get access to a computer? How has that affected your subsequent life and career?

What are the things you think can only be done on a smartphone, not a laptop, that are so important for kids to learn early?

Do you think these kids are going to get access to laptops?

But to answer the question: patterns of socialization that their peers will follow. How to work around surveillance and filtering. How (and why) to jailbreak locked hardware.

Patterns of socialization meaning what exactly?

People outside the no-smartphone group will develop specific ways of interacting, which you only "get" when you participate

Stuff you can't even know you're missing out, because you don't know what you don't know

Maybe calling someone without a heads up is considered rude, or ending sentences with a period is considered passive aggressive, maybe responding to someone right away is considered desperate or using certain words is okay IRL but not online

I agree that kids having smartphones is not good, but isolating an individual or small group from ostensibly the rest of the world in inconsistent ways that may interact in even worse ways is something you should be careful with, you might just be marking them for life

Playing video games (mid 80s) from primary school, chatting online (mid 90s), relatively low mother tongue langage but still better than people 10year younger than me, totally failed studies and career far from my potential, but still not too chubby.

People thinking that an electronic device is good for a kid and it's just a matter of self control or parenting has a fairly strong biais and never spent time with a kid or forgot what is it to be one.

>forgot what is it to be one.

Most adults seem to forget all their memories of their childhood, particularly if they become parents at which point they forget everything instantly.

I'm not sure why this is, what this phenomenon is called (if it has a name), and I would sincerely appreciate a scientific explanation if there is one. I still remember my childhood from about 4 years old onward as a guy in his mid 30s, so I simply can't relate to it.

Yes, I find that I not only can't easily recall what my own experience as a kid was like, I also reproduce a lot of my parents' behaviors.

On the contrary, my experience of being a kid is exactly why I'm convinced this is good for them. As a bullied kid I'm pretty sure computer access literally saved my life, and I've consistently seen that the younger someone got on the internet the healthier their relationship with it is.

An escape from reality is far from a good solution. Although I also think that computer access is much better than a cellphone, I strongly believe that parental control is not the correct way, and need several layers of protections.

First one being, is your kid feeling safe enough with you to discuss any topics? I know I couldn't. I have seen way too many kids having already social media pressure, including my own kid with a fairly low level of screen time across the board (I'd say 4h-8h a week maximum including a movie on Sunday morning, depending if she wants to play around with python or some GT7) this allows also some interesting discussions.

> ve consistently seen that the younger someone got on the internet the healthier their relationship with it is

I fully believe that, for the previous generation's internet.

It's great that tech helped you when you were young, but one can't extrapolate here and apply personal experience more generally. The circumstances are vastly different. In some cases there will be kids that suffer from a lack of phone, but there's still computers, there's still video games, etc, etc. There's just no 24/7 cellphone addiction consuming every aspect of their waking day (and night, under the covers) to the exclusion of all else, and to the great detriment of their mental health.

Computers pre-social media were different. You could do a lot offline. Today, social media has been proven to be extremely toxic. There was a paper submitted to HN that mentions how much worse mental health is the earlier a child gets a cell phone[1].

Today children have unrestricted access to God knows what is on the internet and social media. This is not a recipe for success. Parents need to get involved.

[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/sapien-smartphone-repor...

Had no internet access until 18. No mobile phone until 22.

My physical and mental health has declined significantly since I've been 'always online'. Learning new skills in an age of endless distractions is harder too, despite the amount of educational resources online that should make it easier.

Computers we had access to did not have ML generated crack being served by every app on them. Even so I had addiction issues, thank god this was before ML.

And no I did not have access to my parent's bar to drink vodka and brandy whenever I felt like as a 12 year old to "prepare me to real world".

Computer != smartphone. Social media == smartphone.

Everyone in the room is laughing. „What is it?“ - „Oh, Jimmy just sent a meme. You wouldn’t get it“. How does that feel like?

Trouble is, you’re way too old to understand the implications of not being in touch with your social group. If everyone else is in the loop but you’re not, your dead, socially. If you’re especially unlucky, you’ll be treated as the weirdo outcast with Luddite parents. You cannot imagine how mean kids are. This problem is bigger than you think. Having to live through years of shaming and being alone causes trouble later in life.

Kids are cruel and if they have a mind to it will make fun of literally anything. I was a social outcast in school, where favorite jokes of the other kids were that I was overweight, that I was inept at sports, that I wore glasses, that my shirts had collars, that my only shoes were cleats, that my socks were black instead of white, that I wore briefs instead of boxers.

Funnily enough, though I grew up in the ’90s–’00s with parents who disliked TV and popular movies and heavily restricted media consumption in the household, nobody at school ever made fun of the fact that I’d never seen Friends or The Matrix. Later when I was in college I often saw people who’d grown up with access to popular media saying they’d feel socially deprived if they didn’t watch the latest new show. Personally I didn’t feel deprived, either at the time or in retrospect, even though today I greatly enjoy catching up on movies I never watched. I think there’s something to the idea that some restriction, particularly in childhood, can be healthy.

Wouldn’t you agree that suffering as a child has effects on your adult life? I’m absolutely convinced that some restrictions are good, and not blindly following what the cool kids are doing too. But some people here seem to be blissfully unaware of the consequences harassment has on children.

My point is that if bullies weren’t making life hell for kids without smartphones, they’d be making kids’ life hell for some other irrelevant reason. I see no reason to believe that the bullying situation will be made worse by removing phones from the equation.

If I had a time machine, maybe I’d give my seventh‐grade self white socks and boxer shorts and see if that made any difference.

I believe your example lacks something important, the isolation will go way deeper than just media, maybe you won't develop the same cultural marks, maybe your humor will be significantly different, maybe you won't get to participate in the 3AM shit talking where the group strengthened bonds, maybe people won't know how to give you directions to places (Because they're reliant in maps to get to a general zone), maybe you won't get to participate in online events like gaming sessions or esports

This might not being the kid that didn't watch popular stuff, this might be making a kid alien to an enviroment they will have to deal with for the rest of their life; They might adapt well, or maybe they'll develop a "mark", an "accent" of sorts, which distinguishes them from the rest of the group

I agree that restriction or adversity might be healthy, but paraphrasing House "Then why stop there? Poke a stick in her eye, imagine how healthy they'll be then"

If you're getting bullied for that you'd be getting bullied anyway. Bullies don't find a reason like that then bully you. They get the impulse to bully you then find the reasons to attack you.

No, they have the impulse to bully someone and then go find someone to pick on. Much of what teens do is about desperately trying to avoid being the obvious target.

I'm the 90s kids kept in touch with MSM messenger, AOL I'm, irc and voice telephone calls from land lines.

Somehow they are nowhere nearly as mentally screwed up as their own children

“Show me.”

Path A: you’re shown the meme; “lmfao, nice” — now you’ve broken ice or strengthened a bond

Path B: “nah” — “whatever”

——

Don’t send your kids to a run of the mill public school — which is infested with children of asshats, jackasses, and assholes. Don’t live in in that sort of community. If you can help it, these will be some of the biggest factors in how your kid turns out.

I’ve been to a lot of schools. Kids from parents that just don’t give a shit will turn out like them: vampires, parasites, and people that generally drag others down for their own benefit (unless they’re lucky and get out).

Mean kids come from mean families. Usually people are mean because they don’t have the resources to fill whatever hole they have in them — and have to use maladaptions to get their fix. I.e. money problems and never taught the skills or given the resources to ease them.

I.e. send your kid to a private school that is recommended by people you trust. Just like you would a dentist, or a mechanic, and so on.

Easier said than done, but not an unsolvable problem.

> Don’t send your kids to a run of the mill public school — which is infested with children of asshats, jackasses, and assholes.

This is so obvious to me(from reading, observation and my own experience in public school) that I don't understand why smart, educated people don't realize this.

No way I'm going to send my kids to the cesspool that is public school if I can help it. People can call me and my family privileged all they want. What should I do, downgrade my child's education and life because it's not fair I have the resources others don't?

There are lots and lots of different social groups.

There are mean kids, and kind kids, and good schools and bad schools. There's a variety of experience here to take into account.

There are good families and bad families.

There are... variables. Yes, being a social outcast is hard. I would argue that being a social outcast involves _a lot more_ than not having access to the latest memes. That's where the misunderstanding lies.

It’s not just the latest memes, that was merely an example. Just consider that huge parts of the social life of children and teenagers happens on social media platforms now. Take that away, and you made it a lot harder for your child to be accepted by their peers.

No matter the other variables, that is a pretty common theme for teens nowadays, no matter the community they live in or school they go to.

My solution is to find a community for our family that share the same values, one of them being no smartphones for children. Another one is being nice to others regardless of what they look like and what they have or don't have. These communities are rare, but exist.

The whole point of this agreement is that nobody in the kid's social group would have phones. That's what makes this a good thing. It definitely would be a bad thing if only one family did this.

Maybe... though with a growing trends of the most affluent / best educated families in SF Bay Area not allowing smartphone use I find your prediction unlikely.