Agree, won't be easy -- he already has many peers with phones. But we have a lot of rules like that (e.g. no unsupervised YouTube use, wear helmets on the bike, etc) and he lives an otherwise well-provisioned life -- I think we'll work something out.

I’m amazed no one is pushing back on this. I respect your decision as a parent — it’s your decision — but not letting them have a phone until 16 or privacy in their YouTube sounds miserable for them. I would be, but everyone is different I suppose.

In contrast, I was watching gore videos by the time I was 13. I think I turned out ok.

We’ll see if it’s survivorship bias, but personally, I plan to give our daughter Kess most of the freedom she’ll want. She’ll figure it out. The worst situation would be for her to develop feelings for someone and not trust her parents with that info. I suspect restricting smartphone usage is exactly how to end up in that situation.

The sooner my kid learns someone is always watching, the better.

Yes. But, having the freedom to watch something and decide for yourself is a different question. 16 is two years short of military age, and old enough to pay taxes on your income.

16 does seem late for a first phone and likely they will find the phone necessary by the time their child reaches high school (age 14). Still, I appreciate the goal of trying to protect their child from the always connected lifestyle until they have some mental tools and life experience to understand and manage it.

My kid is college age now and a couple years ahead of the first iPad generation. There is a huge difference in how those kids handle the internet even though they are nearly the same age.

I had unrestricted (dial up) internet access from a very young age and I _do not_ think it was good for me. I don't think having that access in my pocket at all times would have helped either (I didn't get smartphone until I was out of college in 2013).

Despite all the rules I've outlined in this thread, I really do believe in giving my kids as much freedom and autonomy as possible. I do not want to manage their time, I do want them to pursue their own interests and grow into their own person.

That being said, developing brains are not adult brains. It is a parent's job to fill in for that immature prefrontal cortex when needed. I can't expect a child to handle the asymmetric onslaught of the attention economy without negative side-effects. Have you seen the manipulative kids content on YouTube? How can a kid escape the recommendations tab with thumbnail after thumbnail specifically designed to draw them in?

So I will work with my kids to learn how use technology without experiencing all the ill-effects. At the end of the day, technology is just one of many tools they will use throughout life -- I don't let them use the bandsaw without help yet either. We'll make adjustments as they get older, but at age 7 things are still pretty hands-on.

I don’t mind the content they watch on kids YouTube (mostly, streamers can be awful), but the exposure to the algorithm turns them into tiny zombies and led to behavior problems. Even adult brains have trouble navigating the dopamine hits of recommendation algorithms optimized to keep you engaged.

We’ve stuck to a middle ground where they are limited to a certain amount of YouTube per day (but have no time limits for Netflix, games, etc). This has worked well so far

Totally agree. To your point, I personally have disabled watch history on YouTube so there is no recommendations feed at all. I just search for the videos I want or scroll through the new videos from my subscriptions.

It is these kinds of tactics that I want my kids to develop.

You could bet I'd have a secret phone, and somehow knowledge on every wifi password in the neighborhood.

The effects of things like gore at 13 are not well understood, I think, but content like this is prevalent, so I see the point in either restricting or allowing it. The definition of "fine" also varies, what's fine for some, is certainly not fine for the other. Also, simply surviving, or turning out to be a degree of fine might not be something that parents want for their children. For example, people overcome trauma all the time, and doing so is great achievement and a source of life satisfaction, but we generally don't cause trauma to achieve this outcome, in fact, most of the time we actively prevent it.

At the end of the day, I think it's mostly just risk, and dealing with it is risk management. It's not that there are any clear paths, many excellent people and outstanding contributions come from unlikely circumstances, and many times even the safest bet fails.

Yeah there's discussion about this in scientific articles I've read, where at a certain point the social circle exists on these apps, and by a single individual removing themselves they are forced to effectively choose isolation.

I experienced it myself when I deleted instagram. I realized that certain friendships that had been thriving on that channel didn't flow as well outside it, via texting for example.

So I redownloaded and set a screen time limit and I'm calling that good enough.

> I realized that certain friendships that had been thriving on that channel didn't flow as well outside it, via texting for example.

I think it's a strain to call that friendship. Communication channels don't matter in case of friendship. I may text, call, email, etc... and it's all good. But it being exclusive to a specific platform is more a social circle or a club as you said.

I had this happen when I got rid of facebook years ago. I just lost touch with certain groups that were going to the movies or out for drinks or whatever. I just wasn't aware things were happening. Occasionally I'd get "where are you?" texts. No big loss, as I had other much closer groups where the communication mechanism matters less and varies, but I can imagine it could be isolating for some without that.

Eh, yes and no.

Let's say I'm in a group of 6 close friends and every year we have 20 poker nights, 4 barbecues, and attend 2 sports events or concerts.

If I decide I don't like poker and I'm not going to attend the poker nights - my friends will still welcome me to the barbecues and sports events. We'd still be friends.

But they're not going to cancel poker night. And if at poker night Bob tells the other guys how proud he is his daughter Jenny has gotten accepted to the fancy college she applied to - nobody's going to summarise that in an e-mail to me.

We'll still be friends - but I'll be spending more time alone, and the social fabric won't be quite as tightly knit.

> nobody's going to summarise that in an e-mail to me.

You don't need to know everything that's happening in your friends' life. They may want to share some news and it'd be ok to not know if you were not present and you haven't heard from other channels. Every now and then, you call them and ask them what's news and how everything's going.

I liked Facebook when it was about getting status updates from a friend. It was blogging for people that did not know how to set up a wordpress website. Then it became...something else.

> We'll still be friends - but I'll be spending more time alone

Social activities are not the same as social platforms. And as for me, I'm not forcing myself to attend events and use platforms I don't like just to not be alone.

Yep. Their class at school has a WhatsApp or similar group chat.

We can fire up WhatApp on desktop or tablet -- the constant access is the biggest issue I have with smartphones.

Can they? Aren't PC apps second-tier citizens of WhatsApp world, requiring regular reauthentication with your phone?