PHONES & KIDS

obviously letting your child play games on your phone is worse than injecting them with pure crack, but Toca makes some really cool games that seem just right for a 3-year-old, so fuck the haters

I let the girls use Kids Doodle on my HTC but I don't have any games installed. I'd prefer them to draw and create things than play games or solve puzzles - not because there's no value in the latter because clearly there is - but from an entirely selfish PoV I anticipate fewer tantrums if they're just making a picture.

Oh, and we have Video Night on Thursdays where, instead of bedtime books, we watch something on YouTube on the phone. A Harry Potter Lego adventure or a pop video (Sparks on SNL in 1979 got SO many airings) or a cartoon or smthng.

Hannah (10) has a phone now - third hand - but no sim card, Joel has had a functional one since he started secondary school. Phones suck imo but I am all too acutely aware that I am a grumpy, senile old git.

Yep, both kids have one so that they can "contact us in emergencies", yeah...

Except every time we need to contact them...

ok so i've done a full 180 on the phone thing, every day is a constant barrage of demands to use my phone, fuck this shit 2x

think i'm going with the "game night" idea, which also seems like a good way to learn about days of the week and...... waiting and being patient

though one of the positives has been that it's made me realize how much i check/use my phone, because EVERY TIME i do, i hear "daddy, can i play a game on your phone?"

game night = success

much less 242x7 whining as well

i mean 24x7

I had the same problem with my guitar..

Me: "Strum strum"
Amber(or)Alice: "OK, my turn now!"

our solution to that was to get him a cheap ukelele, which he totally ignores now obviously

snap:

http://pic.twitter.com/G2FPab1Y

http://t.co/G2FPab1Y

nm.

boy, 13, has a phone which is rarely charged and never used. pointless.
girl #1, 11, has a phone which is constantly in use and we have had talks about midnight facebooking.
girl #2, 9, doesn't want one. saying that though, she does an ipod touch which she uses for email & facetime so long as she's on a wifi connection.

you have a 13 year old boy who doesn't care about playing games on a phone??

ha! he does have an ipod too... but also he's into things like Civ and Europa Universalis ie strategy games that don't translate well to a small screen.

anyone let their kids do roblox? My 6 year old has been bugging me about it and I finally downloaded it but I'm still wary of the social aspects of it

Current rules are she has to ask before she plays a new game and has to hide the chat

Our kids are on there. I'm simultaneously freaked out and impressed by their behavior on it.

Beeps and her friend from school do stuff like design their own houses and live in wolfpacks.

The boy, on the other hand, likes to play the game where someone is a murderer and everyone else has to try to survive until the end of the round. It's a little disturbing, but hey, he's a member of the Sandy Hook generation, might as well get some practice.

I've watched the chats as much as I can, and haven't seen anything offensive or creepy. We've drilled into the both of them to not reveal any personal details on there, not download anything, etc., and they get it.

Chat's got a filter on it, so now I get to answer questions like, "What is a-star-star supposed to mean?"

Case-by-case (or game-by-game) seems pretty sensible.

They're going to clean their rooms later, I promise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38WxnV-Jv-Q

One of my kids is into Roblox. Makes my MacBook all crashy, but I guess it's not the worst thing.

Aidan plays it on the laptop but isn't interested in playing it on his phone.

He got a headset for christmas for the xbox, which I was a bit worried about, but he's got a nice set of online friends he plays with, I'll earwig every once in a while to check that all is ok, and pull him up when he gives out info he shouldn't (just about what area he lives in, nothing too personal, he's really good at using his handle, none of them know his name)

On New Year's Eve, the admin for Beeps' wolf game put out an alert that at midnight, everyone was supposed to stand out in a field and howl at the same time. I was downstairs in the living room and thought she had opened a portal to hell in her room, but she was so excited about the experience afterward!

<3

it's weird that kids love it so much bc the games seem pretty crappy from what i saw/played

Between Roblox and Minecraft, I keep telling them, you know, they make video game characters with faces now.

How do you get your kid(s) to play other goddamn video games? I’m so sick of roblox.

She started to get into ACNH but we’re already backsliding

Mine are all about Hearthstone rn. It took like 6 minutes for them both to become completely addicted.

I still can't believe my kids like Minecraft and Roblox.

I had to play games that looked like that when I was a kid because that's all there was.

ME: What about Fortnite? That game looked cool?

10-Y/O: Look at this! When I spam my block guy into this wall here, I open a glitch and fall through the ground!

Pewdiepie started talking about Minecraft (again?) and so now one of my kids is into it. I like that he's at least building stuff.

yeah, an army of junior nazis

sad lol

I am going to hate roblox for the rest of my life thanks to this quarantine

A literal pile of other games she could be playing while stuck in the house and she’s stuck on the one that has the bare minimum of quality control / content moderation

a possible silver lining is she’s gotten interested in doing 3D art with Blender but that’s even more frustrating than any Roblox minigame so 😤🤬

Ah, 2012 (top of thread). Different world.

My pair figured out how to entirely circumvent iOS Screen Time limits immediately. Clearly this was one piece of secret knowledge they were happy to share with each other, the older kid being on a 5S/iOS 12 a year before the younger kid; set it up and, sure enough, younger kid is sailing past those limits too. I can only assume they've got this info off the dark web because pathetic Ok Xoomer dad can't figure it out. There's no way they can be arsed to reset date/time continuously.

Roblox tends to be a laptop activity. Which lasts hours.

time for a check-in.

my 11-y-o is now in secondary school (what would be middle school in the US).

ALL his friends have phones that they bring with them to school. they are all on whatsapp and snapchat.

he has one of my old phones, but it has no SIM card and he's not allowed to bring it to school. however i knuckled and let him have whatsapp. which i think is basically fine. because here's the thing - this is how kids communicate now. all the dramas and friendships and breakups and plans all happen on phones. if i don't let him participate, i'm kind of not letting him participate in the lives of his friends. or am i rationalising?

the next big begging is about allowing him to bring his phone with him to school. i'm minded to stick firm on this one. but i can feel myself wavering, too. he has an approx 45-minute commute to school, and the same back. all his friends are on that commute (on the train) and they are all on their phones.

I wish I had something useful to say on this. We acquiesced with both our two kids around the same time and it's been a pitched battle ever since - managing screen time, knowing when to take them away at night/weekends, managing the inevitable squabbles, misuse, dramas that come with social media. It's exhausting and who knows if we've managed it right? I guess it is rationalising, but it's rationalising in the fair direction, I think?

Looking back, whatever you decide, I'd err on the side of being draconian - you at least have some wriggle room with the inevitable conflict that comes with it. Having said that, I'd probably let him have it on the way to school, just to let him fit in, and so you can be in contact if necessary - with the proviso that if he messes up and gets it taken in class etc then he'll lose the privilege. Schools are pretty hot on it, so you'll soon know if he's a repeat offender.

you don't know how comforting it is to read that you're also having these thoughts. i realise literally everyone has these questions and battles but it's incredibly... helpful to read your thoughts about it.

we're in the exact same boat. our 10-year-old has one of our old phones that has wi-fi but no cell connection. schools are still all-online here so phone/ipad is basically the only way for them to be in touch with friends. we let them use some borderline apps (snapchat, tiktok) bc so far they've demonstrated responsibility in terms of staying in safe areas of those apps (only being snapchat friends with people they actually know, having a private tiktok account with safe settings on, etc.). but it's definitely a slippery slope.

9 year old, ipad, definitely uses it to talk to people we’ve never met, but at least we know it’s other kids. she can’t have a phone until she’s 13 and all the other age restrictions online are lifted.

I mean it’s very much about keeping up with the joneses in terms of ensuring she has access to the platforms her friends are on, and it’s also about ensuring she knows how everything works and can start thinking about how to interact online.

Whatsapp is supposedly 16 and over lol

I was very confident in the 13-y-o thing but the realities of secondary school have shaken that conviction

I have Downtime enabled on both which is actually a huge help but it does mean that every five minutes I’ve pinged for access to something. Also their homework requires them to have access to YouTube which is just enraging because there’s no simple way to turn access on or off to specific websites, so I just have to have it on. It’s insane. It’s like setting a hungry kid in front of a big bowl of M&Ms and saying “don’t eat those! I’m going out of the room for an hour now”

Ha, our 13-year-old recently updated her Twitter account from 2004 or whatever to 2007 and immediately got her account suspended.

Her takeaways were 1.) She shouldn't have been on there in the first place and 2.) Why should it be so important to give a social network an accurate birthdate anyway?

We take our kids' (12 & 14) phones at night during the week - at 10pm. X-box fuckery aside, it's still the single biggest cause of conflict in the house. I teach secondary (12-16 in the UK) and it's a daily message that we're doing the right thing, though: the kids who clearly have their phones at all times are a nightmare of exhaustion and stale electricity.

I think that 10pm rule is a good one. We recently accidentally left her laptop that she has for school purposes in her room one night. She stayed on it until nearly midnight & was predictably a bear to deal with the next day.

My friends' 12 year old has Snapchat but not Tik Tok, but apparently keeps up with all the Tik Tok influencers through instagram. Largely however he learns & uploads dances on Dubsmash. This is all I know from my world of young person.

Can you guys get this all sorted out in the next 5 years please, then tell me the answer, cheers