A better question: why does a child need a smartphone?
I don’t want this to be a “back in my day” old man yells at cloud type of rant, but seriously, why?
What I’ve observed, often, is the child requests a smartphone because someone else at school has one, or the “cool kids” have them. Parents don’t want their children to be outcasts, so, they give in and buy the phone. The parents then have to contend with managing device time and trying to control conversations online. Many give up.
I have not observed anything good yet from giving children smartphones, honestly. The main benefit is parents can track and communicate with their children more easily, well, their are ‘dumb’ devices for that as well which are less harmful to a child's mental health.
Don’t get me wrong. The internet can be a wonderful place. There are some truly awesome ways people can learn and connect thanks to the web, but smartphones and social media for children are not one of those ways in my opinion. All i’ve seen from this combination is anxiety, depression and other negative effects.
All of their friends are on social media, all you do by taking their phones away is that they're no longer able to talk to their friends and engage in content / share information in the same way as all of their peers do worldwide. Phones and social media definitely have drawbacks like you mention, but the world has clearly made its peace with that. Using a phone is pretty fundamental to how people interact / engage / consume content in the current age, especially in the youth demographics.
It's far better for children to be educated about a tool / told about the benefits and drawbacks than just be outright denied it, when as soon as they are out of college they will be reliant on a phone for practically all of their day to day life. (And no, I'm not taking about the 1% of people who don't use their phones usually or work entirely on their laptops, that's not the mainstream mode of operation)
Children have poor decision making ability, you cant educate them. Teenagers and just under, perhaps, but children no.
You may assume or think your children are special snowflakes where they can be taught this (as children) but their underdeveloped brain has shown through multiple generations that they will continue to make poor decisions.
Your argument rests on "everyone else is doing it", which is not a strong enough reason.
It inhibits them from speaking to their friends, how did you talk to your friends? On the home phone? That doesn't exist anymore and in any case they all text these days, they won't take a call
Which is why I wish primary school ( up to age of 11 ) would outright ban Smartphone.
Above that is hard. There no way you could ban smartphone at age 15/16. But then you end up having 15/16+ students having phone while the lower age in the same school from 12-14 not having one.
I seriously think Smartphone does more harm than good for Child. But Tablet, in a controlled environment, are many times better.
I'd agree, but I'm probably older than you (52) and remember the pressure to have cool clothes like Members Only jackets in the 1980s. Smartphones are the modern version. It's easy to stand by as a parent and say "you don't need this, son" but an adult (or even a college student) can buck trends and seem all the cooler for it, but it doesn't work that way in high school or younger.
Its a means of communication though not a nicety, kids don't have home phones and youngsters are averse to speaking on the phone so their friends probably won't answer.
I don’t want this to be a “back in my day” old man yells at cloud type of rant, but seriously, why?
What I’ve observed, often, is the child requests a smartphone because someone else at school has one, or the “cool kids” have them. Parents don’t want their children to be outcasts, so, they give in and buy the phone. The parents then have to contend with managing device time and trying to control conversations online. Many give up.
I have not observed anything good yet from giving children smartphones, honestly. The main benefit is parents can track and communicate with their children more easily, well, their are ‘dumb’ devices for that as well which are less harmful to a child's mental health.
Don’t get me wrong. The internet can be a wonderful place. There are some truly awesome ways people can learn and connect thanks to the web, but smartphones and social media for children are not one of those ways in my opinion. All i’ve seen from this combination is anxiety, depression and other negative effects.