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Parents turn to smartwatches for their children amid global phone screen-time pushback
(www.straitstimes.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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The raise your child to use a device appropriately. Waiting until they are a teenager is far too late to form the appropriate habits around self limiting screen time.
I get that no one wants to blame the device but this is clearly a parenting issue and I say this as someone who has on average raised far more children than anyone in my generation.
But go ahead and lean into the articles that blame on the evil algorithms and the evil corporations. Personal and parental responsibility is hard anx blaming outside influences is easy.
Raise your children or someone else will do it for you.
Given that smartphones didn’t even exist until I was a teenager, going to go ahead and call bullshit on that.
Sure is. Too many parents handing their developing children smartphones long before they should. Luckily OP hasn’t made that mistake.
And nobody needs articles to tell them the corporations and algorithms are evil. Some of us are old enough to have lived through the advent of them.
Exactly. I see kids walking to elementary school staring at a smartphone. Why? What could they possibly need a smartphone for?
I'm not sure when we'll give our kids phones, but certainly not in elementary school. I might start them on a flip phone in middle school/junior high (like 12-13yo) so they can text, and probably give them a PC as well around that time for intro to SM so they can keep up w/friends. But a smartphone isn't happening for a while. Until then, if they need a phone, I'll have one they can borrow.
But they are raising their children.
Without a phone.
The algorithms have been proven to be addictive. Do you really think Facebook is your friend? You are their product, not their consumer.
Raise your child to smoke meth appropriately.
I am a living breathing example of a kid who got a phone at 17, I had a bit of a honeymoon period with it, had lots of fun and distraction, but eventually got used to it and actually use it for organising my schoolwork to do list, check the weather and my daily schedule.
I do tend to use social media on it, but only on the bus, since that's usually when I don't have anything else to do. I self limit my screen time pretty well, usually only 30 mins to an hour total per day, and I've always had all my devices without parental control systems, since my parents never knew how to set them up.
Also, you saying it's never about algorithms designed to siphon your attention is inherently incorrect of a statement. They literally have hundreds of data metrics to effectively lock you into staring at the screen mindlessly, although parenting also has a part to play, since you also should teach your child on how to control their attention and harness it to actually do something fulfilling, though many parents don't know how to.