Yes, and as a teacher the amount of bullying and frankly horrible stuff that kids get up to with their phones ‘amuses’ me no end.

Yr7s sharing dick pics anyone? Or a yr9 self harming due to comments made about them on social media – said comments posted from phones during school hours.

If you need to contact them before or after school then get them a non-smart phone.
There is no reason that they or you should need to be in contact during the actual school day. You can just ring the school you know.

Bullying has been around waay before smartphones. My lads school has a strict no phones to be on in school hours policy.

And I’m sorry, but giving a child a phone to keep them amused -as I see on a daily basis – is just piss poor parenting.

Wow.

Bullying has been around waay before smartphones. My lads school has a strict no phones to be on in school hours policy.

Yup, see my second post. But why add to their problems!

Wors – why? I see kids in prams with tablets and phones. What’s wrong with interacting or talking with your child?

We was talking about 10 year olds with phones, not toddlers.

Shouldn’t you be teaching, instead of calling people shit parents on the interweb 😉

You seem to be

a) very angry
b) looking at very simplistic answers to complex problems

Shit parents will be shit parents with or without the aid of smartphones
Bullies will be bullies with or without the aid of smartphones

I miss the days when everything was the fault of ‘video games’

I’m currently on paternity leave. So sat here with a snoring newborn on my shoulder!

Sorry, maybe the shit parent thing was too much, but I see lots of problems on a daily basis caused by these little bits of technology.

Mostly I’m posting through a fog of sleep deprivation 😉

I’m also probably paranoid and a bit scared about what the future holds for this little bundle on my lap.

Mostly I’m posting through a fog of sleep deprivation

In that case, you have my deepest sympathies. 😀

Ah… I remember that semi-hallucinatory world well ajantom

Its ok. When they get to ten you’ll just be able to take them to the pub, and give them a phone to play with while you get pissed 😉

I overheard my 10 year olds friend telling him how to delete his history on the browser. He’s a sneaky little b*gg*r who has his mother wrapped round his little finger ( the friend that is)
Needless to say he was warned that if his history was deleted then his phone will be gone.
When I bought the subject up with the mother she just responded with “oh, I’m not allowed to touch his phone”

Worrying

I miss the days when everything was the fault of ‘video games’

…I miss the days when everything was the fault of playing Black Sabbath records backwards!

Needless to say he was warned that if his history was deleted then his phone will be gone.

There is nothing more suspicious than an empty internet history.

Any sensible covert onanist has a second browser installed.

When I bought the subject up with the mother she just responded with “oh, I’m not allowed to touch his phone”

She’s an idiot!

I’m also probably paranoid and a bit scared about what the future holds for this little bundle on my lap.

Plenty of good times to be had before technology starts to interfere..

Sorry, maybe the shit parent thing was too much, but I see lots of problems on a daily basis caused by these little bits of technology.

Ah I remember that new parent feeling of how I was going to be better than all the other parents 😀

My son got a phone this summer (11y/o) as he was starting secondary school. He doesn’t use it much, listens to music, sends the odd text to us and his friends, generally about what bus they are getting and homework related stuff. I got him an iPhone SE as I can use the find my friends app to see where he is. It seems to spend most of the time left at the bottom of his bag. It’s amazing how long the battery lasts when you’re not constantly checking emails, facebook etc.

The easy way around this is to use Google’s T&C..

The minimum age for someone to have a Google account is 13. Any child younger than that with an Android phone is either not signed in to an account (which I think means that they can’t use the play store), or is signed in using a parent’s account (no way I’d be giving a child that kind of access to my account!) or has lied about their age when registering.

I feel that Google has actually got this right and that 13 is an appropriate age for children to have smartphones (with parental checking). If being able to communicate with parents is required, then a non-smart phone works rather well.

Plenty of good times to be had before technology starts to interfere

Yeah I know 🙂 and our 4 year old is doing fine. No devices yet!

Being serious and rational(ish) for a sec…..there’s no way the technological genie is going back in the lamp with phones, and I do see they can have a genuine use for kids and even education.
The problem is that as even as adults we have so little self control over our use of them (myself included) we waste so much time fiddling with them.
Now look at how kids use them – they have few social filters, they have less self control – what they have in their hands is a device that gives them power over others and the ability to anonymously dive into the ‘adult’ world. I have no answers here, but I see the problems this causes on a daily basis.

My daughter wanted a tablet for Christmas, Santa left her a bag of tablet in her stocking.

The local high school has a problem with kids using their phones in class and they have said that they are not able to do anything about it, this is the problem.

The local high school has a problem with kids using their phones in class and they have said that they are not able to do anything about it, this is the problem.

The problem is a mixture of poor school leadership and lazy parenting.

School should instigate a policy of confiscation for use in class – 24 hours, and parents have to pick up. Worked at my old school.

Patents need to make sure there offspring have boundaries – phone use is a privilege not a right. If it gets misused then it’s gone.

We had a situation in school with inappropriate pics doing the rounds. About 20 phones confiscated and police called. Parents seemed to be more annoyed that their phones had been taken than the fact they were texting nude photos of each other around!

Does she want a phone or the connectivity/apps/entertainment? Personally, at that age I’d get her an ipod or ipad mini instead, then lock it down with access control (as mentioned above). Then it provides the fun and connection, within the constrains of wifi land.

When she needs a phone for communication – get her a Nokia 😉

sat here with a snoring newborn on my shoulder

You need to get it used to sleeping in a cot or moses basket otherwise you’ll be doing that for ever.

Shocking parenting 😉

Hold off as long as you can. Kids have the rest of the lives to gawp at a screen.

I miss the days when everything was the fault of ‘video games’

I miss the days when everything was the fault of radiograms.

Bad patent here, but our 11 year old got an iPhone this year when he went to high school with a 10 mile daily bus journey.

We’re both on iPhones, so the family features are switched on, the phone tracking is switched on and my wife has access to his email etc.

He’s not daft and he needs to learn to use one safely sometime.

On the other hand he has had to use it to get one of us to get him sorted once already so maybe he is daft in other ways.

It’s interesting that the views of those in education are much more negative about the impacts phones and social media.

I know my other half works in a very specialist educational establishment so sees the worst of it but the stories she shares with me when she’s offloading are horrific. She’s had pupils top themselves because of the on going online victimisation. Even after they have left the school where the bullying started they are still getting harassed online.

Once a video or picture is made and shared it’s out there forever and no matter how perfect a parent you are young teenagers are impulsive and make mistakes. In our day that mistake was laughed about for a bit and then hopefully was forgotten. Now it’s online forever for all and sundry to see.

Given what a **** I was as a teenager I’m so glad there’s no permenant record of it.

Nobody had even thought of it before the advent of the smartphone. Steve Jobs has a lot to answer for!

“Smartphones” existed some time before Apple got in on the act, have you not heard of Blackberry or Palm?
All Apple did was make them simple to use for anyone, without needing a stupid, easily lost stylus, and call it an iPhone, instead of a PDA, like everyone else, e very astute bit of marketing.
I had a Nokia N95, had a 5Mp camera, GPS, etc. It was utter crap! Nothing worked properly on it, then the iP3G arrived…