Kids and Smartphones
I am terrified of the day my kid asks for a smartphone.
Granted, my son is 2, and his brother is 3 months, so both I and society have some time to figure this out. That said, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will say when my sons ask me for smartphones.
I am pulled in two directions. On the one hand, there's lots of evidence that smartphones and social media are harmful for young people. I think there's a good case to be made that they're harmful for older people, too, but there's nothing I can do for anybody who is not my offspring. Keeping my kids away from the brain-rotting effects of the algorithm for as long as possible is a good thing. It will be good for their intellectual and physical development. It will be good for my relationship with them. It will just be good.
On the other hand, I have a lot of trauma from being the weird kid. I was the kid who didn't have the cool stuff or the latest gadgets. My parents did their best, and they did instill a value of money into me, but I have strong memories of going over to richer kids' houses and feeling insecure, like I was less than or I was excluded. I don't want my kids to be the weird kids who aren't on iMessage or whatever platform the kids are using to talk to each other at that time. Odds are good they're going to be weird enough on their own, they don't need another thing from dad that makes them different.
So I oscillate back and forth. I want to shield my kids from tech and the internet, but I know that doing that completely would probably harm them. Would it harm them as much? I don't know. Is there a middle way I can live with? If there is I can't well articulate it. I'll have to see what they're like and what the world is like when I get there. In the meantime it is on my mind.