That story is incredibly disturbing…
Only one 11-year-old girl in an entire class did not have a smartphone…?
How long has smartphone ownership and normalized for that age? What age did they first get them?
That’s got to be wreaking havoc on their developing minds…to say nothing of their social development.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, go long on pharma.
Just because a kid has a phone, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have full access to it. My daughter has had her own phone since she was 3 years old, she is now 8 and still rarely gets access to her phone - maybe an hour a week on Saturday mornings or if we’re going on a long drive. There’s never any fights when she has to put it away, and she’s learning good device usage habits.
I’m unclear how your comment relates to the article, or my comment. Because even if I took you at your word, your anecdotal story would still seem to place you as an outlier, maybe.
Clearly an entire class of preteens, minus one girl, has full access to their smartphones, and I’m betting at least a portion of them had just as much access when they were 8 years old.
Also, not for nothing, but you might want to consider the possibility that a child’s usage and behaviors on a smart device might change once it becomes an unsupervised activity. Or maybe it won’t, I don’t know you or your child, so who am I to say.
I need your notes. My daughter is 2.5. I would appreciate if you can share your experience, how is it working, how you set the rules of engagement, etc.
On the one hand, the grumpy old man in me agrees completely.
On the other, they’ve been saying this for all of history, since that new-fangled writing wreaked havoc on our ancestors’ children’s memories. And it did in fact do that, but we changed.
Attention span is just going to become vestigial in the general population as it becomes less necessary in an evolving technological and sociological environment, just like memory and penmanship.
You might want to take a look at this: https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/
Yeah it’s not really up for debate, the science is only growing more conclusive on how smartphones negatively impact a developing brain, especially social media.
Also, attention span is not vestigial… It’s pretty important function of your brain, and can’t just be replaced by technology…but I was more referring to anxiety and depression disorders, which again, are on the rise.
I’m also kind of confused why you included penmanship in there, as that is not something a child’s development requires to be healthy. It’s simply a skill, and one that has been replaced by typing, almost 1:1.
Once upon a time people argued penmanship was crucial to building a well developed brain. Same with memorizing epics by rote. Books were actually considered bad for students because they would become dull and lazy if they did not commit all their knowledge to memory.
But memory can largely be replaced by technology, and that enables access to more knowledge than one person could ever memorize. Who knows how society will develop, for better or worse.
Smart devices are required for the lesson, the school should supply them.
In tax figures should fund it. Especially large businesses and rich people.
These people are supposed to be experts in child development.
Completely irresponsible for the school to be encouraging 11 year olds to have smart phones.
All studies about this are still too recent to have reached your common school. Teachers fall exactly in the age span of people that can’t let go of their phones in an almost unhealthy way and probably were pretty excited, when they found this game online - to share with the kids.
That’s just my impression though
IANAL OR AP NOR AE
Ap nor ae?
Gonna guess,
not a lawyer, a parent, nor an educator.
Is probably what the abbreviations are for, given the context.
A q p
Fund education properly. That includes technology for students.
They offered her a laptop which would just single her out more.
Provide everyone laptops, or provide phones (tablets) for everyone.
Ms Lewis said she began to feel “pressure” on parents to buy smartphones as her daughter left primary school, but decided not to over fears about how it might affect Ava’s mental health.
Capitalism has brainwashed people.
This isn’t the same, but it reminds me of when I was a manager and got stuck with the weekends for awhile. Nothing at all happened on the weekends. So I told my team (I think there was 8 of us) that we could play some games to pass the time.
We settled on a party game, I think it might have been for the Switch. And I hooked it up to the giant TV we used for stats during the week. Everyone was excited. I was pumped.
Then the game forced everyone playing to download an app on their phone. The disappointment was audible.
Dumbest fcking thing ever for a game.
You don’t know Jack?
That sounds familiar, maybe
If so the phone component is totally a necessary part of the game and very warranted.
The game is about everyone typing out secret answers to a question. Not something you can do on a switch normally.
It all works very well, and actually, you don’t even need to download an app, you can just do it through the browser.
Had you gone through with it, you would have had a blast, it’s a great social game.
It just has a QR code you scan that takes you to the website. On that website you put in the short easy lobby code the console gives you and you easily join a private lobby without any hassle. Super low friction.
11? That is definitely too early.
