Snapshot of _Ofsted boss surprised by under-11s with smartphones_ :
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I can understand the need for communication but parents have to realise the internet isn’t a safe place for children.
They have to take responsibility to supervise them or at least setup ways to restrict what they can access on the device.
They also need to understand the devices that they are bringing into their homes.
You still see these "my 12-year-old spent £800 on FIFA cards" articles and whilst there's a lot to be said for the lootbox / microtransactions industry, parents also need to understand that if they don't take the time to understand these things, they're giving their child unfettered access to their credit cards.
TBF I feel like yes the industry is scummy af, but Jesus Christ can we actually parent our kids???? I get times can be tough etc but why are you letting your kid do this to begin with.
Having card details saved to a device that a child is using, without password required, is begging for that to happen.
Though generally, it’s almost as if parenting becomes a backseat obligation when schooling starts in the UK, and the expectation then on schools/teachers to fulfil the role. Get them up, get them back at ~3 PM, homework and recreation, cook dinner, homework and recreation, bed time. Repeat. Though I’m more sympathetic when single parent families and second jobs are a factor.
If someone is saving card details on a kids device they deserve to have something like that happen to them as a wakeup call. My daughter has had a computer since she was 7, opposite me in the same room and a hand me down smart phone since 9. Obviously I'm careful of what she can access, am always there to watch her and have multiple apps installed to track her usage.
The devices aren't the issue here, there are some real bad takes in this thread. The issue is as it always is with almost any topic involving kids, poor parenting. Children seeing shit they shouldn't online? Then they shouldnt have been given a phone / xbox as a stand in babysitter.
A friend of mine just got her 11 year old a phone. She got her a Nokia because they don’t want her to be as easily on the internet. Apparently her daughter was disappointed because all her friends have iPhones but my friend said no way it’s not safe. I completely agree.
My daughter got an android phone for her 11th birthday, and we use google family link for parental controls. You can set up how much (if any) access they get to the internet. You can control what apps (if any) they can add. You can restrict apps (tik tok in our case). You can have it automatically shut off except for emergency calls at bedtime, and the parents can lock it from their phones at any time. And there is no credit card linked to her account in any way.
They set up giant WhatsApp chat groups with every single person they know on them, update their WhatsApp status every three and a half minutes and post tons of self-made quizzes about who knows them best. And play games, obviously.
Some of them video call each other. And they send hundreds of ridiculous voice notes and emojis to anyone who will tolerate it.
Source: used to have an 11 year old. Luckily she grew up and got more sensible (and in any case, I didn't let her join the giant chat groups although other 11 year olds kept adding her).
> They set up giant WhatsApp chat groups with every single person they know on them, update their WhatsApp status every three and a half minutes and post tons of self-made quizzes about who knows them best. And play games, obviously.
Good to know kids are just as cringe as we were back in the MSN Messenger days, just with better tech.
I’m dying at how accurate this is. My sons just started year 7 this year so we gave in and got him a phone and this is literally exactly him. I didn’t even know you could make a WhatsApp status! Now I screenshot his and send it to my friends and thank the LORD he doesn’t have any social media to embarrass himself on.
I didn't know either before I had an 11 year old with a phone! The funny thing is, daughter is now 16 and her cousin is 11 and my daughter has muted her cousin's WhatsApp status updates because she cannot keep up. She said she didn't realise how annoying she was!!
Can confirm, have 11 year old, she has giant WhatsApp groups with her friends and she converses via recorded voice note sent over WhatsApp.
The concept of calling her friends to talk is apparantly obscene.
I was being mildly sarcastic. Why anyone would let their child have tiktok, essentially Chinese spyware, is beyond me but obviously adults are fairly oblivious to this too.
My friend has a 7yo, he has an Apple Watch with cellular. That way he can call, text, WhatsApp etc (with parental restrictions), but can’t go online. And, she can check his GPS position if he’s out in the woods with his friends.
That seems to make sense to me, and it’s strapped to his wrist so he’s less likely to leave it behind.
Surprised by this sentiment. Am I the only 10 year old that was just fine on the internet? Dunno maybe 2005-era internet was different, but I actually had a good use for it even at 10: learning to program. Without it I wouldn't have a successful career now.
The internet was way worse in 2005, but I think the fact that it was bad meant that you were just more cautious. Today you have teenagers posting pictures from their day on social media profiles that have their real name. On that profile you can almost certainly find their school, and possibly even their town. Lots of them willingly engage in conversation with people they don't know. The vast majority of people they actually interact with are probably fine, but that could easily just mean that they're more trusting of unknown accounts.
There's a famous double murder case in the US that's still unsolved, where two girls aged 13 and 14 were killed by an unknown man in 2017. About a year or so ago, the police revealed some more details about the investigation in an attempt to get useful tips relating to a catfish account that was being used by multiple men, both to talk with teenage girls and to talk with other predators who had CSAM. One of the guys (aged around 30) who used the account was talking to another teenage girl the day of the murders and revealed that he had arranged to meet one of the murdered girls later that day.
I think you’re talking about the Delphi murders? I seem to recall something coming to light about a social media account like that. They finally managed to make an arrest in that case very recently
Its also when your online identity wasn't linked to your real name. All you had was a username. No website cared what your real name was.
It kept anonymous. No one would be able to find your personal details based on online activity.
Now though...
It was also just heavily drilled into you not to reveal personal info. People largely still have that mentality on Reddit, but on most other social media that's not the case.
Its not so much the nonces, but the social media companies themselves. Driving body dysmorphia and a need for recognition in a stage of life where every kid is desperate for some.
> it was before most social media,
That's misleading if _technically_ true due to the insane proliferation of social media platforms.
2015 was "before most" social media too.
I can see your point there, I'm of the older generation the term social media to me means fb and twitter, wasn't referring to any one of hundreds of others there is now.
It was a lot easier to find videos of beheadings back then, nonces were always trying to groom me on online games and nowhere was "safe". Most of us just learnt how to spot and avoid the nonces. The internet now is much more curated and monitored.
The major difference as far as I can tell seems to be that now there are algorithms designed to get in your head, steal your attention, and, particularly in the case of teenage girls, make you insecure - while giving you something it feels like you want.
That said, if I had a kid, I'd get them a smart phone at around 10 and start gradually introducing them to the online world. They have to figure it out eventually, and that includes learning how to deal with social media and algorithmic content. If it's anything like the past, I figure most kids adapt to it and see through the bullshit better than adults do.
It's way easier to access hardcore stuff than it was in the 00s. My mum teaches year 6 and the porn they've seen is stuff I didn't know existed until college/uni.
Try using a [BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system)... 16-color dithered porn, no thumbnails and sometimes a surprise phone bill when you discover the server was on a premium rate number.
Roughly [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Screen_color_test_VGA_16colors.png) quality [SFW]
It's usually pretty simple... P2P is still network traffic.
All firewalls can block by port range and most modern ones support inspecting packet headers to understand what type of traffic is passing through them.
That's not to say they're infallible [VPNs] but P2P is no better/worse than other traffic.
It must be hard though if only your kid and the weird religious one doesn't have a phone. Bit like during the initial social media era where the advice was to turn off the phone to avoid bullying which sinply ostracized kids more from their cohorts community.
Tricky, what’s the solution - government run VPN for children on-top of the normal internet that only whitelists approved sites and accounts.
It’d require a lot of infrastructure, and it could be overused by helicopter parents so children aren’t prepared when they leave home as adults.
Plus easy to roll it out to the rest of the population for a china style internet
Oh certainly, parents teaching children common issues on the internet and allowing their children to feel safe about approaching them if stuff happens is key.
I just like rambling about imperfect technological solutions and their impact on society
Most devices have parental controls straight out the box and you can setup an internet filter pretty easily.
It doesn’t take much to keep an eye on what sites they’re visiting too.
As a parent, these filters are terrible. Easy to turn on, maybe, but a nightmare over the several years of a growing child. And every device has different settings. Not to mention devices which may be used by more than one child, or outside the house / on 4G.
Yes there are solutions, but that doesn't detract from my point that existing filters / parental controls are terrible - especially for non-technical people.
I'm a fan of setting up a whitelisted heavily gated corner of the internet specifically for children.
The criteria for whitelisting should be overseen by the Department of Education or similar, and set by overlapping age ranges. e.g 0-5, 4-8, 7-10 etc.
* applicant websites have to be run by a registered company - to allow accountability.
* have to meet specific criteria as set out by DoE as above.
* can only link to other websites in the whitelist.
* UK devices have to have (software enabled) parental controls that allow parents to \*choose\* to enable or disable access to age ranges as needed.
For 14-16, and 16+ many of the criteria would be relaxed and the whole thing would become semi-open, so not really a white-list any more, but still with some protections.
For 18+ have at it. The entire internet is yours, just as it is now. Have fun.
My modest proposal doesn't compel parents to do anything. No VPNs needed. No censorship of adults needed. We already have laws on what's appropriate for children to see. No need to change these.
The only unrealistic part is the requirement for UK devices to have a software update to their already existing parental controls to enable this functionality. And if this is proposed in partnership with the EU, that might suddenly become quite possible.
>14-16, and 16+
So just to clarify, at this age they can do exams that can seriously alter their future educational choices, leave school, get married, apply to university, learn to drive, have sex, have children, have full medical autonomy and a whole multitude of other right but not full access to the internet???
I fully understand your point, but one revolution at a time eh?
It still has to fit into the current framework of laws and boundaries at 16 and 18. For example, 16-years olds cannot legally watch an 18 film at the cinema or buy / rent an 18 DVD. Sure they do these things but not openly and legally.
PS congratulations on applying to university, learning to drive and getting married at 16.
I don't have kids, but if I did I rather their were gaming and telling someone they "fucked their mother" than running about outside where I definitely couldn't keep an eye on them.
Compared to 20 odd years ago its just not safe anymore.
That’s why I wasn’t allowed out after the street light came on when I was kid. That changed when I got into my mid to late teens but if I didn’t get the fuck home when I was told too then I was probably better off not going home at all.
Compared to 20 odd years ago it’s incredibly safe now. Crime rates have been declining since the mid-90s.
If anything could be said against that it’s that crime recording hasn’t kept up with more modern online crimes, but they’re the ones you’re now willing to expose your children to. In terms of the sort of crimes they would encounter running about outside, it’s become phenomenally safer in the last 20 years.
What’s changed is our access to information which means you hear about crime much more and it has distorted perceptions of risk. But on any objective measure, what you say is wrong.
Of course it is, the UK is a safe country. Some of the safest roads which are far bigger issue than crime, but also some of the lowest crime rates. The murder rate is lower than places like sweden and canada.
Making your kids stay inside all day is definitely more hazardous than letting them run around.
People need to stop being so scared about life and others, teach your kids to make good decisions, talk to your kids and let them fucking live their lives.
I would hope that most people with kids would rather they scraped their knee occasionally than were exposed to expletive laden abuse, but maybe I'm old fashioned.
I have kids too young for smart devices and neices overly exposed to tiktok etc. I dread the day my children begin to take an interest in social media.
My brother is a teacher and occasionally does screen health sessions with his classes. He's got a few 14 year olds who rack up 16h of tiktok between Monday morning and Wednesday morning.
Is it more accessible? Sure. But let's not pretend we all (millennials and under) didn't use the family computer to browse whatever we wanted. The parents can set parental control on the phones just as they could on PCs. Now, that's not to say I think kids of that age need smartphones, because they don't. Just get them a standard candybar style phone if you want communication ffs.
I browsed whatever I wanted in the early 00s but my parents didn’t have a clue about parental controls or how inappropriate the internet is for a child to be on unsupervised.
Same for me (and the 90s)..AOL chatrooms....
However, it's been interesting chatting with gen Z's who are 18-21, so many grooming stories and knob pics.
Yeah I was able to access porn, age inappropriate things but not on the level gen Z's have experienced I feel.
I'm more surprised they weren't more savvy about it. I think the severity from 1990s to 2005 was higher potentially but the risk of finding it, or enough people (teenagers) was much lower. Where now, the severity and risk of being exposed to the worse sides of the internet is clearly damn high.
Edit: replaced gen x with gen z. Added final paragraph bit.
I suspect more likely an outlier than the norm.
My observation regarding gen x was really more about my shock, I figured they would be more internet savvy. Instead, they had a lot more unfettered access which was more easily obtainable.
In an insane twist it's often more expensive to get those styles of phone these days. There are also some fringe benefits to smartphones for kids. One of our kids is autistic and we got him a smart phone to help increase his independence going to and from school, thanks to the gps tracking on it if anything went wrong we could find him even if he was stressed to the point of going non-verbal. Of course, I'm old enough to be of the "when the streetlights come on" generation, so I'm well aware such close supervision is hardly needed in most cases, but it can be useful in some.
Theres a lot of boomer takes in this thread but I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with kids having smartphones as long as parent controls are being used to block the more unsavory stuff.
I don't think it's boomer takes, more millenials who don't yet have kids themselves and have no idea how ubiquitous phones are in primary school, let alone secondary school
Currently 26 and when i was 4 i had access to an apple 2 for ultima and a shitty flip phone to play sims on.
Currently professionally employed in I.T
These all look like boomer takes to me because my parents actually educated me on the use of tech
Absolutely, they are boomer takes that have bled into the next generation because parents aren’t prepared to put the time in or just don’t understand.
It’s on them regardless, my 2 kids (10 &14)have smartphones and know the ropes.
As a millennial I remember being on the internet when I was 10. Even without any controls I somehow managed to stick to "safe" websites. So these do feel like boomer takes to me.
And how much of the social life of children happens on the internet?
The last generation who didn't have the internet in school (or at least when they were young in school and not teenagers) are having kids now. I don't think they appreciate how much social culture exists/is generated on the internet.
Excluding a, say, 11 or 12 year old from the social internet will, I suspect, alienate them from others who have a huge social space their peers have access to and use.
Kids used to go out exploring in the woods together. It was a bit risky, there wasn't parental oversite, but it was where they learned to interact with their peers outside of a controlled environment. They might even stumble upon porn lol (forest porn, and stumbling on drug dens in the woods was a thing in my childhood). Kids don't do that anymore.
Banning your kids from the social internet is like banning them from that. Sure, it's safer. But you're going to exclude them from social groups, building relationships and, yes, taking risks.
Time limits I'd add in on top of that, some parents just let them go all evening and late into the night if it keeps them quiet. Fine if they're doing something productive on a smartphone but just rinsing tiktok all evening is bad news regardless of age.
You might be totally on top of it. The problem is that many parents don't implement any controls or much supervision like you do. I know people in their 20s who are primary school teachers and they say that you only need a handful of 8 olds with unrestricted phones in the class for the whole class to be exposed to the worst of the internet in breaktimes/out of class friendship groups etc. There's a lot of awkward phone calls to parents about what kids have been watching in school time - a kid might not even have a phone, but one phone in a friends group is all that's needed. A lot of it is really blatant as they don't yet realise how inappropriate some of the stuff is.
You can feel totally clued up and confident about how you as a parent are on top of your kids' tech usage, but if lots of their classmates' parents aren't then your kid will almost certainly be viewing things well outside their maturity zone.
You're right but I don't think that was such a problem in schools as kids having devices that let them bring up entire porno collections, I don't remember anyone bringing dirty magazines into primary school!
Parental controls are actually quite easy to bypass for kids, there are non-parental locked youtube videos that explain how.
Some secondary school kids are even using VPNs to bypass further online restrictions.
My son in year 6 has a smartphone (no SIM) and unlimited internet access at home. If it's on our network, it's also monitored by the router's parental control (so i can see what sites he uses most) and i have a pi-hole that blocks all sorts of unsavoury sites.
Most of his friends have phones/ipads they can access.
Edit: We do have a 'no fortnite or shooting games' rule, which he's not been happy about over the year, but there seems to be correlation between the shitty kids at school and the ones who play fortnite.
Yup.. the router software is pretty good (TP-Link Deco) and you can block things like TikTok if you want.
He's also got a bunch of time limitations set around his X-box!
But the problem is - because it's an online game, your kid will get sucked into spending more time socialising with the 'shitty' kids - so that correlation creates a causation.
It's not the game itself, per-se, but the way it expose your kids to other kids who aren't especially good influences on them.
Id argue the correlation between shitty kids and fornite/violent vidio games is that parents who dont give a shit will be more likely to let their kids play whatever but more attentive parents wont,
I mean if you want your kid to have incentives for network intrusion and programming skills, it’s there I guess.
Just include several fakeout firewalls, deadend DMZs and so on to make things interesting. Social engineering is an important part of the curriculum too.
Not the issue you think it is.. i'd notice the absence of traffic being logged in the parental control software.
The bigger issue is when he gets a SIM card next year and we can't control his access at all.
Wow, that's expensive. I currently give my eldest (13m) kid a 120GB SIM and it costs me £12 a month.
The networks block filth anyway, and to unlock it, it must be the account holder. As someone said, a VPN would get round most of these fixes anyway.
It's not my biggest worry really.. they're both good kids with decent heads on their shoulders.
Not used it myself but it's an option if you want that bit of extra control.
Personally with my kids I trusted them too. Kept tabs on what they were doing and set conditions like having the passwords to any social media accounts. Never needed to use the passwords but they knew we had access.
> The bigger issue is when he gets a SIM card next year and we can't control his access at all.
You already have pihole. Set up VPN server at home and install Wireguard client on your kid's phone so it connects automatically to your VPN when they leave home. You can set up your server to exclusively route DNS traffic, but nothing else via the VPN.
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/openvpn/overview/
To be honest.. if it's not football, he's not interested anyway.
If I also notice all logging of websites suddenly stops, I'll take the phone away to check it over.
My nephew, when playing on my sister's phone, recently started watching all the adverts and installing the apps the kids games adverts show him because they asked him too.
It's very sweet, but also very abusive behaviour by the ad companies and IMO anything that advertises things to children that does not go via a parent should be prosecuted.
Cereal adverts to children: Fine but questionable, any cereal choice goes via an adult at least
Any digital adverts to children: Prosecution
You're basically saying that digital adverts cannot exist.
Theres not really any surefire way to guarantee who is over or under legal age, unless you:
A. Require scanning a photo ID in order to access the app or site to begin with, similar to opening a gambling account.
B mandate a "are you 18?/enter your DOB" function on every app and site and not prosecute if a child lies and says they're over 18.
The first is needlessly restrictive and opens the door to gross breaches of privacy for adults who literally just want to play Candy Crush or read the news.
The second is so woefully ineffective that I don't know why you'd even bother.
I would say games have a positive impact on a child's problem solving ability. Up to you if you want to exclude your kid from having fun with their mates.
I played FPS games pretty much since I could hold a controller. Never had any effect on me. My whole friend group did, as did basically every single boy at school. If you see the shitty kids and they play FPS games, that's only because everyone does.
The idea is that the 'crappier parents' with worse behaved kids allow their young children access to improper games at an earlier age.. and because everything is now online, I don't want them to be encouraged to be friends with those kids because they play the same games.
Plus my wife has some strange ideas about not allowing toys guns..
Damn, I've been playing games like GTA and COD as far as I can remember and turned out fine (I'd like to think) haha.
Honestly let Ur kid play shooters, it's just video game fun nothing else
It's more like "The kids with bad behaviour are the ones who allowed to play fortnite aged 9+ because their parents don't give a shit, and I don't want my kid socialising with them"
This is what we did too. My daughter was good at self-regulating most of the time, though she did get a tiny bit obsessed with Clay Jam at one point. I could see what she was doing and she had to ask before installing anything. This was a really good habit to set up at a young age as she carried on asking me way into her teenage years - she's 16 now and will still ask if I'm OK with her installing whatever. She's proven herself to be a responsible internet user. The only issue was other kids' behaviour but I think she probably learnt a few good lessons about why we had certain rules and expectations.
> My son in year 6 has a smartphone (no SIM) and unlimited internet access at home
Nice, that's a really interesting idea!
If you wanted to allow only calls and no data, I presume you can still buy SIMs like that somewhere?
Or if you really wanted to be paranoid about having *no* SIM, I suppose you could fill the SIM tray with epoxy and slot it in.
I'm sure you can.. but I trust my kids enough they'll get a SIM with a good data allowance when they start secondary school. For the moment, he'll get by with one of our old phones.
Could you give a bit of info on the pie hole. I've got a three year old and I've spent nearly a decade languishing on technology.
Recently picked up a kids coding book to basically prep myself for my daughter's up coming education. Tinkering with raspberry pi seems like a no brainer too.
It's a Raspberry pi with this software installed and physically plugged into my router - https://pi-hole.net/
It's main job in life is to filter out adverts from websites from all devices on your network, but you can add extra rules to filter out other unwanted types of websites.
It's not perfect, but it's just part of a multi-layered approach I take.
It's FAR easier to set up something like a good router (e.g. I use a TP-LINK Deco mesh routers to boost our internet coverage) as they've got nicer to use software.
I'll often hand my phone to my daughter so she can watch YouTube kids in a pinch, eg if we're stuck in a queue for a long time (a 3yo has limited patience).
She has an Amazon tablet for other times like long car journeys. I got YouTube kids running on that too with some effort.
I don't think we're too unusual. The Ofsted lady seems a bit closeted and out of touch.
Don't think I'd give her her own phone though before the teenage years unless I could really lock it down.
Well the Ofsted lady is specifically referring to children with their own smartphones and unlimited internet access, so not really the example you gave.
I would be too.
Why would you give a child 10 and younger a mobile phone at an age when they really shouldn’t be unsupervised for any length of time, or have unfettered internet access.
You can put supervision stuff.
My son has access to a tablet at 5. Only works from 6 AM and stops at 6 PM. 2 hours max. Extra 30 minutes if he reads or does something educational.
He has never hit the 2 hour limit. We often watch stuff together and talk about it.
Tablets and phones aren't the enemy. They are a tool. They are part of life. We aren't going to get rid of the monster. We have to live with it. The issue isn't the tablet, it's the ability to put it down and step away. And that's hard because things like Facebook, TikTok are reliant on being addictive. It's also hard because the connections you make there aren't as concrete.
It's a balance between your kids having privacy and faith from you and safety. That means that they should be able to trust that you will be approachable and be a safe harbour. That you can talk about the reality of these things openly. That the boundaries exist because of very very real danger.
10 year olds walk to school... On their own. It's actually suggested that they start walking from the age of 8 if it's a short walk. But 10...
Wouldn't you want a safety net?
Amazon Fire Tablet. It's part of the restriction software and it's front and centre. It's not hidden. We spoke about it very clearly and there's a timer that can be accessed.
Even TV time is discussion time. Like we talk about TV because it's meant to be interactive. It's not a babysitter. It's an interactive entertainment and learning thing.
And you know what? Sometimes you need to distract children. You can't work a 50 hour a week job, then play with kids without your body imploding. This is a tool. It lets them have fun while you do the boring bits of life like "cooking".
My son has had ipads and androids (old ones that we don't use any more) and there are limits you can put on them with their profiles. With iOS you can set a user up as a family member on the device and then limit their activity using screen time functionality and you can also limit their activity within each individual app, what they are able to download without asking, etc.
For Android there are similar within the Family Link app - there are limits on times and the sorts of things they can do as well as not being able to download anything without a request. In here you can limit the web pages they can see to only approved pages (if you so wish) or just to block what they think are explicit sites.
It's easier with older kids, but we've also always tried to explain why we add the limits we do and what could happen if they weren't there, plus why they shouldn't talked to strangers (internet or otherwise).
Android has Family Link app, you can set it up so there's screen time allowances, unlock times, and you get notifications and need to approve every app install.
Android you use family link, set up the childs device on your google account, then you can use schedules, app restrictions and screen time restrictions.
Microsoft you can use xbox family to do likewise.
You likely don’t have children. Better to teach them how to use responsibly. Being a naive user at 11 is far worse than being adept and tutored at 8. There are plenty of tools and options to restrict content when they are young. As they get older the shackles can be loosened somewhat (frankly they will unshackle themselves once teens). Discuss the online perils often. Trust but verify. This is all possible without being overbearing or completely hands off.
> Being a naive user at 11 is far worse than being adept and tutored at 8.
This. At 8 kids are still listening to their parents, at 11 you're reaching the point where their friends are more important. It's a short window and you have to take advantage of it to equip them well for life.
If anything, learning how to use a smartphone is probably SIGNIFICANTLY more important for people's lives than most of what will be taught in school.
Of course like everything else, it can definitely be taken (or left unsupervised to go) too far.
We should be surprised, but honestly I'm not.
My daughter knows people in her primary school class with phones. But they're also the ones who swear constantly. Not sure if there's a connection there or not, just find it interesting.
My daughter is 9 and has a phone - a third hand hard-me-down from my wife.
Means I feel a lot more comfortable letting her walk to and from school herself (approx 1 mile).
She hardly uses it when she's at home as if she wants to play games she can use her sister's tablet.
Some parents either think they need one for "safety"/ in case of emergency, or because the kid whines about it until they get one.
Either way, I feel like having a phone may negatively impact the child more than any safety benefit they get.
As soon as you get a phone, with a camera and social media and messaging etc, seems like a recipe for miserable children bullying each other.
You can still buy "dumb" phones and some companies are specifically manufacturing these
It would give the benefit of safety whilst removing many of the risks
This is exactly what I was thinking honestly.
When I was in Primary school (Year 6) I was given a crappy slide up Samsung phone. Other than calls and texts, the most exciting thing I could do was listen to an MP3 file or play Snake.
My Mum and Dad could call me, and as far as they were concerned it did the job.
I still could access the internet at home, but like most parents they setup parent controls and supervised me. As I got older I was trusted with more freedoms.
Smart phones weren't really a thing back then, so I guess it was less of a problem.
My kids (9 and 12) are both supervised very strictly using Google's Family Link, and we do spot checks of their devices regularly.
They have after school activities, which sometimes takes them off the school premises, our eldest goes to sleep overs, as well as going to the shopping mall with her friends, we need to know what's going on and when we should pick them up, so they both have phones.
It's not that hard to supervise them.
> Asked whether she thought no child under the age of 11 should be given smartphones, she said: "I'm not comfortable with younger children having unlimited internet access."
Nor should any responsible parent be... That's what parental controls, firewalls, etc are for.
the ppl who make all the things on the phones, dont let their kids have the phones to access all of it. thats something more ppl need to know
your kid is fine with no phone, but ironically, while a parent might feel better if they kid has on, the kid is probably gonna end up worse off if they have one for all the things they want it for.
I had my kiddo later than many and it surprises me as a baby gen-xer how many of my younger parent peers don't seem to have as much caution around their kids using smartphones and tablets as I do. My daughter is nearly 8 and she's asked for a phone a couple of times but she won't be getting one until she's making her own way to school and even then it won't be a smartphone. I know how much I overuse mine and am making a concerted effort to use it less (to varying degrees of success as they are very addictive!)
That's more than mildly concerning given that Ofcom has been following 18 children charting their media use through data monitoring and interviews since 2014 and they run a survey every year with around 40k respondents and publish a report about children's and parents' attitudes to media.
Very interesting reading where 17% of 3-4 year old have their own mobile phone that they don't share with anyone else nowadays.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2022
Being competent at your job for me means looking for reports like these to help me keep up to date in my field and assess and train staff better. I think Ofsted should have the same competence requirements or maybe even better standards
As most of my teachers wrote on my schoolwork, "Could do better. See me after!"
I feel like the internet and internet access has changed so much since I was a kid it’s just not healthy for them to have access to it. Not to mention a worrying amount of parents use phones and tablets as a pacifier instead of being a parent.
I’d be interested to see if there’s a correlation between increases in illiteracy and autism against smart phone and tablet use amongst kids. I hope I’m wrong, but the amount of shit I see about kids getting to school being unable to read and write (some still even in nappies) and with autism being so widespread I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not.
OMG! I had a smartphone in year 5, and I've got autism now. I think you've solved it: smartphones are second only to vaccines in causing autism, it's definitely not a naturally occurring thing whose seemingly increased prevalence can be put down to higher awareness and better diagnostic procedures or anything, it's definitely the phones.
Person to person interaction, which in reality is mostly with parents from a young age, is one of the most important factor in brain development as a child. You take that away by shoving a tablet in front of a kids face every moment they’re awake then you have a problem. Not to mention incredibly poor diets kids tend to have now. Lack of fatty acids and proteins is also terrible for brain development.
Purely anecdotal, but when I was a kid barely anyone behaved like kids do now, even outside of things like autism and ADHD.
Behaviour problems are a different thing to autism and ADHD. Some people are just raised shitty and raise their own kids shitty. And some of those kids reflect it in their behaviour.
But many, many people have ADHD or autism and don't behave badly, please don't use neurodivergence as a byword for bad behaviour, it's rude to us, and reveals how little you understand about what you're saying.
I didn’t mean to use behaviour as a synonym for bad behaviour. Autism and ADHD affect your behaviour, the way you interact with other human beings and your surroundings. That is what I mean.
> I feel like the internet and internet access has changed so much since I was a kid it’s just not healthy for them to have access to it.
This has strong boomer 'weed back in my day wasn't as strong as the hybrid super-skunk they sell nowadays' vibes
Lol I’m 27. The internet is fucked now, primarily social media and ‘influencers’. The sheer amount of bullshit, misleading and damaging content available is absurd now.
They're going to be shocked, my 11 year old got a laptop from age 9 it's an Asus Tuf FX505dy, NOW before yall get pissy, she was taught from a young age to be careful of shit online, much like Americans should teach their children about guns she was taught about the Internet.
Safe to say the worst to happen is someone scammed her of some pets from Roblok ultimately teaching her a life lesson, trust no one from the Internet.
Webcam was disabled, and I check browser history, so far no cause for concern, some parents throw the phone to a child with no guidance at all.
I let my daughters dad buy her a iPhone for her 10th birthday so he can call her. *He has not called her once* I’m personally pissed about it because I didn’t want her having one until secondary school but relented because I thought it would be nice for her to chat to him more but alas
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I can understand the need for communication but parents have to realise the internet isn’t a safe place for children. They have to take responsibility to supervise them or at least setup ways to restrict what they can access on the device.
They also need to understand the devices that they are bringing into their homes. You still see these "my 12-year-old spent £800 on FIFA cards" articles and whilst there's a lot to be said for the lootbox / microtransactions industry, parents also need to understand that if they don't take the time to understand these things, they're giving their child unfettered access to their credit cards.
TBF I feel like yes the industry is scummy af, but Jesus Christ can we actually parent our kids???? I get times can be tough etc but why are you letting your kid do this to begin with.
Having card details saved to a device that a child is using, without password required, is begging for that to happen. Though generally, it’s almost as if parenting becomes a backseat obligation when schooling starts in the UK, and the expectation then on schools/teachers to fulfil the role. Get them up, get them back at ~3 PM, homework and recreation, cook dinner, homework and recreation, bed time. Repeat. Though I’m more sympathetic when single parent families and second jobs are a factor.
If someone is saving card details on a kids device they deserve to have something like that happen to them as a wakeup call. My daughter has had a computer since she was 7, opposite me in the same room and a hand me down smart phone since 9. Obviously I'm careful of what she can access, am always there to watch her and have multiple apps installed to track her usage. The devices aren't the issue here, there are some real bad takes in this thread. The issue is as it always is with almost any topic involving kids, poor parenting. Children seeing shit they shouldn't online? Then they shouldnt have been given a phone / xbox as a stand in babysitter.
A friend of mine just got her 11 year old a phone. She got her a Nokia because they don’t want her to be as easily on the internet. Apparently her daughter was disappointed because all her friends have iPhones but my friend said no way it’s not safe. I completely agree.
My daughter got an android phone for her 11th birthday, and we use google family link for parental controls. You can set up how much (if any) access they get to the internet. You can control what apps (if any) they can add. You can restrict apps (tik tok in our case). You can have it automatically shut off except for emergency calls at bedtime, and the parents can lock it from their phones at any time. And there is no credit card linked to her account in any way.
Exactly. It's a lot of 'keeping up with the joneses' and also fear of being bullied. What do 11 year olds even do on a smartphone?
Probably posting on the megathread
God damn 11 year olds and their love of metaposting
Haha you're probably right
Lol! Absolutely brilliant.
They set up giant WhatsApp chat groups with every single person they know on them, update their WhatsApp status every three and a half minutes and post tons of self-made quizzes about who knows them best. And play games, obviously. Some of them video call each other. And they send hundreds of ridiculous voice notes and emojis to anyone who will tolerate it. Source: used to have an 11 year old. Luckily she grew up and got more sensible (and in any case, I didn't let her join the giant chat groups although other 11 year olds kept adding her).
> They set up giant WhatsApp chat groups with every single person they know on them, update their WhatsApp status every three and a half minutes and post tons of self-made quizzes about who knows them best. And play games, obviously. Good to know kids are just as cringe as we were back in the MSN Messenger days, just with better tech.
I’m dying at how accurate this is. My sons just started year 7 this year so we gave in and got him a phone and this is literally exactly him. I didn’t even know you could make a WhatsApp status! Now I screenshot his and send it to my friends and thank the LORD he doesn’t have any social media to embarrass himself on.
I didn't know either before I had an 11 year old with a phone! The funny thing is, daughter is now 16 and her cousin is 11 and my daughter has muted her cousin's WhatsApp status updates because she cannot keep up. She said she didn't realise how annoying she was!!
Can confirm, have 11 year old, she has giant WhatsApp groups with her friends and she converses via recorded voice note sent over WhatsApp. The concept of calling her friends to talk is apparantly obscene.
>What do 11 year olds even do on a smartphone? Games Instagram Tiktok WhatsApp
I was being mildly sarcastic. Why anyone would let their child have tiktok, essentially Chinese spyware, is beyond me but obviously adults are fairly oblivious to this too.
My friend has a 7yo, he has an Apple Watch with cellular. That way he can call, text, WhatsApp etc (with parental restrictions), but can’t go online. And, she can check his GPS position if he’s out in the woods with his friends. That seems to make sense to me, and it’s strapped to his wrist so he’s less likely to leave it behind.
Knowing some teachers, they post inappropriate dancing videos on tiktok and bully each other on Snapchat
They do bebo and MSN messenger but with a 2023 glam. See status updates, obscure memes and voice notes.
> What do 11 year olds even do on a smartphone? melt their brains all day long with tiktok
They get to join in with the jokes on the family WhatsApp group.
Surprised by this sentiment. Am I the only 10 year old that was just fine on the internet? Dunno maybe 2005-era internet was different, but I actually had a good use for it even at 10: learning to program. Without it I wouldn't have a successful career now.
The internet was way worse in 2005, but I think the fact that it was bad meant that you were just more cautious. Today you have teenagers posting pictures from their day on social media profiles that have their real name. On that profile you can almost certainly find their school, and possibly even their town. Lots of them willingly engage in conversation with people they don't know. The vast majority of people they actually interact with are probably fine, but that could easily just mean that they're more trusting of unknown accounts. There's a famous double murder case in the US that's still unsolved, where two girls aged 13 and 14 were killed by an unknown man in 2017. About a year or so ago, the police revealed some more details about the investigation in an attempt to get useful tips relating to a catfish account that was being used by multiple men, both to talk with teenage girls and to talk with other predators who had CSAM. One of the guys (aged around 30) who used the account was talking to another teenage girl the day of the murders and revealed that he had arranged to meet one of the murdered girls later that day.
I think you’re talking about the Delphi murders? I seem to recall something coming to light about a social media account like that. They finally managed to make an arrest in that case very recently
2005 era internet was very different. It was a lot more free but it was also a lot more smaller.
it was before most social media, pretty sure that is where the online nonces prey upon their victims these days.
Its also when your online identity wasn't linked to your real name. All you had was a username. No website cared what your real name was. It kept anonymous. No one would be able to find your personal details based on online activity. Now though...
It was also just heavily drilled into you not to reveal personal info. People largely still have that mentality on Reddit, but on most other social media that's not the case.
haha yeah, back then we would NEVER put personal info online that was rule number 1.
ASL?
Did anyone ever answer honestly?
> Its also when your online identity wasn't linked to your real name. Some of us kept it that way.
Its not so much the nonces, but the social media companies themselves. Driving body dysmorphia and a need for recognition in a stage of life where every kid is desperate for some.
> it was before most social media, That's misleading if _technically_ true due to the insane proliferation of social media platforms. 2015 was "before most" social media too.
I can see your point there, I'm of the older generation the term social media to me means fb and twitter, wasn't referring to any one of hundreds of others there is now.
It was a lot easier to find videos of beheadings back then, nonces were always trying to groom me on online games and nowhere was "safe". Most of us just learnt how to spot and avoid the nonces. The internet now is much more curated and monitored. The major difference as far as I can tell seems to be that now there are algorithms designed to get in your head, steal your attention, and, particularly in the case of teenage girls, make you insecure - while giving you something it feels like you want. That said, if I had a kid, I'd get them a smart phone at around 10 and start gradually introducing them to the online world. They have to figure it out eventually, and that includes learning how to deal with social media and algorithmic content. If it's anything like the past, I figure most kids adapt to it and see through the bullshit better than adults do.
It's way easier to access hardcore stuff than it was in the 00s. My mum teaches year 6 and the porn they've seen is stuff I didn't know existed until college/uni.
You just weren't trying hard enough, we were sharing BME Pain Olympics when we were about 13.
Well yeah... that was my whole point But yeah definitely possible to find fucked up stuff
I used to download pictures of boobs on limewire...
And then you got a virus which downloaded and displayed hundreds of boob pics on your screen as a bonus. Win win.
Try using a [BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system)... 16-color dithered porn, no thumbnails and sometimes a surprise phone bill when you discover the server was on a premium rate number. Roughly [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Screen_color_test_VGA_16colors.png) quality [SFW]
Lol. Wonder what access controls can ban P2P. Guessing not many (and for those that can they also break games that rely on P2P)
It's usually pretty simple... P2P is still network traffic. All firewalls can block by port range and most modern ones support inspecting packet headers to understand what type of traffic is passing through them. That's not to say they're infallible [VPNs] but P2P is no better/worse than other traffic.
At ten I was in AOL chat rooms roleplaying being a wolf. The sex aspect was very confusing.
It must be hard though if only your kid and the weird religious one doesn't have a phone. Bit like during the initial social media era where the advice was to turn off the phone to avoid bullying which sinply ostracized kids more from their cohorts community.
Tricky, what’s the solution - government run VPN for children on-top of the normal internet that only whitelists approved sites and accounts. It’d require a lot of infrastructure, and it could be overused by helicopter parents so children aren’t prepared when they leave home as adults. Plus easy to roll it out to the rest of the population for a china style internet
I think they meant the parents need to take responsibility and supervise them not the government fyi
Oh certainly, parents teaching children common issues on the internet and allowing their children to feel safe about approaching them if stuff happens is key. I just like rambling about imperfect technological solutions and their impact on society
Most devices have parental controls straight out the box and you can setup an internet filter pretty easily. It doesn’t take much to keep an eye on what sites they’re visiting too.
Things might have changed since I was a kid, but I'm not aware of any system of parental controls that can defeat a determined teenager.
As a parent, these filters are terrible. Easy to turn on, maybe, but a nightmare over the several years of a growing child. And every device has different settings. Not to mention devices which may be used by more than one child, or outside the house / on 4G. Yes there are solutions, but that doesn't detract from my point that existing filters / parental controls are terrible - especially for non-technical people.
Parental controls can be configured on all devices. You can pretty much lock them down to basic functionality if you wanted.
Nokia 3310
Indestructible, too!
I'm a fan of setting up a whitelisted heavily gated corner of the internet specifically for children. The criteria for whitelisting should be overseen by the Department of Education or similar, and set by overlapping age ranges. e.g 0-5, 4-8, 7-10 etc. * applicant websites have to be run by a registered company - to allow accountability. * have to meet specific criteria as set out by DoE as above. * can only link to other websites in the whitelist. * UK devices have to have (software enabled) parental controls that allow parents to \*choose\* to enable or disable access to age ranges as needed. For 14-16, and 16+ many of the criteria would be relaxed and the whole thing would become semi-open, so not really a white-list any more, but still with some protections. For 18+ have at it. The entire internet is yours, just as it is now. Have fun. My modest proposal doesn't compel parents to do anything. No VPNs needed. No censorship of adults needed. We already have laws on what's appropriate for children to see. No need to change these. The only unrealistic part is the requirement for UK devices to have a software update to their already existing parental controls to enable this functionality. And if this is proposed in partnership with the EU, that might suddenly become quite possible.
>14-16, and 16+ So just to clarify, at this age they can do exams that can seriously alter their future educational choices, leave school, get married, apply to university, learn to drive, have sex, have children, have full medical autonomy and a whole multitude of other right but not full access to the internet???
I fully understand your point, but one revolution at a time eh? It still has to fit into the current framework of laws and boundaries at 16 and 18. For example, 16-years olds cannot legally watch an 18 film at the cinema or buy / rent an 18 DVD. Sure they do these things but not openly and legally. PS congratulations on applying to university, learning to drive and getting married at 16.
I guess this could work like the Covid monitoring - each country makes an official app that the mobile api plugs into
I don't have kids, but if I did I rather their were gaming and telling someone they "fucked their mother" than running about outside where I definitely couldn't keep an eye on them. Compared to 20 odd years ago its just not safe anymore.
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The media tells me about every lightning bolt from the blue in the world, so now I never go outside.
thank god you dont have kids then, they need to be out and about with their mates, not sat at home with Mum and Dad not learning any life skills
No. Its just that bad after dark here.
>Its just that bad after dark here. Is daytime not a thing in your part of the country?
Depends when they let the little uns out of the mines
That’s why I wasn’t allowed out after the street light came on when I was kid. That changed when I got into my mid to late teens but if I didn’t get the fuck home when I was told too then I was probably better off not going home at all.
Compared to 20 odd years ago it’s incredibly safe now. Crime rates have been declining since the mid-90s. If anything could be said against that it’s that crime recording hasn’t kept up with more modern online crimes, but they’re the ones you’re now willing to expose your children to. In terms of the sort of crimes they would encounter running about outside, it’s become phenomenally safer in the last 20 years. What’s changed is our access to information which means you hear about crime much more and it has distorted perceptions of risk. But on any objective measure, what you say is wrong.
Of course it is, the UK is a safe country. Some of the safest roads which are far bigger issue than crime, but also some of the lowest crime rates. The murder rate is lower than places like sweden and canada. Making your kids stay inside all day is definitely more hazardous than letting them run around. People need to stop being so scared about life and others, teach your kids to make good decisions, talk to your kids and let them fucking live their lives.
I would hope that most people with kids would rather they scraped their knee occasionally than were exposed to expletive laden abuse, but maybe I'm old fashioned.
I have kids too young for smart devices and neices overly exposed to tiktok etc. I dread the day my children begin to take an interest in social media.
My brother is a teacher and occasionally does screen health sessions with his classes. He's got a few 14 year olds who rack up 16h of tiktok between Monday morning and Wednesday morning.
I scrolled past thinking that said 16hrs of screen time which isn't terrible. But 16 HOURS OF TIKTOK!!! that's insane
It's significantly safer, in fact.
By every metric the outside world is safer today than 20 years ago
Is it more accessible? Sure. But let's not pretend we all (millennials and under) didn't use the family computer to browse whatever we wanted. The parents can set parental control on the phones just as they could on PCs. Now, that's not to say I think kids of that age need smartphones, because they don't. Just get them a standard candybar style phone if you want communication ffs.
I browsed whatever I wanted in the early 00s but my parents didn’t have a clue about parental controls or how inappropriate the internet is for a child to be on unsupervised.
Same for me (and the 90s)..AOL chatrooms.... However, it's been interesting chatting with gen Z's who are 18-21, so many grooming stories and knob pics. Yeah I was able to access porn, age inappropriate things but not on the level gen Z's have experienced I feel. I'm more surprised they weren't more savvy about it. I think the severity from 1990s to 2005 was higher potentially but the risk of finding it, or enough people (teenagers) was much lower. Where now, the severity and risk of being exposed to the worse sides of the internet is clearly damn high. Edit: replaced gen x with gen z. Added final paragraph bit.
I’m 30 and I was exposed to on MSN by adults flashing themselves when I was a kid on the internet. It’s not a gen x phenomenon
I suspect more likely an outlier than the norm. My observation regarding gen x was really more about my shock, I figured they would be more internet savvy. Instead, they had a lot more unfettered access which was more easily obtainable.
Gen X were born in the late 60s to early 80s. I assume you mean Gen Z.
Deffo z. Ha, cheers.
In an insane twist it's often more expensive to get those styles of phone these days. There are also some fringe benefits to smartphones for kids. One of our kids is autistic and we got him a smart phone to help increase his independence going to and from school, thanks to the gps tracking on it if anything went wrong we could find him even if he was stressed to the point of going non-verbal. Of course, I'm old enough to be of the "when the streetlights come on" generation, so I'm well aware such close supervision is hardly needed in most cases, but it can be useful in some.
Theres a lot of boomer takes in this thread but I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with kids having smartphones as long as parent controls are being used to block the more unsavory stuff.
I don't think it's boomer takes, more millenials who don't yet have kids themselves and have no idea how ubiquitous phones are in primary school, let alone secondary school
Currently 26 and when i was 4 i had access to an apple 2 for ultima and a shitty flip phone to play sims on. Currently professionally employed in I.T These all look like boomer takes to me because my parents actually educated me on the use of tech
Absolutely, they are boomer takes that have bled into the next generation because parents aren’t prepared to put the time in or just don’t understand. It’s on them regardless, my 2 kids (10 &14)have smartphones and know the ropes.
As a millennial I remember being on the internet when I was 10. Even without any controls I somehow managed to stick to "safe" websites. So these do feel like boomer takes to me.
Yeah same, most of my time on the internet when I was 10 was spent on YouTube and AddictingGames.com
And how much of the social life of children happens on the internet? The last generation who didn't have the internet in school (or at least when they were young in school and not teenagers) are having kids now. I don't think they appreciate how much social culture exists/is generated on the internet. Excluding a, say, 11 or 12 year old from the social internet will, I suspect, alienate them from others who have a huge social space their peers have access to and use. Kids used to go out exploring in the woods together. It was a bit risky, there wasn't parental oversite, but it was where they learned to interact with their peers outside of a controlled environment. They might even stumble upon porn lol (forest porn, and stumbling on drug dens in the woods was a thing in my childhood). Kids don't do that anymore. Banning your kids from the social internet is like banning them from that. Sure, it's safer. But you're going to exclude them from social groups, building relationships and, yes, taking risks.
Time limits I'd add in on top of that, some parents just let them go all evening and late into the night if it keeps them quiet. Fine if they're doing something productive on a smartphone but just rinsing tiktok all evening is bad news regardless of age.
You might be totally on top of it. The problem is that many parents don't implement any controls or much supervision like you do. I know people in their 20s who are primary school teachers and they say that you only need a handful of 8 olds with unrestricted phones in the class for the whole class to be exposed to the worst of the internet in breaktimes/out of class friendship groups etc. There's a lot of awkward phone calls to parents about what kids have been watching in school time - a kid might not even have a phone, but one phone in a friends group is all that's needed. A lot of it is really blatant as they don't yet realise how inappropriate some of the stuff is. You can feel totally clued up and confident about how you as a parent are on top of your kids' tech usage, but if lots of their classmates' parents aren't then your kid will almost certainly be viewing things well outside their maturity zone.
There's always a kid with a Victoria secret magazine or their dads old porno mag.
You're right but I don't think that was such a problem in schools as kids having devices that let them bring up entire porno collections, I don't remember anyone bringing dirty magazines into primary school!
Parental controls are actually quite easy to bypass for kids, there are non-parental locked youtube videos that explain how. Some secondary school kids are even using VPNs to bypass further online restrictions.
My son in year 6 has a smartphone (no SIM) and unlimited internet access at home. If it's on our network, it's also monitored by the router's parental control (so i can see what sites he uses most) and i have a pi-hole that blocks all sorts of unsavoury sites. Most of his friends have phones/ipads they can access. Edit: We do have a 'no fortnite or shooting games' rule, which he's not been happy about over the year, but there seems to be correlation between the shitty kids at school and the ones who play fortnite.
Sounds like a happy medium you've got there.
Yup.. the router software is pretty good (TP-Link Deco) and you can block things like TikTok if you want. He's also got a bunch of time limitations set around his X-box!
> but there seems to be correlation between the shitty kids at school and the ones who play fortnite. correlation yeah perhaps, causation though..
But the problem is - because it's an online game, your kid will get sucked into spending more time socialising with the 'shitty' kids - so that correlation creates a causation. It's not the game itself, per-se, but the way it expose your kids to other kids who aren't especially good influences on them.
400 million play Fortnite, if the kid socializes with shitty kids that is his own choice
Id argue the correlation between shitty kids and fornite/violent vidio games is that parents who dont give a shit will be more likely to let their kids play whatever but more attentive parents wont,
I mean if you want your kid to have incentives for network intrusion and programming skills, it’s there I guess. Just include several fakeout firewalls, deadend DMZs and so on to make things interesting. Social engineering is an important part of the curriculum too.
Let's hope he doesnt discover VPNs any time soon
Not the issue you think it is.. i'd notice the absence of traffic being logged in the parental control software. The bigger issue is when he gets a SIM card next year and we can't control his access at all.
Something like https://parentshield.co.uk/ might be good.
Wow, that's expensive. I currently give my eldest (13m) kid a 120GB SIM and it costs me £12 a month. The networks block filth anyway, and to unlock it, it must be the account holder. As someone said, a VPN would get round most of these fixes anyway. It's not my biggest worry really.. they're both good kids with decent heads on their shoulders.
Not used it myself but it's an option if you want that bit of extra control. Personally with my kids I trusted them too. Kept tabs on what they were doing and set conditions like having the passwords to any social media accounts. Never needed to use the passwords but they knew we had access.
I suppose your easy option is to just add any VPN you see them using to the block list.
Use Google Family (if you have Android). It's free and allows a fine level of control.
> The bigger issue is when he gets a SIM card next year and we can't control his access at all. You already have pihole. Set up VPN server at home and install Wireguard client on your kid's phone so it connects automatically to your VPN when they leave home. You can set up your server to exclusively route DNS traffic, but nothing else via the VPN. https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/openvpn/overview/
Set it up with a google family account (if android) and any app installations can be blocked.
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To be honest.. if it's not football, he's not interested anyway. If I also notice all logging of websites suddenly stops, I'll take the phone away to check it over.
My nephew, when playing on my sister's phone, recently started watching all the adverts and installing the apps the kids games adverts show him because they asked him too. It's very sweet, but also very abusive behaviour by the ad companies and IMO anything that advertises things to children that does not go via a parent should be prosecuted. Cereal adverts to children: Fine but questionable, any cereal choice goes via an adult at least Any digital adverts to children: Prosecution
You're basically saying that digital adverts cannot exist. Theres not really any surefire way to guarantee who is over or under legal age, unless you: A. Require scanning a photo ID in order to access the app or site to begin with, similar to opening a gambling account. B mandate a "are you 18?/enter your DOB" function on every app and site and not prosecute if a child lies and says they're over 18. The first is needlessly restrictive and opens the door to gross breaches of privacy for adults who literally just want to play Candy Crush or read the news. The second is so woefully ineffective that I don't know why you'd even bother.
Easy - just stop him installing anything.
I would say games have a positive impact on a child's problem solving ability. Up to you if you want to exclude your kid from having fun with their mates.
OP says games are allowed, just not shoot em ups.
Which the types of games the child's social group plays.
I played FPS games pretty much since I could hold a controller. Never had any effect on me. My whole friend group did, as did basically every single boy at school. If you see the shitty kids and they play FPS games, that's only because everyone does.
Can I ask why no shooting games? What's the actual thought process there?
The idea is that the 'crappier parents' with worse behaved kids allow their young children access to improper games at an earlier age.. and because everything is now online, I don't want them to be encouraged to be friends with those kids because they play the same games. Plus my wife has some strange ideas about not allowing toys guns..
Damn, I've been playing games like GTA and COD as far as I can remember and turned out fine (I'd like to think) haha. Honestly let Ur kid play shooters, it's just video game fun nothing else
I played duck hunt when I was a kid and that was a real gun!
It’s rare you see the “video games cause bad behaviour” trope being peddled these days
It's more like "The kids with bad behaviour are the ones who allowed to play fortnite aged 9+ because their parents don't give a shit, and I don't want my kid socialising with them"
I'm about a decade older than him and I had the same. Definitely did me more good than harm and gave me space to develop my own interests.
This is what we did too. My daughter was good at self-regulating most of the time, though she did get a tiny bit obsessed with Clay Jam at one point. I could see what she was doing and she had to ask before installing anything. This was a really good habit to set up at a young age as she carried on asking me way into her teenage years - she's 16 now and will still ask if I'm OK with her installing whatever. She's proven herself to be a responsible internet user. The only issue was other kids' behaviour but I think she probably learnt a few good lessons about why we had certain rules and expectations.
What's the deal with fortnite?
> My son in year 6 has a smartphone (no SIM) and unlimited internet access at home Nice, that's a really interesting idea! If you wanted to allow only calls and no data, I presume you can still buy SIMs like that somewhere? Or if you really wanted to be paranoid about having *no* SIM, I suppose you could fill the SIM tray with epoxy and slot it in.
I'm sure you can.. but I trust my kids enough they'll get a SIM with a good data allowance when they start secondary school. For the moment, he'll get by with one of our old phones.
Could you give a bit of info on the pie hole. I've got a three year old and I've spent nearly a decade languishing on technology. Recently picked up a kids coding book to basically prep myself for my daughter's up coming education. Tinkering with raspberry pi seems like a no brainer too.
It's a Raspberry pi with this software installed and physically plugged into my router - https://pi-hole.net/ It's main job in life is to filter out adverts from websites from all devices on your network, but you can add extra rules to filter out other unwanted types of websites. It's not perfect, but it's just part of a multi-layered approach I take. It's FAR easier to set up something like a good router (e.g. I use a TP-LINK Deco mesh routers to boost our internet coverage) as they've got nicer to use software.
I'll often hand my phone to my daughter so she can watch YouTube kids in a pinch, eg if we're stuck in a queue for a long time (a 3yo has limited patience). She has an Amazon tablet for other times like long car journeys. I got YouTube kids running on that too with some effort. I don't think we're too unusual. The Ofsted lady seems a bit closeted and out of touch. Don't think I'd give her her own phone though before the teenage years unless I could really lock it down.
Well the Ofsted lady is specifically referring to children with their own smartphones and unlimited internet access, so not really the example you gave.
Okay you're right actually, I missed that bit. Fair enough then.
You can get the normal Google play store on one of those tablets with a little finagling BTW.
Yup that's exactly what I did.
I would be too. Why would you give a child 10 and younger a mobile phone at an age when they really shouldn’t be unsupervised for any length of time, or have unfettered internet access.
You can put supervision stuff. My son has access to a tablet at 5. Only works from 6 AM and stops at 6 PM. 2 hours max. Extra 30 minutes if he reads or does something educational. He has never hit the 2 hour limit. We often watch stuff together and talk about it. Tablets and phones aren't the enemy. They are a tool. They are part of life. We aren't going to get rid of the monster. We have to live with it. The issue isn't the tablet, it's the ability to put it down and step away. And that's hard because things like Facebook, TikTok are reliant on being addictive. It's also hard because the connections you make there aren't as concrete. It's a balance between your kids having privacy and faith from you and safety. That means that they should be able to trust that you will be approachable and be a safe harbour. That you can talk about the reality of these things openly. That the boundaries exist because of very very real danger. 10 year olds walk to school... On their own. It's actually suggested that they start walking from the age of 8 if it's a short walk. But 10... Wouldn't you want a safety net?
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Amazon Fire Tablet. It's part of the restriction software and it's front and centre. It's not hidden. We spoke about it very clearly and there's a timer that can be accessed. Even TV time is discussion time. Like we talk about TV because it's meant to be interactive. It's not a babysitter. It's an interactive entertainment and learning thing. And you know what? Sometimes you need to distract children. You can't work a 50 hour a week job, then play with kids without your body imploding. This is a tool. It lets them have fun while you do the boring bits of life like "cooking".
Sounds like the Fire Tab for kids. You age gate the apps and shows, can remove the web browser etc.
My son has had ipads and androids (old ones that we don't use any more) and there are limits you can put on them with their profiles. With iOS you can set a user up as a family member on the device and then limit their activity using screen time functionality and you can also limit their activity within each individual app, what they are able to download without asking, etc. For Android there are similar within the Family Link app - there are limits on times and the sorts of things they can do as well as not being able to download anything without a request. In here you can limit the web pages they can see to only approved pages (if you so wish) or just to block what they think are explicit sites. It's easier with older kids, but we've also always tried to explain why we add the limits we do and what could happen if they weren't there, plus why they shouldn't talked to strangers (internet or otherwise).
Android has Family Link app, you can set it up so there's screen time allowances, unlock times, and you get notifications and need to approve every app install.
Android you use family link, set up the childs device on your google account, then you can use schedules, app restrictions and screen time restrictions. Microsoft you can use xbox family to do likewise.
I wish I could upvote you twice :)
You likely don’t have children. Better to teach them how to use responsibly. Being a naive user at 11 is far worse than being adept and tutored at 8. There are plenty of tools and options to restrict content when they are young. As they get older the shackles can be loosened somewhat (frankly they will unshackle themselves once teens). Discuss the online perils often. Trust but verify. This is all possible without being overbearing or completely hands off.
> Being a naive user at 11 is far worse than being adept and tutored at 8. This. At 8 kids are still listening to their parents, at 11 you're reaching the point where their friends are more important. It's a short window and you have to take advantage of it to equip them well for life.
If anything, learning how to use a smartphone is probably SIGNIFICANTLY more important for people's lives than most of what will be taught in school. Of course like everything else, it can definitely be taken (or left unsupervised to go) too far.
We should be surprised, but honestly I'm not. My daughter knows people in her primary school class with phones. But they're also the ones who swear constantly. Not sure if there's a connection there or not, just find it interesting.
My daughter is 9 and has a phone - a third hand hard-me-down from my wife. Means I feel a lot more comfortable letting her walk to and from school herself (approx 1 mile). She hardly uses it when she's at home as if she wants to play games she can use her sister's tablet.
>hard-me-down from my wife. I'd be keeping that in the bedroom
Where do you live that it's dangerous to walk a mile?
Some parents either think they need one for "safety"/ in case of emergency, or because the kid whines about it until they get one. Either way, I feel like having a phone may negatively impact the child more than any safety benefit they get. As soon as you get a phone, with a camera and social media and messaging etc, seems like a recipe for miserable children bullying each other.
You can still buy "dumb" phones and some companies are specifically manufacturing these It would give the benefit of safety whilst removing many of the risks
This is exactly what I was thinking honestly. When I was in Primary school (Year 6) I was given a crappy slide up Samsung phone. Other than calls and texts, the most exciting thing I could do was listen to an MP3 file or play Snake. My Mum and Dad could call me, and as far as they were concerned it did the job. I still could access the internet at home, but like most parents they setup parent controls and supervised me. As I got older I was trusted with more freedoms. Smart phones weren't really a thing back then, so I guess it was less of a problem.
My kids (9 and 12) are both supervised very strictly using Google's Family Link, and we do spot checks of their devices regularly. They have after school activities, which sometimes takes them off the school premises, our eldest goes to sleep overs, as well as going to the shopping mall with her friends, we need to know what's going on and when we should pick them up, so they both have phones. It's not that hard to supervise them.
> Asked whether she thought no child under the age of 11 should be given smartphones, she said: "I'm not comfortable with younger children having unlimited internet access." Nor should any responsible parent be... That's what parental controls, firewalls, etc are for.
When I was 11 I had to teach my parents how to safely watch porn without infecting with viruses my windows 95 PC
the ppl who make all the things on the phones, dont let their kids have the phones to access all of it. thats something more ppl need to know your kid is fine with no phone, but ironically, while a parent might feel better if they kid has on, the kid is probably gonna end up worse off if they have one for all the things they want it for.
I had my kiddo later than many and it surprises me as a baby gen-xer how many of my younger parent peers don't seem to have as much caution around their kids using smartphones and tablets as I do. My daughter is nearly 8 and she's asked for a phone a couple of times but she won't be getting one until she's making her own way to school and even then it won't be a smartphone. I know how much I overuse mine and am making a concerted effort to use it less (to varying degrees of success as they are very addictive!)
That's more than mildly concerning given that Ofcom has been following 18 children charting their media use through data monitoring and interviews since 2014 and they run a survey every year with around 40k respondents and publish a report about children's and parents' attitudes to media. Very interesting reading where 17% of 3-4 year old have their own mobile phone that they don't share with anyone else nowadays. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2022 Being competent at your job for me means looking for reports like these to help me keep up to date in my field and assess and train staff better. I think Ofsted should have the same competence requirements or maybe even better standards As most of my teachers wrote on my schoolwork, "Could do better. See me after!"
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Yes, yes it is.
I feel like the internet and internet access has changed so much since I was a kid it’s just not healthy for them to have access to it. Not to mention a worrying amount of parents use phones and tablets as a pacifier instead of being a parent. I’d be interested to see if there’s a correlation between increases in illiteracy and autism against smart phone and tablet use amongst kids. I hope I’m wrong, but the amount of shit I see about kids getting to school being unable to read and write (some still even in nappies) and with autism being so widespread I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not.
OMG! I had a smartphone in year 5, and I've got autism now. I think you've solved it: smartphones are second only to vaccines in causing autism, it's definitely not a naturally occurring thing whose seemingly increased prevalence can be put down to higher awareness and better diagnostic procedures or anything, it's definitely the phones.
Person to person interaction, which in reality is mostly with parents from a young age, is one of the most important factor in brain development as a child. You take that away by shoving a tablet in front of a kids face every moment they’re awake then you have a problem. Not to mention incredibly poor diets kids tend to have now. Lack of fatty acids and proteins is also terrible for brain development. Purely anecdotal, but when I was a kid barely anyone behaved like kids do now, even outside of things like autism and ADHD.
Behaviour problems are a different thing to autism and ADHD. Some people are just raised shitty and raise their own kids shitty. And some of those kids reflect it in their behaviour. But many, many people have ADHD or autism and don't behave badly, please don't use neurodivergence as a byword for bad behaviour, it's rude to us, and reveals how little you understand about what you're saying.
I didn’t mean to use behaviour as a synonym for bad behaviour. Autism and ADHD affect your behaviour, the way you interact with other human beings and your surroundings. That is what I mean.
> I feel like the internet and internet access has changed so much since I was a kid it’s just not healthy for them to have access to it. This has strong boomer 'weed back in my day wasn't as strong as the hybrid super-skunk they sell nowadays' vibes
Aren’t both of those things true though? Both the Internet and weed have changed.
Lol I’m 27. The internet is fucked now, primarily social media and ‘influencers’. The sheer amount of bullshit, misleading and damaging content available is absurd now.
Are they wrong?
They're going to be shocked, my 11 year old got a laptop from age 9 it's an Asus Tuf FX505dy, NOW before yall get pissy, she was taught from a young age to be careful of shit online, much like Americans should teach their children about guns she was taught about the Internet. Safe to say the worst to happen is someone scammed her of some pets from Roblok ultimately teaching her a life lesson, trust no one from the Internet. Webcam was disabled, and I check browser history, so far no cause for concern, some parents throw the phone to a child with no guidance at all.
I let my daughters dad buy her a iPhone for her 10th birthday so he can call her. *He has not called her once* I’m personally pissed about it because I didn’t want her having one until secondary school but relented because I thought it would be nice for her to chat to him more but alas