<story><title>Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?</title><text>Recently, there are more and more studies that smartphones harm learning and not a single study with the opposite results. However, very few parents have the guts not to buy a smartphone for their child. At what age do children in the HN crowd begin to have censored access to proprietary software (personal supervision) and uncensored (smartphone with or without parental controls)? Are there families where children have access to computers with only FOSS before they have access to proprietary software?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>[Random parenting advice from the internet]&lt;p&gt;My child is grown but grew up during the iPhone era.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I had a policy.&lt;p&gt;It lasted until middle school.&lt;p&gt;Then we had a conversation.&lt;p&gt;And worked things out together.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s my recommendation because in the long run, conversation and negotiation are the only tools you really have.&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;Appendix:&lt;p&gt;1. FOSS is your value. Your child is not you. If your child thinks FOSS is cool, it&amp;#x27;s cool. If they think it is lame, you are being lame.&lt;p&gt;2. Parental controls are only as good as someone else&amp;#x27;s parents. Your child can look at naked people on someone else&amp;#x27;s phone.&lt;p&gt;3. Around middle school, your child&amp;#x27;s peers begin to have massive importance. It is not that you cease to be important. But you are going to have to share influence. Even if you try to forbid such sharing.&lt;p&gt;4. It is better if parents grow as their children grow. Growing is on you because you are the adult.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gpt5</author><text>To add to that:&lt;p&gt;1. Technology and screen time aren&amp;#x27;t the problems; it&amp;#x27;s the lack of passion and interests that is the root problem. Cultivate passion in your child and expose them to new things. You&amp;#x27;ll immediately notice a positive change in how they use their screen time to pursue these interests. When they watch gaming videos or unboxing on youtube they do that because that&amp;#x27;s their current passion.&lt;p&gt;2. Your control over your children diminishes over time. Build trust early on and allow them to make mistakes; these are invaluable teaching tools. It&amp;#x27;s better to teach them good habits concerning technology while you still have influence, rather than later when your control is limited.&lt;p&gt;3. There are real costs associated with not allowing your child largely unrestricted access to technology. These costs include social drawbacks, a significantly reduced ability for them to explore their passions independently, and long-term tension between the child and the parents due to a lack of trust.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?</title><text>Recently, there are more and more studies that smartphones harm learning and not a single study with the opposite results. However, very few parents have the guts not to buy a smartphone for their child. At what age do children in the HN crowd begin to have censored access to proprietary software (personal supervision) and uncensored (smartphone with or without parental controls)? Are there families where children have access to computers with only FOSS before they have access to proprietary software?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>[Random parenting advice from the internet]&lt;p&gt;My child is grown but grew up during the iPhone era.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I had a policy.&lt;p&gt;It lasted until middle school.&lt;p&gt;Then we had a conversation.&lt;p&gt;And worked things out together.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s my recommendation because in the long run, conversation and negotiation are the only tools you really have.&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;Appendix:&lt;p&gt;1. FOSS is your value. Your child is not you. If your child thinks FOSS is cool, it&amp;#x27;s cool. If they think it is lame, you are being lame.&lt;p&gt;2. Parental controls are only as good as someone else&amp;#x27;s parents. Your child can look at naked people on someone else&amp;#x27;s phone.&lt;p&gt;3. Around middle school, your child&amp;#x27;s peers begin to have massive importance. It is not that you cease to be important. But you are going to have to share influence. Even if you try to forbid such sharing.&lt;p&gt;4. It is better if parents grow as their children grow. Growing is on you because you are the adult.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tstrimple</author><text>&amp;gt; And worked things out together.&lt;p&gt;So much this. Kids are living, breathing, thinking human beings. They are immature yes. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t remove the value of their opinions or their agency. And it&amp;#x27;s not to say you give them everything they want, but that you find common ground and aren&amp;#x27;t seen as dictating things without reason. If you can explain your point of view in terms they understand, compliance is far more likely.&lt;p&gt;For the most part, my kids have unlimited access to electronics and the internet. Yeah, sometimes they watch stupid TikTok videos or silly toy reviews on Youtube. Other times they are learning how to code or learning how to knit or how to make slime from common household materials, etc. Last week I baked bread with my daughter because she found a recipe on TikTok she wanted to try out. They sometimes watch content I don&amp;#x27;t like or agree with, but often that&amp;#x27;s resolved just by talking about why I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s good content or sending a good message. I&amp;#x27;ve talked to both of my daughters about why I don&amp;#x27;t like SSSniperWolf content as an example. Usually this works out fine, but none of the things they watch are so egregious I feel like I need to cut them off. And who am I to judge the occasional mindless entertainment when I&amp;#x27;ve always done the same and I can readily see it&amp;#x27;s a small portion of the content they are consuming?&lt;p&gt;When I hear folks talking about zero access and no smart devices until X years, I have to ask myself where the trust and relationship exists between these parents and their children. I just can&amp;#x27;t imagine not having enough of a relationship with my kids to not have a good understanding of what they are up to online and how they are perceiving it. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine not being able to trust the values that I&amp;#x27;ve instilled in my children and having to cut them off from the world to hide that neglect. Further, I feel these sort of blanket bans put kids into a position where they feel they need to hide what they do from their parents online which is the absolute opposite of what they should be thinking.&lt;p&gt;That said, we do have restrictions. No electronics during dinner or shared entertainment sort of things. People scrolling social media during movie time is a pet peeve of mine. The electronic devices are not an escape from small talk during boring family dinners or the slow part of the show we&amp;#x27;re watching.</text></comment>