Not sure why this hasn't triggered a discussion, I thought a lot of readers include parents of young(er) children?
I totally lost my teen to TikTok and deeply regret succumbing to their (and my wife's) pressure to give them an iPhone at 14 (they're 16 now). It's like hours upon hours of mindless scrolling, with occasional gaming sprinkled in.
My youngest is 10 and has a dependency on school iPad (school was giving up iPads during COVID when they were teaching remotely). We have to monitor their usage closely and unfortunately angry outbursts (ie when it's time to stop) are a regular occurrence.
The 10yo does have a lot of extra-curricular activities so having a cellphone would be a big help (to know where they are and give them an option to contact us if anything happens). But there's just no way I'm giving them a smartphone anytime soon.
I think there's sooo many parents in my position and do hope that some of these devices might be able to help.
spondylosaurus · 3h ago
> Bark places calls to law enforcement when it receives an alert about a kid threatening to harm themselves or others, he told me, but those alerts are reviewed by a human first. “We’re not swatting kids,” he said.
So any messages your kid sends to their friends could get routed to some random employee at this third-party service? Yikes.
I totally lost my teen to TikTok and deeply regret succumbing to their (and my wife's) pressure to give them an iPhone at 14 (they're 16 now). It's like hours upon hours of mindless scrolling, with occasional gaming sprinkled in.
My youngest is 10 and has a dependency on school iPad (school was giving up iPads during COVID when they were teaching remotely). We have to monitor their usage closely and unfortunately angry outbursts (ie when it's time to stop) are a regular occurrence.
The 10yo does have a lot of extra-curricular activities so having a cellphone would be a big help (to know where they are and give them an option to contact us if anything happens). But there's just no way I'm giving them a smartphone anytime soon.
I think there's sooo many parents in my position and do hope that some of these devices might be able to help.
So any messages your kid sends to their friends could get routed to some random employee at this third-party service? Yikes.