Smart Phones are computers, in a different form factor. Giving you kid an smartphone doesn't mean you need to give him access to facebook, twitter, instagram or tiktok.
So is your car and your microwave and your router. All computers in different form factors. The form factor - and associated culture of use - is all that matters. For smartphones, social media is unfortunately inherent part of the experience - the hardware and the OS have been continuously optimized for that use for the past decade.
Smart phones are poor computers. They also come with social media apps preloaded (the last cell phone I bought prevented deleting or uninstalling facebook) although that doesn't mean you can't order your children not to create accounts. They're also difficult to lockdown and monitor, and they continuously broadcast copious amounts of data about your children to third parties. Children would be much better served by having a real PC they can play with and learn on.
Spoken like someone in a bubble. Most people don't care for any of that - they want their TikTok, YouTube, Facebook dopamine hits. They want to "Like" the latest picture Granny posts of their kids.
Not to fiddle with things and learn something new.
For the vast majority of people, computers are just very expensive entertainment devices. That's why Smartphones are so successful. Not because they are great at computing, but everyone has their own personal slot machine. It's always with them. It's always connected.
iPhones don't come with social media apps pre-loaded (unless you count Facetime/iMessage).
Sounds like you agree with me. Smart phones are poor computers but they sell well because they're designed to be easy to use devices for media consumption and data collection. I've written programs on a cell phone (perhaps that's just a much less popular type of slot machine) but I wouldn't recommend it, or expect a kid to develop a love of coding by handing them a cell phone. A PC on the other hand could easily spark that interest in them.
I think kids naturally want to fiddle with things and learn something new. Maybe most grow out it eventually, but it's innate to them. We can't expect kids to know or care about the massive amounts of data collection in smart phones or the sophisticated types of manipulation they'll be subjected to on social media, but as adults we should know better and be very careful about giving kids access to either. Giving a kid an old computer or laptop instead of a cell phone seems like a much better option. Having one set up and available to them in a shared space like an office or living room makes it easy to keep an eye on them while they explore and monitor their usage.
I've never seen an iPhone that didn't have social media apps on it, but I've never seen one at factory defaults either, so I'll have to accept that you're right about pre-loaded garbage being an android specific problem.
> I think kids naturally want to fiddle with things and learn something new.
I have two kids. I can tell you that it's not necessarily true, and kids spend an ungodly amount of time silently comparing themselves to their peers. It's always "My friend has this", "My friend does that". It takes a special kind of kid to have the patience, attention and time needed to want to fiddle around with a computer. I've tinkered with computers, smartphones, etc, all my life and shared as much as I could about it with my children - they have zero interest.
Of course, they don't know about the data collection and they're growing up in a world that normalizes that kind of behavior. When looking back, they'll go-- well as a kid I had that, so I guess that's ok. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et. al. wants that- they know it's just a matter of time.
My kids have had cell phones since 12 for 'necessary' purposes, but they were not allowed to use it except for that. Otherwise, kept in the public space, in view and must ask to use it. My oldest is halfway till 17 and hardly uses their phone now. I have been thanked for this because they notice how their friends are addicted. The goal here is to avoid priming your kids' brain to be addicted to phones, not necessarily avoiding tech.
probably the kind that a vast number of people buy.
I just overheard someone talking about how they buy cheap phones on Amazon because they don't need all the bells and whistles. Except they don't know that's not the only reason why that phone is cheap.
That's true, though it's harder than it looks to keep the kid off those services. You can block the app, but what if they go in through the web browser. Maybe there's a way to block certain websites on the device, but who knows if kids use proxies or alternate browsers to get around such blocks. It seems like a cat-and-mouse game that's hard to win because kids are highly motivated to get around parental controls, and once one kid discovers a workaround it would be widely shared.
