[kawogi]

> Let’s protect the elementary and middle school years from the distractions and the dangers of a smartphone.

> … because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.

Sorry, but I do not agree with the equivalence of a device and one of its possible usages.

My kids got their first smartphone at the ages of 5-6. (dramatic pause)

When I was younger me and my siblings got a camera, a Game Boy, a watch, a walkman, a calculator, a stopwatch and small handheld battery-driven games. Later a tamagotchi and whatever was trending. Also we were taught to use the phone-booth in case of an "emergency". While you do not have to agree that all of us needed all of this, nobody would've said to "wait until the age of 13" with all of this.

The phone I gave my kids were retired Android smartphones with Lineage OS installed. Almost all Google Apps removed or disarmed. I preinstalled Apps like: a calculator, camera, a secure messenger (Threema), clock, navigation (OSMAnd), a few educational games, a paint/drawing app, a calendar and added the most important contacts (Parents, siblings, grandparents) to the address book. We added more apps over time when we felt they might benefit from them.

We agreed upon usage duration and modalities. We mostly moved their TV-time towards their phones. We explained how to ask before taking a photo of a person.

What happened? My Kids started to get interested in how to read/write, used the navigation software during road-trips to find the next possible stop to have a break or try to find POIs along the road and wait them to pass by. They played with the calculator, started to learn English (non-native if that wasn't obvious, yet), started to "program" robots, send me "good nights" when I was late at work. Call me if they spontaneously decided to stay with a friend after school. Take photos during their holidays, listen to audiobooks during road-trips. Play with the torchlight in the tent.

The older one is now 12. She got access to our family calender and contact list, so she can plan her appointments with friends around ours, manage her ToDo-lists, make stop-motion videos, research all sorts of stuff on wikipedia, gain a very good understanding of how those devices work. Learn to take care of expensive gears and how it matters to have control over their own data and that backups are important. She learns how to manage her data plan by moving audiobooks for offline-usage. Also she helps her grandparents with all sorts of technical problems they have with their phones.

Yes, it's more work to teach a kid how to work with all this stuff than just throw an iPhone at them when they turn 13 and say "whoa, finally old enough to figure this all out." What could go wrong. Sorry, that I'm a bit salty on this topic (and I sometimes might not find the right words due to the language barrier), but just saying that a smartphone is bad because parents do not care for what their kids are doing with the device just feels plain wrong to me.

[brewdad]

You should start a business selling those locked down phones to parents because 99% of them have never heard of Lineage OS. Half who have heard of it wouldn't know how to begin installing it and locking it down.

[kawogi]

LineageOS was just the easiest for me personally (was already installed anyway). But aren't there parental tools to lock down phones for non-tech people?

Another middle ground would be to insert no SIM card (my kids only had access via WiFi at first) or to disable mobile data.

Maybe my kids are special, but so far it was enough agree upon rules about what they are allowed to do. As soon as they break the rules they will loose some of their benefits. No rule works for everyone, but simple "no" to a technology that has so many upsides for our family life is also nothing for me.

Edit: also "selling a locked-down phone" is exactly NOT a solution. Parents will have to learn the up and downs of this technology and apply an individual solution to their situation.