[jameskilton]

My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.

As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental controls to do everything for me.

Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by Nintendo and Microsoft. I got that working but it's by far the worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single player.

[Angostura]

> My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.

It’s all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they’ve actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter’s case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-world activities is tough.

In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple parental controls offered a reasonable approach.

[ecshafer]

My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to text, but keeps them off of apps and such.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

I had a cell phone before my parents. Paid cash for a TracFone when I was 16 or 17 and used that to sell weed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[SkyPuncher]

Yep. Even 20 years ago, phones were basically necessary to have a social life in high school. It’s where everything got planned.

[adastra22]

My daughter is 14. Still no phone. You can make this work.

[alisonkisk]

HN as a population skews heavily away from "real-world peer-scheduled activities"

[nicoburns]

My parents did the no phone until 16 rule, and it was awful. Completely cut me off socially.

[Someone1234]

The "socially" part is the problem though. A lot of bullying occurs via those social media platforms that teenagers are using.

[mothballed]

This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social experience.

This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.

[dwb]

I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as it meant I wasn’t quite such a weirdo outcast.

[whythough1234]

I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 17, but still used the house phone to call and talk to friends. A house phone a parent can always listen in to conversations but still respect the child’s privacy. The child also knows that they can be listened in on and that their privacy is restricted.

The child may also learn about making social effort to keep in touch rather than relying on a beacon to ping them about social events.

[hnlmorg]

16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.

Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not.

[squigz]

> Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.

Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very effective way to create trust issues in your kids.

[adastra22]

Yeah I’m pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is setting you up for worse trouble.

[iso1631]

Then you are a terrible parent and your kids will get their social activities through detention as they can't do homework.