So, this summer we got the girls cell phones. (I wished we called them mobiles (/MO’ byles/) in this country. Wouldn’t that be fun?)
I’ve been semi-dreading this transition for the past couple of years. My ambivalence about phones is no secret. I hatehatehate the fact that so many of us spend so much time looking down at our phones instead of at the world around us, at people, at books, at newspapers, at nature, at anything. I hate seeing groups of kids walking around with each other and yet staring at their phones. I really do think the fact that we do so much of our interfacing with other people, both friends and strangers, digitally instead of person-to-person, is responsbile for many of society’s current ills and divisions.
That said. Damn, the little things make life convenient. This is the main reason we assented to giving the girls phones this year. They’re in middle school, now, a short walk from our house, and involved with afterschool clubs and spontaneous socializing and whatnot. It’s so, so nice to be able to contact them and vice versa about changes in our plans and theirs.
But we didn’t exactly jump into this brave new world with both feet. When we first got the gals phones, back in July, we got shitty, basic ones. This is what we call them now in our family: The shitty phones. They weren’t smartphones; they just had a little slide-out keyboard, which the girls were jazzed about. And they weren’t flip phones GOD FORBID. We figured they were a good intermediate step before graduating to smartphones. The girls could call and text, take some shitty, grainy pictures, and it would be fine for a couple of years.
But, well. The thing is, they were shitty phones. Like, really shitty. The memory filled up after like 10 texts, and when the girls’ friends sent photos or gifs, the phones would all but explode. We ended up dropping $20 on a memory card for each of them that didn’t even seem to work. Meanwhile, the girls were so used to messing around on Alastair’s and my beautiful, intuitive iPhones, we might as well have given them Commodore graphing calculators from the 1970s (pictured above) and been like: Here! Try these! They’re great!
So we got rid of the shitty phones. We got the girls bottom-of-the-line Android smartphones, and disabled the crap out of them, so they can’t use cellular data—only wifi, texts and calling. No social media, no way, no how. A 2-page contract detailing guidelines for phone usage, rights, and responsibilities. A big-ass family meeting. A you-lose-it-or-break-it-you-buy-it (or you get demoted to one of the shitty phones in the attic) clause. A plea for them not to become “phone people.” As well as an opportunity for the girls to air their comments and complaints about Alastair’s and my phone habits, because we could surely do better, too. (Although since I got rid of Facebook and Twitter on my phone a few years ago, it’s been a lot easier. And good for my mood, too. I highly recommend it.)
So far, the girls have not abused their phone privileges — at least not in any egregious ways. That I know of. One of the girls, I won’t say which, (ugh, it’s such a pain having to respect their privacy!) is definitely a big texting enthusiast with her group of friends, which I get a little annoyed with sometimes. On the other hand, I spent hours on the phone with my friends in middle school and high school. Talking is a little more human, for sure, but texting is just what kids do these days. Hell, it’s what I do, too. I love texting! So as long as she’s not ditching in-real-life socializing in favor of the on-screen kind—so far she’s not—I think it’s OK.
So, really, everythings’s going relatively well at the moment. And yet, I still worry. I worry that as more kids the girls know get sucked into a phone-based reality, a la the movie Wall-E (the people floating around in chairs with screens in front of their faces all day — how prescient was that??) that they will too. I worry about what will happen three or four years when we will probably allow them, grudgingly, to start using social media. I worry about losing them to the crack of online validation, the pain of online cruelty.
Then, I guess losing your kids, in ways small and large, postive and negative, is an inevitable part of adolescence, even taking phones out of the equation. Isn’t it.
For now, though: They still want to be tucked in at night. They still want to cuddle on the couch and watch movies with us. They still want to talk to us about their days. I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
Jane, I simultaneously applaud you and feel your pain. As I think you know, our family has a not-so-happy relationship with smartphones to the point where we just don’t have them. However, the crappy flip phone I use is, as you described, crappy, especially in the making of phone calls. Which, well, it’s a phone. You’d think that would be a priority.
That said, H seems to be involving herself in every single school activity ever, so I would love to get her a phone, even a crappy one. She’s not that interested in any kind of technology use, but her bro is, so we have to be oh-so-careful with whatever we end up doing for her.
I think the contract, the family meeting, and the severe curtailing of what the phone can do are all excellent ideas. I’m less concerned about multiple hours of texting (as you said, we did multiple hours of talking) than about any bullying or icky social stuff that might arise from, say, group texts or sharing of information via text that maybe wasn’t meant to be shared. I assume you love and trust the girls’ friends, but what happens if/when the mean people sneak into the mix? Pre-social media, that would be my huge concern.
Also, just out of curiosity: What’s the school policy on phones? Where do the phones live during the school day?
Yeah, I definitely worry about the icky social stuff via text. So much more room for misunderstanding, for kneejerk reactions, for inappropriate info sharing. (We actually had “teachable moment” on our own phones a few months ago, when one of the girls sent a goofy photo of the other one, without permission, to a friend of mine.) We talked a lot about the dynamics of online interactions in our “contract,” and have ongoing conversations about it, too. I’m not sure how else to handle it, except the same way we’d handle real-life situations involving meanness / drama / etc., which are bound to happen.
As for the school: They have a no-phones policy. The girls bring their phones to school so they can use them afterward, but keep them in their lockers.
Good luck. It’s not easy — and I know you’ve got a more complicated situation than we do!
The middle school showed a great film a couple of years ago called “Screenagers” and I’ve been following their Tech Talk Tuesdays ever since. They propose dinner discussion topics every Tuesday with a little background info. Check it out here: https://www.screenagersmovie.com/tech-talk-tuesdays/ to see past topics and to sign up for the emails.
Phones. Ugh. We definitely had a child using a “C-student” phone because she had lost her fancy Razor she had asked for as a birthday present. But we also had a kid (maybe the same one) who played her instrument all the way through high school because when she begged to quit in middle school her dad said, “Sure. Go get me your phone. That was the deal.”
I have one piece of free, worth-every-penny parenting advice: make your kids talk on the phone, preferably the landline. They socialize with their friends, but they don’t talk on the phone, so they don’t know how. My kids would look at me with a combination of disbelief and fear when I asked them to answer the phone.
Good luck with your digital natives. It is a scary thing and we can’t really help them because we really don’t know. We never broke our phone addictions at 15 because they were affecting our friendships or happiness, or put ourselves on phone diets at 17 so we could finish our college applications. I lectured my youngest that even her older (half) sisters wouldn’t be able to help her because they didn’t get phones until COLLEGE.