• sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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    9 months ago

    I’ve put through kids through secondary and have two more to go. I universally regret giving them a smartphone at year 7. For the first one we fought valiantly - we said no; she and one other girl in her whole year didn’t have a smart phone. Within 6 months it became clear that she was missing out on a lot of events by not having a phone. We caved in and bought one of those neutered android phones meant for younger people - it sucked and basically didn’t work. After 9 months we got her a used iPhone.

    It was also the wrong thing to do. Social media immediately starts shaping them and we still have restrictions on which networks they can go on. She can pry Instagram out of my cold dead hands; that site is liquid poison for a young girl.

    • TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz
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      9 months ago

      Lol, I would’ve been bullied in school if I didn’t have a phone. At least in later grades when phones became more popular.

        • tobbue@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          This, tbh. You don’t get bullied for something, you get bullied because bullies want to bully.

        • TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz
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          9 months ago

          In my experience it’s usually the ones that stick out and aren’t seen as “cool”. Not even nerds, just people that are different in one way or another.

            • TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz
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              9 months ago

              No? Not everyone got bullied when I went to school, and I’m sure it’s not very different nowadays.

              • asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                My point is that everyone is “different in one way or another”, so we’re all fair game. That might be getting bullied in front of everyone for being a stereotypical nerd, or it may be another clique talking about you behind your back for dressing preppy and hanging out with the “cool kids”.

      • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        I didn’t have a phone until I was 16 despite most of my peers getting one around 12/13. I didn’t get bullied for not having a phone, in fact no one really made any comments on it other than an occasional “wow, I couldn’t live without my phone!”

        Granted, this was over ten years ago, and was probably the first generation of teenagers where cell phones were near-ubiquitous. I don’t know if kids nowadays would get bullied just for not having a phone, but it would severely limit their social interactions. Riding your bike and knocking at your friends’ doors randomly, or going to the mall and expecting you’ll find some people you know there, these are from a bygone era.