China wants to limit teens to using their phones for just an hour a day to fight rising ‘internet addiction’::The Cyberspace Administration of China announced proposed regulations for children’s smartphone usage, including a “minor mode” with time limits.
There is no norm of course, but a personal phone is kinda necessary once they use the school bus etc alone. We’ve had a lot of problems with buses being hours delayed or completely canceled in winter and payphones just don’t exist anymore so a way to contact a guardian is absolutely necessary.
Ipad is the next issue, schools have started requiring iPads for school use for elementary school children so there is also no way around this once they enter school as well. At least those are kinda locked down from school so they can’t install just anything.
On the one hand, elementary school children having these devices makes me uncomfortable.
On the other hand, not using devices will put them at a hefty disadvantage on a technical aspect as well. I am fairly sure if I didn’t have my own personal computer with Internet access when I was a child, I wouldn’t be a software engineer today and I might never have acquired the problem solving skills I have. I also wouldn’t have been able to teach myself languages and other things.
But technology has also been dumbed down in recent years so tinkering and learning how things work to fix them is not as necessary either.
I guess there is just no generalized best way to go about it, the line between too much and too little is just way too hard to navigate, and it also depends on the child in large parts.