alt Hacker NewsI don't think enough parents have internalized that if they're the "I don't let my teenager have a phone" parent in 2026, that also means they're the "I don't let my teenager have friends" parent.
Replies
If .. many parents would do this (like you imply), then there would be many kids without a phone who can be friends with each other?
Also I doubt the "not being able to have friend without a phone" in general. But surely harder in most areas.
This is a symptom of not encouraging children into extracurricular activities. If all you have to bond over is social media, your friendship is empty. That's how you create terminally-online, mentally ill people. Everyone needs third spaces like sports, scouts, music, church, clubs, and the like. They get you out of your house and head and surround you with people who share similar interests.
My gut reaction was "well, you can give them a phone, just lock down tiktok and other crap" but then I was thinking "well, in the end that doesn't matter in practice, they can buy a used device from a friend for pocket money and hiding it from me will be trivial", so... it all comes down to my relationship with the kid. Nothing else will work.
There's a line to toe - each kid is different, but with my daughter she went from a flip phone in middle school, to a smart phone in high school.
We didn't turn on mobile data for her smart phone (hand me down pixel) until about a year ago.
She is very responsible with it and it hasn't been much of an issue. She had no problems making friends, and if her phone was filtering shallow people out her friend pool a bit that probably wasn't a bad thing.
Now, my oldest son is dying to have a smartphone but really he just wants to use it as a tablet. I installed lineageOS on an old D821/Nexus5 and it can run some mobile games, and we have a chromebook.
We'll try the same flip phone in middle-school route for him. It fulfills the basic needs of emergency contact, and is a good test of responsibility with lower stakes.