No Smart Phone For You!
Children should not get smartphones until they are at least teenagers.
Toys. I love toys. No, not the weird early-90s movie I secretly dug, but the objects we give to children for play. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what toys are for and who they are for. Children’s use of toys is something that helps develop their brains, bodies, and social responsibilities that might be expected of them in adulthood. A pediatric review of the role of toys and play in children’s lives by the Northern Clinics of Istanbul states that games and toys play a crucial role in raising healthy and happy individuals (Cetin Dag et al 2021). Toys and games should promote the use of children’s imaginations and physical skills, and smartphones, tablets, and device-bound toys and games terminate any chance at imaginative development.
Children are getting access to smartphones too early in their development. Any electronic with a screen can stunt a child’s development, and an article published by Boston Children’s Hospital (Kelly 2023) has recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
“The AAP advises keeping children away from screens until they’re 18 months old and limiting digital media use for 2- to 5-year-olds to one hour per day.”
It is perfectly fine for your four-year-old to play with a tablet while the family dines out. Once home, though, the tablet should be removed and replaced by a physical toy or game. Just beware of connected toys… physical toys that require a child to interact with a smartphone or tablet computer to access all features of the toy. It’s fascinating how up-in-arms parents got over suspicions a 1997 camera-embedded Barbie doll might spy on their kids (no such tech existed at the time), while this generation of parents (and schools) give their children devices with built-in cameras that CAN be hacked and accessed! Divorced from aspects of pure play, a Washington Post article states, “Your children could be ready for a smartphone or similar device anywhere from ten to fourteen, or during middle school” (Kelly 2023).
The article also brings up a fantastic compromise to keep a child from Roblox addiction; a smartwatch or a phone that isn’t quite smart enough to get your child into trouble (Kelly 2023). A ten-year-old should not be on social media, and the vast majority of popular social media apps are for thirteen years and above (which is still too young). It does provide us with a guideline, however. “You can have social media when it’s legal for you to use it,” might be a good standard. As a teacher of children aged 11-18, I love this compromise in technology. It also would give me hope that students have the early childhood development necessary to prosper in school and life.
There was so much more I wanted to write about, but the topic is too huge to tackle in one blog. Rest assured, I gathered enough research material to produce various opinions on the various aspects of smartphone technology and how children interact with it. My brain will continue to ponder the aspects I didn’t get to in this blog entry, and suddenly there’s a series. Or not. I really can’t predict the neurospiciness levels a subject has for me.
Works Cited
Cetin Dag N, Turkkan E, Kacar A, Dag H. Children’s only profession: Playing with toys. North Clin Istanb 2021;8(4):414–420.
Kelly, Heather. “What Age Should You Give a Kid Their First Phone?” Washington Post, 7 Sept. 2023.
Fliesler, Nancy. “Screen Time Caution for Babies.” Boston Children’s Hospital, 2 Feb. 2023, answers.childrenshospital.org/screen-time-infants/.
Phone Addiction≋ Food Addiction
Student cellphone addiction mirrors our nation’s issues with food addiction.
The body positivity movement, originally meant to support differently-bodied people, like those with physical disabilities or difference, was co-opted by the pro-fat body movement. Across social media hundreds of content creators proudly display their junk food meals and the unhealthy bodies that food produces.
It’s easy to see why someone would prefer to love themselves in obesity than go through the difficult process of changing their diet. Late-stage capitalist America produces more empty and unhealthy calorie foods than it does healthy ones. Many processed American foods are not legal to sell in other countries because they literally lack any nutritional value (AP 2022). Access to healthier foods is very difficult with many Americans live in food deserts; areas without supermarkets or grocery stores that carry fresh fruits, vegetables, and other basic nutritional needs. Then there’s the time involved in planning, buying, preparing, and eventual clean-up in making a meal for oneself or a family.
Unregulated smart phone use is similar, but for a parent or guardian, it should be easier to control. Students are filling their phones with junk. Instead of being tools to keep our students safe, they are being misused with unhealthy apps and behaviors. Students are downloading the digital equivalent of junk food into their brains daily. TikTok, SnapChat, Twitch, and Kick are just a few of the social media platforms that can and have featured both obscene materials.
From a non-parent, teacher’s perspective, the solution is easy and obvious. Lock up that phone! Before giving your student a smart phone, use all of the controls to make sure that your student can use the phone to make calls, stay satellite-located, text friends, and listen to music. That’s it. Take away all of the junk-foodesque features that lead to device addiction. Make sure they can utilize safety features and utilities like the calculator, and lock them away from everything else.
You say your student already has a bad phone addiction? Time to put them on a diet. As a parent, you own the phone and pay for the service; you can control how your student accesses that technology. Is it easy? Not at all. There’s a reason body positivity morphed into an obesity-is-great movement; diets and habit changes are difficult.
Works Cited
Warning! Toxic Toys!
How does one safely play with Miniverse UV resin craft kits? By throwing out the poison!
Making and collecting miniatures has been a lifelong special interest. Toy company Zuru has been giving with an amazing array of miniatures, though not always consistent with scale. They’re relatively safe for school-age children. It’s the MGA Miniverse toy kits that are concerning.
Miniverse is a series of ball-shaped “surprise” craft toys by MGA (best known for LOL Surprise and Bratz dolls). The projects are all at a consistent, roughly 1/6th scale (fashion doll size), and are amazing with details, realism, and interactivity.
It is that interactivity that is the problem. Nearly every one of the Miniverse craft kits contains highly toxic UV resin. UV resin is something you’re more familiar with than you’d think; it’s what makes most modern manicures. A clear liquid, UV resin can be tinted to nearly any shade, and the resin contained in the craft kits tend to be clear (water or juice), opaque white, pink, or yellow (cheese and sauces).
You can assemble the craft without the resin, but it’s the resin that hardens into a plastic that connects all of the tiny pieces. Hold on, the manicurist uses a special lamp on your nails! No worries, the instructions on Miniverse kits have you placing the finished object in direct sunlight for five to ten minutes. Problems all solved! Everyone can play with UV resin!
Or not. The craft kits don’t contain everything you need; like disposable gloves. While playing with one or two of these kits will expose your child to highly toxic chemicals, it is repeated exposures that lead to contact dermatitis. Disposable gloves are the only way to remove most of that risk. When it comes to the removal of any residue on one’s skin, the ONLY thing that will remove resin completely is (high percentage) rubbing alcohol.
Contact dermatitis leaves one’s fingers with itchy skin and cysts only relieved by steroid creams. Later, the skin dies and sloughs off, very often leaving fissures and splits where the toxin penetrates more deeply. It’s painful, it’s ugly, and no child should have to worry about it!
There’s a quite simple solution to this problem, however. Clear-dry glue. Elmer’s, hot glue, Mod Podge, you can use (and tint with paint) a safe liquid to a solid substance that won’t leave painful lesions on your child’s hands! The YouTube channel @myfroggystuff has dozens of videos on how to safely play with Miniverse kits, and is recommended to parents and toy collectors alike!
Where Does Learning Happen?
If not in the classroom, where?
From the Ides of March 2020 until the summer of 2021, most students found themselves in isolation. The impact of this loss of learning, social and emotional development, and post-traumatic stress are with us now and will continue to present in the future. No matter how hard we as teachers worked, the fundamental loss of a physical space made school easy to tune out of. Despite software to monitor student work on their devices and digital curricula, keeping student attention and interest at the high school level was practically impossible.
Like the young woman in the photo, most students spent their days in bed. Lucky students had an entire bedroom to shut themselves up in an artificial night a la Act One Romeo, but many students had that single piece of furniture: a bed. Their only changing view came from the digital screens with them. Hunched over Chromebooks, knockoff AirPods playing Spotify or Pandora from their phones, they spent months in tiny spaces with no outlet other than the internet. Their only window was digital, and the doors were closed.
They found ways to spend the wasteful days. When allowed out into the world again, when forced by the actual law to make the physical movement from bed to campus, those ways weren’t given up nor unlearned. TikTok exploded, and live streaming became standardized as a way of life. The World Wide Web has become a landmine of disinformation and cheaply produced “content.”
“Content” is what they want. What is it? Content can be a rerun of “The "Golden Girls.” Content can be a BuzzFeed quiz. Content can be a man live-streaming himself having a manic episode. Content can be a short video of someone getting smacked in the head. Content can be the latest pirated movie, video gameplay, or the thousands of free-to-download game apps for personal devices. What we used to call “entertainment” is now “content.”
So, let’s try that. Wedging educational content into the social media sphere is a popular genre of content creation, though most of it focuses on preschool and elementary-level education. Public education does not have the backing, financially or politically, to engage students as it could before the pandemic lockdown for the simple reason that the students themselves are different. They are not location-based in their behavior; they are the same people no matter where they are located, without any care of civil behavior as it used to exist.
Perhaps we can teach some of those things that we used to learn in school through “content.” If students don’t or can’t pay attention to the teacher or lesson, they might pay attention to something else. Teachers are advised to bring the world inside their classroom. Maybe it’s time to leave the classroom and be outside in that world.