Could "Wait Until 8th" Work at OIS?

23/11/2018

For those of you who attended the sessions by Allison Ochs way back in September, you will of course remember that she spent quite a bit of time talking about the effect of smart phones on the lives of our students. One thing she mentioned was a campaign called Wait Until 8th that seeks to empower parents to wait until at least Grade 8 before giving their children a smart phone.

Neil shared this very interesting, sobering, enlightening article with me a few days ago, courtesy of the Wait Until 8th blog, and I thought some of you might enjoy it as well.

Also, just before Diwali, I also spotted this article in the New York Times regarding how the tech titans of Silicone Valley manage their own children's use of devices...very interesting reading. (Spoiler alert: Most of the people who are intimately involved in designing and building smart phones DO NOT allow their children access to this technology!)

I do see a few students with smart phones in our building each day, primarily in the Secondary School (in case you're wondering, I see the phones in students' hands when they enter the building, at which point they disappear into school bags, since we do not permit their use during the school day). I often wonder how our parents have made decisions about their child's use of technology...in this specific case, whether to allow or deny their child access to incredible power of a smart phone. I do out of curiosity, not in judgment. I have a soon-to-be-4-year-old at home, and already he understands how touch screens work. I think quite a bit about how all of this technology will shape his life experiences, in both good and bad ways. How will I manage this for him until he can make his own decisions?

Most of our students, it appears, do not have a smart phone, and I often wonder why that is the case. On quite a few levels, I think this is the harder decision to take: There seems to be lots of pressure for parents to allow their kids to have these devices, so I am curious how some have bucked the trend and said no.

Have a look at the articles I have mentioned and feel free to comment:

Whether you have decided to allow or deny your child access to a smart phone, how did you come to that decision?
Also, after having explored the Wait Until 8th website, what do you think about it? Is it something that could be promoted in our school?

About the author...

Steve Augeri is the Head of School at the Oberoi International School - JVLR Campus.

Lakshmi Ramanarayanan

23/11/2018 19:08:39

Wait Until 8 is absolutely awesome. & so are the two other articles - about how a same experience in 2008 & 2018 are absorbed & assimilated very different by a teenager. Thank you for sharing.
Having lived in Thailand & Indonesia for the past 8 years, we have had the privilege of meeting & interacting with a very multi-national populace. & owing to the unknown being so large, distractions being so many, large number of these parents we know do not give a phone or allow social media accounts for as long as they can hold off (read well into high school) and a allow a basic phone when their children can no longer ride the bus due to extended sessions and are dependent either on a driver/ carpool/ waking/ cycling their way home.
Hence, we have chosen to walk down this route too. Delay the phone & social media access for as long as possible. First introduce a basic phone for as long as possible.
Should we have a wait until 8 campaign at school? - Absolutely Emphatically Yes. Since most of the children want these gadgets because of peer pressure, it helps deal with that when the parents agree to delay the onset of smartphone in their lives.
Personally, I find no screen time easier to manage than Low Screen time. But having said that, we practice Low Screen time. Since the children spend evenings playing ball, building Lego, swimming, reading, cooking & helping me with chores around dinner time, the children feel there is “no time” for screen on a weekday. Weekends, we have undocumented family contracts/ verbal agreements where they get their agreed quota.
Managing screen time is hard work for the parents - we have to engage more, be more Hands-on - reading, playing, talking etc. giving in to the iPad, PS4, Xbox, Apple TV, channel surfing is anyday easier. But Parenting, as with all other walks of life, is all about choices.

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