This blocks progress (and motivation) on some of my projects.

Another middle ground would be to insert no SIM card (my kids only had access via WiFi at first) or to disable mobile data.

Maybe my kids are special, but so far it was enough agree upon rules about what they are allowed to do. As soon as they break the rules they will loose some of their benefits. No rule works for everyone, but simple "no" to a technology that has so many upsides for our family life is also nothing for me.

Edit: also "selling a locked-down phone" is exactly NOT a solution. Parents will have to learn the up and downs of this technology and apply an individual solution to their situation.

Reminds me of "Every single person who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying".

Jokes aside: "more than 7 hours a day" is a _quite little more_ than the 0 hours the site is asking for. Also I'd guess it might make a difference whether the kids are using a drawing app, tiktok, learning a foreign language, reading an eBook, playing a shooter, gambling, …

I think the possession of a device isn't the risk itself.

- "I'd like to stay with a friend after school - they'll drive me home after dinner", "Sure, thanks for the info, have fun"

- "Fire alert, I'm fine but bored"

- "Had to help a friend with an accident, will be home 1h later approx"

- Bus didn't turn up, uses app to improvise an alternative connection

- asking teachers about details from the lessons

- getting a news-feed from school

- looking up the schedule if things change

- manage their calendar and todo-lists

- set an alarm/reminder

So basically "everything" an adult does with their phone to make their lives easier.

After that there's enough brain left to learn that social media is something that needs special attention

It all looks like B'n'W opinions and mixing devices and services. I completely miss the "parenting" aspect. It's all about prohibition.

I think it's more important to talk about the services they use than what device they're on.

And most problematic services already have an age limit. It's the parents' damn job to make sure their kids are prepared for the usage of those services.

I'm more worried about the youtube-consumption on the PC than chatting with class-mates about school-related questions via smartphone.

> … because of unrealistic social pressure and expectations to have one.

Sorry, but I do not agree with the equivalence of a device and one of its possible usages.

My kids got their first smartphone at the ages of 5-6. (dramatic pause)

When I was younger me and my siblings got a camera, a Game Boy, a watch, a walkman, a calculator, a stopwatch and small handheld battery-driven games. Later a tamagotchi and whatever was trending. Also we were taught to use the phone-booth in case of an "emergency". While you do not have to agree that all of us needed all of this, nobody would've said to "wait until the age of 13" with all of this.

The phone I gave my kids were retired Android smartphones with Lineage OS installed. Almost all Google Apps removed or disarmed. I preinstalled Apps like: a calculator, camera, a secure messenger (Threema), clock, navigation (OSMAnd), a few educational games, a paint/drawing app, a calendar and added the most important contacts (Parents, siblings, grandparents) to the address book. We added more apps over time when we felt they might benefit from them.

We agreed upon usage duration and modalities. We mostly moved their TV-time towards their phones. We explained how to ask before taking a photo of a person.

What happened? My Kids started to get interested in how to read/write, used the navigation software during road-trips to find the next possible stop to have a break or try to find POIs along the road and wait them to pass by. They played with the calculator, started to learn English (non-native if that wasn't obvious, yet), started to "program" robots, send me "good nights" when I was late at work. Call me if they spontaneously decided to stay with a friend after school. Take photos during their holidays, listen to audiobooks during road-trips. Play with the torchlight in the tent.

The older one is now 12. She got access to our family calender and contact list, so she can plan her appointments with friends around ours, manage her ToDo-lists, make stop-motion videos, research all sorts of stuff on wikipedia, gain a very good understanding of how those devices work. Learn to take care of expensive gears and how it matters to have control over their own data and that backups are important. She learns how to manage her data plan by moving audiobooks for offline-usage. Also she helps her grandparents with all sorts of technical problems they have with their phones.

Yes, it's more work to teach a kid how to work with all this stuff than just throw an iPhone at them when they turn 13 and say "whoa, finally old enough to figure this all out." What could go wrong. Sorry, that I'm a bit salty on this topic (and I sometimes might not find the right words due to the language barrier), but just saying that a smartphone is bad because parents do not care for what their kids are doing with the device just feels plain wrong to me.

I'd use `flatten()` to iterate over this nested type.

Just offer a plain youtube-Account and we have a deal.

It's available in German (and maybe other languages), too.

Does anyone know how good their "LEGO® Education SPIKE™" stuff is? Is it as open as the NXT-bricks? Are these somewhat compatible? Linux IDE available?

I wish someone would offer a replacement for those who have a 3D-printer, rp2040 and some soldering experience. I'd help the school to re-stock their supply.

Edit: 35 € for a 2 A USB power supply is definitely Apple-ish. And those peripheral connectors look like they're … unique. Mindstorms just had standard RJ-something plugs.

Single-line comments could be a bit brighter, though.

Not to disagree, but the picture is more complex.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

> Maybe ask France or the US, they seem to be more practical on how to do this

Was curious about that as well, but I only keep finding "solutions" that are in the make or disputed.

This is from 2014, so maybe they found a solution in the meantime? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26425674

I'm also trying to find the final costs of any disposal.

Renewables aren't without problems of course. We still need a solution where the blades of the wind turbines don't end up in landfills. That's effectively not renewable.

> And PV panels don't? You need many less trucks of uranium than of coal

I don't understand. Coal isn't required to build PV? We once had PV industry here but everything moved to $China :(

> I know. But this doesn't sound too healthy neither https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11900206/

Not sure why everyone assumes I'm pro coal when I explicitly stated that I'm trying to push renewables.