Lately I've been interested in single use devices that do what they're meant to do without adding in distractions and extras. This is something I've previously pursued in my digital tools but haven't always been as intentional with physical devices.

This pursuit has primarily been inspired by parenting kids who are at the age where they both want (and in some cases need) technology. The almost daily request of can I have a phone and everyone else in my class has one has put me in a position of needing to come up with a good answer for why I don't plan on giving them one anytime soon—if ever. It's also left me wondering if maybe giving them my old phone (stripped of most of its functions) was a step in the wrong direction.

Let me try and unpack my thinking:

I had repurposed my old iPhone in order to give my kids a way to a) listen to music/podcasts and b) take pictures. For the last couple years this has worked just fine. But over the last few months I began to notice a couple things that had me second guessing this.

1) They were scrolling. Despite having no access to anything to really scroll through, they were still just lying there, looking at the phone and flipping through pictures they had taken. They weren't doing anything creative with those images, just looking at them. And they had the same slumped over posture and vacant expression that we all do when sucked into a mindless feed.

2) They had been conditioned to streaming. Here's a question: do we think it's a good idea to give kids access to anything they want whenever they want it? I feel like if we were to apply that generally to most things the answer would be no. Yet, when it comes to entertainment this is now the new normal. And I guess from a childhood-development perspective I'm wondering what that will do to how they interact with the world. Also, what is this doing to their relationship with the things they enjoy? More on this in a future post I think.

Anyways, in response to this I've started a difficult backtracking in our home, putting some new boundaries on things as well as taking away what had previously been given. I took back the old phone and have sort of-mostly-not quite-but almost cut them off from Apple Music. Not an easy thing, but as Katherine Martinko says, "you can say no."

However, I also believe in saying yes at the same time. So I did some research and bought both kids a DAP (digital audio player). Like the iPods or mp3 players we used to have, it's designed to do one thing and one thing only: play music. They weren't initially happy with this switch. It's less convenient (we have to put music on it). It's not as intuitive (physical buttons rather than a touchscreen). And it doesn't do anything else. But, I notice it's now the first thing they grab when we're going somewhere in the car.

Small win? Sure, why not.