renegadebusiness:

zogon-sausage: renegadebusiness: Taking a child’s phone away is not child abuse. because your grandma can take away your dad’s laptop if she thinks he’s using it too much, right? she’ll give it back when she feels like it? what? that sounds illegal? that’s not how it works, you say?? hey @adultprivilege, this person doesn’t seem to understand why stealing things is wrong. Can you explain it for them? Hey, I hope you realize that if the parents buy it for their children (who are minors, by the way) it is technically theirs and they can take it away. Children do not require phones to live either. It’s not abuse. Period.

So if I bought you a phone, I could take it away at any time, because I spent my money on it?

If you buy something for someone, you’re giving it to them. It’s theirs, now. You think they’re using it too much? Too bad! It was their parents’ decision to give them that phone; if they hate seeing their kid use it so much, why did they buy it for them in the first place?

If the people in this question were both adults, we wouldn’t be having this argument. Because one of them would go to jail.

And hey, you are literally saying that children don’t have the right to own objects, even ones that are literally given to them. Like, do you remember being a kid at all? Children are people, too? How are children supposed to learn responsibility if you don’t grant them any sense of autonomy?

Having control of an object is a good feeling, and an important lesson in responsibility for young people. When a kid breaks their toy, they learn that they don’t get to play with it anymore, and they’re more careful with their toys in the future.

When you take away your kid’s phone, what are you teaching? “If I use this device my parent gave me too much, they’ll steal/break it”? What kind of lesson is that?! It’s not like minors can do anything about it, either; they can’t argue with their parents because they’re still learning to communicate, and they can’t stop their parents from hacking it and looking through all their personal stuff.

Should they be on their cell phone all the time? Of course not! No one should do anything all the time. But it’s the parent’s job to teach the child how to use it responsibly. They don’t have to make the child feel helpless in order to do it.

Stop dehumanizing children.