There are a couple ways you can approach this particular issue.

1. You can capitulate to the demands that your child has, and get him an iPhone of some appropriate variety. You can attach some strings to this, maybe he needs to work or do something else and this can be his reward, or you could just give it to him. Sometimes it's best to pick your battles, and you could have a conversation with him about that.

2. You can continue as you have been doing to try and teach your son that the kids are wrong, and that he can be resilient against this kind of bullying. (I don't think I recommend this strategy)

3. You can tell some other authority figures about what's going on. The outcome of this will largely depend on who they are, and how likely they are to recognise/care about the bullying.

EDIT:

The most important thing is to talk to your son about this, and listen to what he has to say. You might think you're an expert on phones, and you probably are. That doesn't matter. Let your son explain how he feels, and work through a plan to make the situation better. Bullies prey on insecurity. Help your son understand what's happening and let him know that you are a person who can help.

IMO, option 3 can also be highly ostracizing depending on the circumstances. Maybe the bullying based on the phone will stop, but it's also possible the kids decide that "OP's son is a snitch. So full of shade. We don't want him around."

There's a whole slew of conversational skills that would be useful to develop in OP's son for dealing with adverse situations like this. Especially in deescalation and conversational redirection techniques.

I was also bullied as a kid and when my kid will have similar issue, I will try to explain him how bullying work and what gives then satisfaction, so he could stay confident and show something unique about himself.

As I think OP is technical person that knows well android ecosystem, maybe he could even build some cool app (something that just looks cool, depending what kid would think would impress other kids) - eg maybe some chat app that with gptchat with prompt to pretend to be some celebrity/YouTuber/etc?

Wow, talk about missing the point.

My parents were well-to-do but frugal immigrants. I got railed on constantly in the faddish 80s for my home haircuts, my second-hand gear, and my sneakers from the clearance bin. Nothing my parents told me about function over form helped alleviate the ignominy. I honestly don't know the best approach, to gut it out, or to succumb to consumerism.

A bit of a Froid-ian slip there.

I know HN doesn't appreciate comedy, but I couldn't resist and will gladly take the down votes.

I believe the comedy has to be universal because we come from so many different cultures here. HN dislikes comedy that is based on some biases or bigotry.

He’s not too young to understand.

It is your thing. It isn’t his thing.

12 is about when kids see that. When their friends become important and their relationship with their parents changes.

It is when your role as a parent changes.

My parenting advice is get two iPhones. Let your kid teach you how to use yours.

If you really want to win, first ask them if you should get an iPhone.

—-

On a Friday afternoon, I picked my boy up from middle school to get to an out of town travel soccer event.

“I need an iPhone because I have a girlfriend.”

Thus ended the Tracphone is good enough phase of our relationship.

A five years later I asked what phone I should get. These days we FaceTime when he’s not working. It’s a long game. Rapport, trust and goodwill are the only winning strategy.

Good luck.

Wtf what are you a sheep?

Educate your kids to be more independent and think for themselves.

And no I also didn't had always the cool shit as other kids.

No one cares and no it doesn't matter

The dad has political opinions about smartphones. The kid doesn’t care about his dad’s political opinions and just wants an iPhone.

The dad is as much succumbing to whatever anti-iPhone narrative he is being sold online as the kid is succumbing to whatever pro-iPhone narrative he’s on the receiving end of.

And why should anyone follow trends just because of some kids?

I think the child being bullied and excluded would disagree.

And no the solution to bulling is not buying hip shit

Not blindly accepting dad's lame rationalizations.

I mean he didn't just say his phone was lame, he said S20-because-sideloading was lame...and yes, that means dad is kinda' lame.

Like all dad's.

“I need an iPhone because I have a girlfriend.”

"if that is what your girlfriend expects from you, then she is not a true friend. i know this may be painful, but true friends do not focus on things like that. try to be persistent. this is a good test for your friendship. if she insists, then let her go. you will not be happy with her in the future, because she will continue to pressure you to buy fancy things, and that is not the kind of relationship you want."

I had a similar conversation with my wife a few years back. Her sister's teenage kids insisted they needed iPhones "because all our friends use them."

And my wife explained this to me like this was a perfectly rational reason.

I started laughing and told her "If our kids said that to you, they'd get a long discussion about how that's a 'follower's mentality' and you're letting people who don't have your best interests at heart control your life for superficial reasons."

That being said, I think it depends on where OP's child is "at" mentally. It may be important enough to the child to still buy an iPhone simply because you don't want your kid to be miserable. But if that's the case, you should also try to have a conversation with the kid saying

"That's fine--it's obviously important enough to you right now, so we'll get an iPhone. But you might look back on this when you're older and think the brand of phone wasn't as important as you thought."

Internet and texting is where everything happens these days and you can't force your understanding of the world on your kids.

In this day and age, how can anyone even begin to have a relationship without being able to contact them when you want to? It is not something fancy, it's a basic necessity if you want your kid to not turn out a social pariah.

... are you really going to use email or irc in high school

To use WhatsApp/Duo/etc, all it takes is a phone number and maybe an email address (or a Google account you already have), and a few minutes of time.

If someone's girlfriend is like "I would rather just use FaceTime and call you 'by phone number', instead of spending that few minutes to set up an account for an app we can both use", I would agree with the person above -- this is too toxic.

> If someone's girlfriend is like "I would rather just use FaceTime and call you 'by phone number', instead of spending that few minutes to set up an account for an app we can both use", I would agree with the person above -- this is too toxic.

On principle, I agree the hurdle is not high to get another app/account. I even stand with you to not give in and succumb to this behavior.

The social aspect is harder. It may be easy to convince 1 person (the girlfriend) to do this, but what about her attached network of friends and all the group chats that come with? Will it be easy to convert all her friend groups and setup all the group chats to replace the existing ones?

I'm not sure anyone has that strong of a network effect unless they're at the top of the heap. In which case the girlfriend would have probably just downloaded the app and setup the account.

Even if they convinced the girlfriend and not her network of friends to get the app and new account, it would essentially still exclude and make them a "second class citizen" in that group. All it would take is not opening the app or seeing the notification or acting upon it to be relegated.

I think those not as tech friendly would want multiple 1 to 1 chat apps where there was one or very few people were on the other side. Just easier to convert people to the majority.

Plenty he didn’t get for philosophical.

i simply can not accept defeat on this issue

For me doing something nice isn’t defeat, and his desire for an iPhone wasn’t an issue.

We were fortunate to be able to get him an iPhone. And fortunate he wanted an iPhone and not his own bong.

It might have worked out the same if we hadn’t. By working out I mean FaceTimeing with him now that he’s a grown ass man.

this is also an issue of social justice and exclusion of lower income families. anyone who is arguing that not getting an iphone means depriving their children from getting friends is missing the point. if that is what is happening in a community then that community is seriously broken, and we need to address this problem. excluding others because they don't have the necessary tech gadget is something that should not be allowed to happen.

if my kids do this to others then i failed as a parent.

This is kind of like saying, “Yes my house is on fire now, but rather than put it out right now, we should research and develop fireproof houses.” Cool idea but your house still burns down. You can work on the bigger societal problem but if you can, address the immediate issue, which is you kid getting bullied. And yes it sucks if you can’t afford it, but if you can, buying the iPhone is a simple way to resolve the issue your kid is facing (albeit not the underlying problem).

so then what is your suggestion to put out the fire?

to stay with the comparison: there is no water.

if your idea of putting out the fire is getting iphones, then that simply is not an option. and then you are getting back to bullying. giving in to bullys is not an acceptable solution. the iphone will not solve the problem here at all.

bullying needs to be addressed differently. but that is not even something i am worried about. simply the inability to participate is already a problem. and it's going to remain a problem for those that can't get those tech gadgets. so what do you propose that we do about this? run a fundraiser and donate iphones to poor kids? legislate that kids have a right to communicate and are thus entitled to get an iphone? force apple to lower their prices?

here is one that might actually work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34993823 require apple to make imessage interoperable, or at least force them to support imessage to run on android. it would not make the FOSS advocate in me happy, but that at least would be putting out the fire.

Of course it is! It’s called picking your battles and sometimes you give in and sometimes you don’t. Everybody loses sometimes.

Never "picked my fights" at any time in my life... make me feel treated unfair (or observe someone treated unfair) and i go full psycho mode. Yeah, i got stomped in the ground many times in my life (lost a few teeth, got broken bones, where fired or thrown out of places) but i am just too stubborn and stupid to give in.

Congrats.

This is the literal definition of picking your battles.

I'm not saying its a good thing. I despise that its practically impossible to have a social life without an iphone in a lot of urban american schools. Just know that by not budging and not getting your kid an iphone, you are causing them frustration and potentialy making them lose out on a significant part of their childhood.

the trouble is of course, today there are no home phones anymore. the last one i saw a few years ago in china. but even when our internet service came with a phone we didn't bother connecting it. sooner or later home phones will be extinct.

there are laptops and internet but then it depends which messaging services work with out a phone. telegram, signal, whatsapp, wechat all require a phone.

i suppose a shared family mobile might work for calls, but not for messaging where surely everyone should have their own account.

the original message was "i need an iphone" not "i need a phone".

my response specifically addresses the request for something they shouldn't need since they already had a phone (i could not find any specifics about a tracphone, but i guess it is android based)

and since this was likely not clear, by not giving my kids a regular android phone, i meant one with a manufacturer provided android. they will be getting something with a version of android customized for privacy, like /e/ or something similar.

They came out together ten minutes into a two hour drive and five minutes later he was asleep because I said, I will talk about it with mama.

And later that same day while he was doing his soccer things, I did on my Windows Phone. And then we all talked some more over the next few days.

Mostly about the girlfriend. Because it was awesome to see him reach that stage of his life…we were that age once.

The iPhone came eventually after a few weeks. I think it turned out a positive tool for social navigation in his circumstance.

Other kids have other circumstances. But they are not my kid for better or worse. Your kid certainly isn’t.

and it's wonderful that your son can talk to you about his girlfriend. i could not talk to my parents about that. i hope my kids will be comfortable to talk with me when the time comes.

We all start with lots of theories about parenting. We end with experience and memories. Hopefully, the kind that make you miss them (it's hard to wish that your child would miss you). And we all have the option of not parenting like our parents.

The iPhone was a tool for social navigation. It replaced a flip-phone.

We got the flip-phone as a tool for the just-in-case cases. There's a lot of growth between fourth and seventh grade...the girlfriend uhm was an obvious example...anyway, a big part of that growth is peers bove into the center of a child's attention. The parents are still there, but they're not the only thing there anymore.

Just like it was for me. Maybe like it was for you...it is for a lot of people, but not everyone (I wrote that because I took what you wrote at face value).

It's easy to read things into what people write that provide an excuse to express outrage...expressing outrage is often a form of socially acceptable creativity. It's ok to say "I wrote because they wrote something outrageous."

We all need creativity, but telling someone "I write because I like to write" feels unsafe. One thing I learned from HN is to read what people wrote charitably.

But for the record, I don't give a shit whether or not buying my kid an iPhone is ok with you.

ok, that's a lot more reasonable than replacing a recent android phone, ignoring the iphone vs android debate.

in written communication it is a lot easier to take something personal that wasn't meant to be. it is also more difficult to make clear that something isn't personal.

my outrage in this thread is targeted at the idea that an iphone is required for youth to fit in. a point that several people here have accepted and supported. the reason to share this outrage is to gather support against this idea and to get ideas how to deal with it and how to talk to my children about it. it is good to know that there is support, but also interesting to see that this is quite controversial.

i appreciate your measured, insightful and quite personal contributions to this topic.

As a person estranged with their parents, the fact that they did not attempt to interact with me at my own terms and demanded that I meet them on their is one of the main reasons we are as we are.

I also had an Android phone from 7th grade to 12th grade, and definitely faced the same attitude/behaviour your son experienced.

First, you should address the bullying. That is the most important part, kids are vicious and the phone might just be an easy excuse to pick on your son. You should raise this issue with other kids' parents as nicoburns said.

Second, it can definitely be a bit isolating being the only one or the few kids with an Android phone (especially in the States) a lot of social activity revolves around the Apple Ecosystem (iMessage, iMessage Games, FaceTime, etc...). I found that when I got an iPhone I felt a lot more "connected" to my peers simply because we shared the same platform, its unfortunate but it is the reality.

Third, and this may be controversial, I would get your son an iPhone, I assume the dependence for cell phones has only gotten increasingly higher post-covid and feeling left out at that age can hurt pretty bad. You could perhaps make him "earn" it by doing chores, getting good grades, etc...

We've definitely made some of these concessions with our kids more lately. They don't have phones yet, but they do have iPads, and it is already apparent how pervasive the iMessage ecosystem is. If they were on Android they'd be the only ones not in their friends iMessage and Facetime groups, which would be pretty isolating.

Another commenter talked about spending $300 as a targeted fix to a problem. The idea that just doing the simple thing is sometimes the best choice resonates with me. I recall being bullied in a PE class in highschool. After so much uncomfortable intervention by teachers I was like, "oh ffs can't you just move me to the other class so I'm away from these assholes?". And they reluctantly did, and things were better. No it didn't address any root causes, but it make my life much nicer for 4 months which was very appreciated.

I wish US kids would move to Whatsapp like the rest of the world but that's what we have here.

The drawback is the phone number requirement, but this is true of all the other chat apps. If there was one that was functionality equivalent but accounts didn't require a number then I would switch.

Obviously, this goes back to the root issue as there are philosophical reasons to straight prefer certain technologies—like the ability to side-load apps on your pocket computer—that you should try not to compromise on just because of peer pressure.

XMPP would be preferred, but isn't quite as simple as iMessage/WhatsApp at the moment, and Matrix isn't the same. I do see that some of the XMPP clients are getting pretty slick and I could probably move the family to something like that soon enough.

It's a bunch of XMPP software (Conversations, Siskin, Prosody), with minor patches, under a common branding (the Snikket parrot), plus a web portal.

It's aimed at the friends&family use case, with an easy invitation-based onboarding workflow. You can either self-host a Snikket Server (= Prosody + TURN + certificate automation) or sign up for the hosted beta (which is either bring-your-own-domain or a domain under snikket.chat).

Note that snikket.org is not, by itself, an XMPP service where you can just sign up. You either need to run your own instance, or you need to sign up for hosting.

https://eagernomad.com/most-popular-messaging-apps-by-countr...

> hardly an upgrade.

It's a huge upgrade. It's not perfect but it beats being forced to buy iPhones by a mile. Facebook already has the address book of most people anyway. The extra metadata they get from WhatsApp is marginal at best.

I suppose if the low-hanging goal is better than iMessage lock-in then sure. Saying Facebook has a lot of data already doesn't make it excusable--especially with younger generations not even having or wanting accounts (though Instagram, same parent, yadda). I actually don't think this is marginal either as it's not difficult to use Facebook from a browser or just not share your contacts, but a requirement is a different story, if this data wasn't valuable, why would they have payed billions to acquire a chat app with E2E enabled?

Sadly that is the low-hanging goal. There's pretty much zero chance we will ever get a perfect e2e encrypted, federated, decentralised, open, spam free, popular IM system, but I would say WhatsApp is furthest towards that overall. If you exclude "popular" then Signal is probably the best but in IM systems "popular" is probably the most important characteristic.

Not having to buy a really expensive phone to use it is another important characteristic. If WhatsApp ever gets a foothold in America I guarantee Apple will open iMessage up to Android.

We're not in an ideal spot and self-hosting is more complicated than it should be. That said, there still are options to join public Matrix and XMPP servers that cover the all the above features and would be accessible even on smaller mobile platforms like KaiOS, Capyloon, and all Linuxes.

But also… what if Apple converted iMessage to use one of those open protocols (like the reverse of how Google and Facebook's chats were XMPP until they decided there's more to gain making it proprietary after scaling with FOSS)? Sure tim@imessage.apple.corp would still give them a 'vanity' URL like the color of a message bubble, but at least everyone could participate and have all the same features on a technical level.

Whether the phone is any good or not is besides the point. The point is that he's being bullied for it. Perhaps you could try raising the issue with the kids' parents?

I'd also suggest that there's an extent to which taking a principled stance on these issues isn't worthwhile. Such bullying can be really damaging to kids (as I know from my personal experience as a child), and hepling them to fit in can be the best way of protecting them from this stuff. That doesn't mean you accept the line of reasoning they are hearing. You should still provide a strong rebuttal to that. But it might mean that you support them to do things that wouldn't otherwise be rational simply because they want to fit in.

EDIT: I also agree with another commenter who says "Focus on his self confidence". If he's confident in himself then he'll be able to navigate the social situation much better.

I am certain this would get the right kind of attention from the bully's parents the second little Johny makes dinner talk the most uncomfortable day in HIS family's life.

My Australian boss would impolitely tell them to go away.

The other side already started it with the bullying... ;)

Kids are jerks, I honestly don't think buying him an Iphone will change a thing.

Also, it might so happens the bullying does fade away. We lack a whole lot of details on the situation of this kid.

Getting the iPhone isn't a solution. Building up your son's confidence and capability will arm him against bullies and internal insecurities.

To build these up I did martial arts as a teen and it helped me a lot.

Caving to peer pressure is not a position of strength.

On the other hand it can also be the case your son wants an iPhone. In this case good to chat with him.

The parent ought to build up their child, and __telling__ and reasoning to the child why they are wrong is not the way to solve a social or emotional problem.

1. The bullying is unacceptable. As other comments have noted, address this first and foremost regardless of the (perceived) reason. A good first step is to have your child identify the offenders and reach out to the parents with your child's agreement on the plan of action. You may also want to consider a longer-range set of possibilities, up to and including potentially changing schools if you have the means and if the situation is extreme enough (ideally, not).

2. Older/refurbished iPhones look they can be found for similar prices as the Galaxy S20. If you buy one for your child, or have your child earn it via chores/jobs, then you'll both find out soon enough whether the bullying stems from not having the right phone or if it's a vicious social group that will find a different reason to keep harassing your child. Hence, dealing with #1 is the most important.

3. You explained to your child (probably numerous times) about iPhones not being automatically better; now it's time to move on and take actions that (might) improve his situation.

Parenting can be tough to navigate. Best of luck.

I wonder what that kid's therapist will say about those features viz-a-viz bullying in 20+ years.

Worse, it's actually re-inforcing bullying, and make the kid a target, because it obviously works. You don't stop a behavior by making it work out.

I however agree with people that it's not a technical problem, so trying to solve it like one is doomed to fail.

The "solution" really depends on the context though. The assumption that owning an iPhone will turn a bullied outsider into being part of a peer group is bizarre and only works in commercials and bad TV shows.

If I was in the same situation now, my answer to them would be that this is how I like my things and this is how I am. Downside is that you won't fit in those circles, but should you with that kind of people?

One answer could be to go even worse, give him a basic phone (e.g. Nokia 3310)or a basic watch no one in the school would have it and that could be his own unique selling point (or may be not, it doesn't matter). What matters is what your kid likes. I am a parent now and I know I will be facing similar situation one day and I will be teaching my kid to do what he likes instead of giving in to social "demands".

Edit: All I needed at my time in school was some confidence, which I wasn't given from parents, you just need to give your kid the confidence. The means could be to let him know that he can have an iPhone just don't give in to demands of bullys. We shape our wants/needs/desires based on what our social circle expects but that's not what we really want.

If he is a target of general serious bullying, you should try to coach to build a layer of social skills and emotional defense, they will find something else, telling authority figures or buying phone will not fix this, it will make worse. The sad truth is people aren’t bullied in serious/ chronic ways for no reason. The reason may only be that they different. But with difference comes a necessity to defend oneself, socially, physically, emotionally.

I hope this is just a somewhat regular friend group and they are giving him a hard time for group chat incapability or cheapshot dogging on android, then perhaps get him a used iPhone and make him sit through some more of your side loading type technical talks as repayment. Try to encourage him to not react emotionally to friend group teasing and to tease back in a smooth way.

It seems like I’m that kind of situation we should probably just go with whatever the person being squeezed feels like and they’ve explicitly stated that they don’t care about sideloading or understand what it is - and there’s no conceivable way that participation in your circle of friends should depend on it or even does depend on it. And that he just wants to do things that iPhones are perfectly well suited for.

You can get slight older iPhones that’ll continue getting updates for a while yet for remarkably little these days and iPhones offer, dollar for dollar, better CPU performance than Android devices by some margin.

It is no expensive jewellery it is just a tool.

The people around him have settled on one kind of tool that works for them so just get him the same tool.

You’re the one trying to burden him with expensive jewellery, a device with worse CPU performance per dollar, with features he doesn’t care about but missing features that he needs just to be able to more effectively interact with the people around him.

That’s jewellery.

If OP is looking for an explicit answer to that read between the lines question the simple one is: You don’t and you can’t, the end.

As a wise person once said: "Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It's not going to happen!"

Also, I'm not quite sure how much of it is actual bullying vs. the kid feeling left out in a friend group because everyone else is sharing iPhone only stuff (games, etc).

I'd like to point out this is correct, but also for another reason.

The child is being bullied, period. What they choose to ostracize him for is irrelevant. You cannot simply relocate the child in the social hierarchy by removing that single point of contention, because they will find another. After all, if he was more well liked, would they still bully him for having a different phone?

Well, it is an answer. An easy and effective one in this precise situation.

We’re not talking about changing the whole kid’s personality here. He probably didn’t make the choice of an Android phone himself.

And I say this as someone who really doesn't like Apple and has only had Android phones.

You can also buy them a pump gun and teach them how to deal with bullies, but that's being frowned upon.

You wouldn't try teaching calculus to your toddler.

You'd have a hard time teaching many 30 year olds why you're right on technical and/or ethical merit in this situation.

Regardless of what lessons you may help your child learn from this, what they will remember most prominently will be how you made them feel. Be supportive. Help them figure out a plan to earn an iPhone, if they want. Bullies will continue to bully, but don't make it your fault -- they will learn these lessons on their own.

One of those posts where I am not even entirely sure whether it is satire or not (most likely not).

i disagree with not recommending this strategy. today it's the iphone, tomorrow it's something else. bullying needs to be stopped, and giving in to demands is not the way to do it.

apart from involving authorities (parents/teachers, etc), children need to learn how to deal with bullies. but don't argue about the qualities of the phone, instead talk about bullying in general and how any children that exhibit such behavior are not friends, and help your child find friends elsewhere.

And no, nothing should excuse bullying.

this is not about excusing bullying, but about dealing with it properly and addressing the actual root cause.

separating children from their parents often causes more harm to the children than what the situation at home is doing, so such a move needs to be done very carefully. often more appropriate measures are some form of counseling or other support for the family.

Half these bullies are probably on iPhone SEs, refurbs, or hand-me-downs anyways.

If you’re thinking of getting your child or teenager a high end iPhone… why not just go spend that same money on yourself

At 12, kids are just starting to execute their us vs them muscles. Anything that causes you to stand out against the group can compound this social isolation. There’s plenty of time for your son to develop his individuality later but it takes quite a lot to undo the damage from bullying at this age.

And having a Samsung is actually considered high-status, let alone one of the S-series :)

Xiaomi is very popular since it used to offer about the same hardware power as a Samsung at half the price if not lower, so owning a Xiaomi flagship, albeit costing half the price of a Samsung S-series is still viewed with admiration. Meaning it's a good phone with decent performance, although it has it's shares of bug like all Chinese made stuff. But you tell to yourself "well at least I paid half price".

And then there's the Xiaomi mid range which also has decent performance although ,guaranteed, with a lot more annoying bugs like: switching the camera from photo to video takes 10-20 seconds so if you wanna film evidence of Bigfoot, make sure you anticipate it's brief appearance by at least half a minute in advance. And updating the software is only guaranteed to break even more stuff while almost surely doing nothing for the existing bugs if not making them worse.

But then Xiaomi mid range is still flagship level of performance and reliability compared to the phones owned by the a lot of people, often adults with not so great jobs and / or their children, who are happy to at least have a phone, compared to a vast number of kids (usually smaller age) who have none of their own and look in admiration and envy at the ones showing a Chinese clone with the strangest names ("FreeYond", "Bobbary" etc).

I actually had a period when I tried to see what's the lowest cost one can pay for a phone or tablet and still be able to use it. Noticed there's an abrupt exponential degradation from the price of a Xiaomi mid-range although the prices enter saturation region quickly. Just cannot manufacture them cheaper, so all you pay is the hardware essentially, but then God-help us with whatever software runs on them and the compatibility with the hardware. One tablet I bought for less than $100 had some 12 nasty bugs right of the bat and eventually at some point the battery exploded (for real!).

So Samsung S20? That's so high-status around here that people mostly assume you're showing off when you buy that :)

> How do I convince him that this peer pressure is unacceptable and that iPhones are not automatically 'better' just because they're marketed as a premium brand are are nothing more than expensive jewelry?

The flip side is that Android phones are cheap because everything you do is tracked and sold. Android phones are at least as expensive as Apple, but someone else is subsidizing the cost because they enjoy spying on you.

Take your son to kickboxing for a year, and see if he ever gets bullied again, ever.

Now he's the one with the cool phone, but he's also got the lame one. Reversal!

/s

Motherfucking side load apps? Bro, your son is suffering and it ain't got shit to do with side loading apps.

I was cruelly bullied at that age and my parents did nothing either. It nearly did me in, for good. I was 13.

If you won't buy him the iPhone lmk and I will.

I think the takeaway (if I were a parent conveying something) is that bullies are finding reasons to bully, because they are shallow. One should use things to support one's own values in the end - I'd say technical and social freedoms are more important than brand allegiances. Now though, I was also aggressively bullied as well, but I saw that bullies will just find anything to feel superior over someone else. I wouldn't know how to describe it - but there is greater things in life than access to particular program. I can understand though - how do you explain this a 12-year-old who is most likely living in our modern culture and must function in the light of others who are steeped in modern life's constant frivolities and distractions?

A second-hand SE is cheap and is still likely to outlast the support period of even a brand new flagship Android phone.

For the same cost as a refurbished iPhone SE 2020 from the same carrier.

Just to balance things out.

The iPhones battery life has been amazing since the 11

There's technically no reason they can't pass through the raw media sent by MMS, but as a result of lack of engineering talent, cutting corners and technical debt, it is mangled and recompressed to potato quality before being delivered.

This problem would also affect iPhones that don't use iMessage.

Couple of points here that as far as I’ve seen has yet to be addressed by the comments. It doesn’t matter what the Android phone can do, in the end, no android device beat the social experience of the iPhone.

The texting experience is inferior. The inability to send gifs videos, and photos (It doesn’t matter how good of a photo an android photos can take if the recipient will never seen the quality over text) in a reliable manner, voice messages, and iMessage games is a turn off. The fact that these are degraded/ even more undoable for a group chat enhances the inferiority.

The inability to FaceTime, have group face time, and now share play is also a Downside socially.

The fact is, no android can do what the latest online can do socially

???

Android phones (and iPhones too, for that matter) can have third-party apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, Skype, WeChat, Viber, etc installed.

iMessage absolutely pales in comparison to Telegram.

And all of those still aren’t Facetime & iMessage. The fact that’s they’re third party apps is friction enough. The fact that you don’t need an android to use them is enough. The fact that this takes place in America so I doesn’t matter what other countries use is enough.

It’s like this: Nearby Share will never be superior to Airdrop since not every android comes with it. It’s superiority doesn’t come in that it could be a superior service, it comes in that’s its available out of the box no configuration necessary. Every iPhone user is able to use because every iPhone user has it. There’s no installation required to get it and it’s easy to use in less than 5 seconds.

> iMessage absolutely pales in comparison to Telegram.

Telegram is great. I like telegram. I would never ask for someone’s telegram. Here’s a little known social media secret for telegram: it’s notoriously used for porn.

Clearly not enough friction for the rest of the world.

> The fact that you don’t need an android to use them is enough

But you need an iPhone for FaceTime and iMessage, and iPhones are non-trivial expenditures in many parts of the world.

> The fact that this takes place in America so I doesn’t matter what other countries use is enough

There are a lot of things wrong with the US, and this strange submission to megacorpos is amongst them.

> Nearby Share will never be superior to Airdrop since not every android comes with it

I concede Airdrop is very useful. But most people I know also use Telegram to share files.

> Here’s a little known social media secret for telegram: it’s notoriously used for porn

Hmmm...

> little-known

> notorious

A bit of a logical disconnect there, but anyway: who cares that it's used for porn? Like another commenter said, if people look for it, they will find it. Reddit has porn on it too; so does (did?) Tumblr and Twitter.

who cares? you may as well stop using the internet at all, if that is your argument.

people who look for this stuff will find it. avoiding telegram is not going to help. nor is using telegram making it any easier. you don't accidentally run into that.

This is solely an American problem manufactured by Americans for Americans, and catalysed by the excessive vapidity and superficiality of social media. You lot appear to like shooting yourselves in the foot a lot (sometimes, not even figuratively).

Ergo the bullying that OP's son is experiencing. Android phones have rivalled iPhones in price for a long time now.

He used the word "bully" to try to help you understand that this was a significant social issue for him. Having the non-Apple phone signals less wealth, lower social status, makes him unavailable for significant communication channels.

I personally have never owned an Apple product. Mostly because they seem like a waste of money and aren't developer friendly. Luckily I have no friends anyway and am not a kid in school so it doesn't matter.

Best I think you can do is emphasize working (at 12, allowance or chores) to earn the fancy things you want, and not caving yourself to the demands of his friends. He might be disappointed, but its not his money.

She managed to get my parents to buy a hair straightener but the color was not the same as her friends and she started to cry. Because of the color of the hair straightener.

It's an emotional decision that had nothing to do with technical capabilities. It's being virtue signaling and a tribal human in its finest form.

Kids bully each other to establish a hierarchy. It happens to both boys and girls. I once dated a very tall girl who told me she was being bullied for her height, but in return she bullied back her friends for being short. It was so funny to listen girls bullying each other over physical appearance... Lol

You let your opinion known, he knows that you are against, so by yielding to his request you will show that his needs - as foolish as they may seem to you - are actually important to you.

Also, the fact that Apple and Google stores have different content is a very big issue for kids. Someone picks up a new game, comes to school, shows it off, everyone gets it, plays it for a day or a week, and then moves on to the next one. If your kid is on another store than doesn't have this game, he is excluded. Repeat this few times and this will leave a mark on him even without someone making fun of him because of that. And the Apple store does get better games first.

She actually has the opposite problem, cut off from texting with her Android-toting peers because iMessage on her iPad only clicques up with other Apple users. They work around it in some cases by others relaying appointments for gathering f2f, or by not having contact with certain kids except when they serendipitously cross paths irl. And it’s ok. She doesn’t suffer FOMO because she experiences missing out on things and recognizes she’s still ok.

There’s nothing wrong with expensive jewelry. Your son isn’t being bullied because the iPhone has more features than the S20.

Bullying’s bad but focusing on explaining the technical benefits of the S20 show a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation on your part.

If you’re not equipped to help him deal with the bullying, you should consider getting him an iPhone. It’s probably the easiest way out of the situation and there are worse things in the world than being accepted socially. He’s going to have plenty of time in life to be miserable and build character. If buying an iPhone today can make things better, why not?

He's being bullied because he's the odd-man-out, and every single text message from a non-iPhone user looks a different color.

His parent's concern about sideloading and F-droid also makes it clear that this family isn't great with the awareness or social skills; awkward parents == awkward kids.

It's not like the iPhone is a status symbol, that was back in the late '00s. Gen Z has simply rejected Android for whatever reason and very few young people in the west willingly pick an Android. This is not only a big issue for Google but for society at large - because we're basically giving to Apple complete and utter control about the future of computing.

It's just a more pleasant and robust experience, especially if you're non-technical and don't know the pitfalls to avoid or how to make the most of your Android device (removing pre-loaded crapware, alternative & better ROMs, which devices/brands to buy, etc).

Bullied kids shouldn't shoot up schools, they really should go to marketing departments.

or is there more to it?

it seems like apple needs to be forced to stop this.

maybe this new law in the EU will help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34993823

Agreed that iMessage needs to be open, but let's not pretend like SMS is a fine replacement for it - it's not.

I use an android, but none of this. Nobody normal cares. Unironically. I install apps from google play, use firefox for the adblock and messenger, telegram, whatsapp, discord, snap for messaging.

When did smartphone start to mean apple? I feel like just a few years ago EVERYONE used snap as a teen/young adult. Is it really imessage/facetime only now?

(1) buy him an iPhone or

(2) stand up to the bullying in some capacity.

Not to grandstand, but this is one of the many reasons why I strongly believe children - certainly preteens - should not have phones. They obviously cannot comprehend the function of these devices, and certainly cannot comprehend the danger of these devices. Tragically, at this point, it would take a law to change the status quo, and it seems the the gerontocracy of American government cannot comprehend or is apathetic to the underrated crisis of mental health that mobile phones, social media, etc. is obviously causing amongst children.

I'm sorry that your kid is a victim of this unprecedented modern phenomenon. After this debacle is hopefully resolved, encourage you to share his experience and your thoughts with a lawmaker if you see fit.

And an S20 cant do this somehow?

Is this the american green bubble shit?

You don't have to convince him.

You’re disconnected and more than the bullying, your kid will never truly fit in. It is sad that’s the way it is, but it’s the world we live in.

As others have said, the issue is the kid's feelings and self confidence not actually technology. That applies to sideloading not being the point, but it also applies to switching to iphone not being the point.

Kids can be incredibly unrelenting and mean, so it might be best to just get him the phone he needs to fit in. Part of me wonders if that sets a really poor example for how to handle social pressure though. On the other hand, if you think the bullying is light enough that your son won't be traumatized by standing up to it, teaching him that it's okay to not follow trends would be a big win and probably serve him well in life.

I have no idea how best to solve this, but I wish you the best of luck!

You said it yourself. He doesn't care at all about pushing his S20's operating system to the limit. Even though this is a forum for nerds, you don't have to peer pressure him into owning a nerd phone.

It's mostly an iMessage thing as I understand, and all iPhones work with iMessage.

Assuming things are as you say, fist thing is to teach fear management. Do light fear training. Nothing extreme, ideally something tailored to his psyche. Without this nothing is gonna work.

Then, teach him crowd control. I'm not joking. There is science on how to deal with a crowd. You don't need to explain advantages of Android, but how to use them to stand up to those kids.

Both of these skills are universally useful, and will help him in life almost guaranteed.

Having an android in some circles, that skew young, is pariah.

It is what it is. It's about peer acceptance, and what's happening on blue imessages is the kids classmates talking about how he's weird because he isn't fitting in.

If their 'friends' care that much that they have an Android phone, they're not friends, they're losers. If they want an iphone that much then they can get a job and work for it. You can't educate perspective, they have to learn it themselves.

In the UK I know people with iPhones and people with Android phones. The cost of them are usually not that different, people have stuff like the galaxy flip phones that are 1K+.

But everyone uses SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram/etc so this manufactured problem just doesn't exist.

The goal here is changing the subject entirely and not being forced by their game of “who has the best phone”…

Didn't know the Galaxy S20 supported iMessage or FaceTime.

That's probably what all his friends are using. And the girls he would like to talk to. I mean, I guess he can show them how he can "side-load" apps on his phone...

Get your son an iPhone if you can handle it financially. It's not capitulation, there are other bigger shits your son will need you to deal with that money can't address. Focus on those.

I would just buy him an iPhone, or sign him up for Jiu Jitsu class.

Does he actually personally want an iPhone over an Android phone? Might there be some subtle emotional manipulation going on in order to get what he prefers over what you might prefer?

And they really don't care that much. If he really wants to he can say that it's because of his big dick.

I see your boy manipulating you and you afraid to let the boy grow up. Tell him to get a job and buy any phone (and whatever else, within reason) he wants.

I did; so can your son.

If the adults are parroting the corporate marketing propaganda, how could children not?

The father here is wrong. Logic isn't an argument here. The iphone is an icon, a fashion symbol, his son wants it for cultural reasons. Logic DOESN'T apply to fashion.

Whenever I hear an argument like this it makes me wonder how in touch with reality some people are.

On hot days why don't men just don't wear pants and walk around with their dicks hanging out all day? There's no difference here, and overall you'll be cooler temperature wise then having to drape an extra piece of clothe called "shorts" over your crotch area. It's the rational thing to do.

How do I convince society that I'm logically right?

You don't. Just like you don't convince your kids to change the culture of his friend group. They like iphones... that's the culture you can't change. Let him wear some shorts for godsakes because currently the kid feels like he's walking around with his dick hanging out. .

Unless it's light hearted teasing/discussion (by actual "friends") but taken as peer pressure. To be honest S20 at 12 being an issue over Apple in 2023 is first world problems as fuck.

There is an active negative selection pressure that the kids are exercising. "Lame" is really just the tip of the iceberg. So you reply, "it's not lame! look at all these cool things you can do." This is very invalidating for your son.

Others have mentioned things like self-confidence, but I'd beg to differ. One can't just pull confidence out of a magic hat. These kinds of character traits are developed over time and circumstance in small amounts so that the mental activation energy of getting over a give "hump" is significantly reduced. And also confidence is a similar solution to the way, "getting an iphone" is a similar situation to getting bullied.

Sure, the peer pressure is unacceptable and people shouldn't be judged on their merit, but what your son needs isn't logic that proves the principled stance. He needs you & (other parent if they are available) that can listen to his personal struggle of what it feels like to deal with the situation (without offering solutions like "side-loading is awesome!").

Once he has an authentic, non-judgmental, supportive, not-providing-solutions outlet for the struggles he's facing, then you as a parent can help him process what is going on. And in that process, you can model what a healthy response looks like. Without that modeling, and a framework for being able to articulate rebuttals and defend himself, "just having a capable phone" is a very dismissive approach. He legitimately has an Everest of a social mountain to climb not being an iPhone user.

As adults, getting judged by some unimportant people in our lives is not important to us, but as kids, his school, his "friends" are likely a HUGE part of his life. And being able to participate in those social circles is a huge part of the quality of life and satisfaction he likely receives from his peers. So it's important to be able to understand what about his inner world is important. And it's important to validate that his inner-world is seen & heard, and based on what's been seen & heard, that he feels accepted.

If this wasn't an issue for a while, it could be that he wants to join a particular social circle because maybe he's interested in a girl from that social circle. It could be that he looks up to someone in a particular circle and wants to be accepted by them. It could be that he feels that he needs to obtain a certain amount of status by associating with certain kids (he won't actually word it this way). So it's important to be able to delve into what's really happening, how it's making him feel, that his feelings are actually legitimate & OKAY, and what coping mechanisms are necessary to prioritize the right things.

I don't have any helpful direct youtube links, but I would highly recommend looking through the Youtube videos of HealthyGamerGG, who is a Harvard trained psychiatrist, but makes a tremendous amount of the challenges that kids go through, very accessible to understand with both kids & adults alike.

imho. this is clearly a social and not a technical problem - it should be approached accordingly ...

just my 0.02€

Generally the only way to stop bullying is to build resilience and fight back.

There are extreme cases where I agree it should be reported, including infliction of physical violence.

I’d start out first by talking to him about what is actually happening. Is it his friends bullying him? Where and when is it happening? Is he being left out of things?

How did you find out about it? Has he mentioned it in the context of “my friends think I’m a loser because I don’t have an iPhone” or is it “I’m getting left out of things because I don’t have an iPhone and people are calling me names”.

When you’re 12 being told that one thing is as good as the other thing is meaningless if everyone else has the other thing and the other thing is perceived as cool.

In reality and android phone is not as good as an iPhone if everyone you know has an iPhone - and particularly when you’re a kid as it means you can’t do things other kids are doing and participate in those things. This can be iMessage group chats or FaceTime group video calls - or it can just be simple stuff like being able to join in a fad like where everyone uses the same images for their wallpaper or something like that. Sure you can set the wallpaper on an android phone but you’re still being othered.

I’m an adult. I use an iPhone. Most people I know use iPhones. I do t like whatsapp but I have a whatsapp account but it’s hidden away and I don’t have notifications turned on because I’ve got really bad ADHD and have all non essential things hidden and notifications off.

If people don’t iMessage me I tend not to reply because I just don’t see it.

There is no easy answer to this. But saying “an android phone is as good or even better” might actually make things worse because you’re not hearing what he’s trying to say.

To be clear - this is probably not actually about the “wrong phone” making him stand out, and it’s not about consumerism gone mad - but more likely about the fact that he doesn’t have a key tool that lets him participate.

Will changing the phone fix things? Maybe not. But telling him the thing he has is great when he knows that it’s not will make him less likely to come to you in the future.

When I was a kid I was bullied - horribly, physically, psychologically, every day.

After one particularly horrible incident when I was about 9 where two “friends” who were bullying me relentlessly told me that they’d created a skeleton key for all the locks in our house and given them to a “burglar” who was going to get in at night and “murder my parents and murder my dog and then burn the house down” I finally - after literally not sleeping for an entire weekend through fear - plucked up my courage to tell my parents.

The problem was that I felt like I had done something wrong - that’s what bullies do - and I felt ashamed and horrified that I’d brought this danger on my family.

My parents laughed and said that I was being silly and of course they weren’t going to do anything like that and anyway the two boys were good friends and they were just teasing me.

That increased my shame, and I never told my parents about bullying again. It continued for another ten years, and ruined my childhood. I would fake illness to avoid going to school, and would spend lunchtimes and breaks hiding wherever I could to avoid encountering bullies. That made me more alone and more susceptible to being bullied. And it fractured my relationship with my parents, and I never really trusted them again because when I was at my lowest they laughed off my concerns.

As an adult I can see that it actually made me incredibly resilient, self sufficient and almost immune to caring about what anyone thinks of me - which has allowed me to achieve a lot.

But as a child it nearly killed me.

Talk to your son. But more importantly listen to him, and try and understand what he’s actually telling you.

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is that you buy two iPhones and make it a thing for the two of you. Do weird things together with your two iPhones. Play games together. Don’t even switch to an iPhone for your main phone. Make it the hat phone that only he can reach you on. A direct line to dad.

There was an interesting radio programme I heard the other day, talking about online safety for kids; the woman talking said that too many parents treat online games differently to other hobbies. If your kid is into sport of music or drama or whatever you get up early to take them to practice, you’re there on the sidelines cheering them on, celebrating the highs and the lows. You are participating in their participation.

Do that. Make the iPhone a hobby that you do together.

First, let me tell you that you did well trying to explain to your son the reasoning behind your decision _so far_ to not buy an iPhone. It is always good to explain why you took a decision than simply saying "No".

Second, I think you should approach this tactically.

There are three causes/problems here, each needing a different reaction:

1. (Immediate) Your son is bullied and that should stop. This is serious and requires immediate action on two sides:

1.a. Work to stop the bullying behaviour (as many people pointed out here bullying is a behaviour that has many triggers, it happened now to be the phone)

1.b. Help your son vent and talk about how he is feeling while trying to minimize the psychological harm caused by bullying. I don't know exact how to do this, but I am sure there are resources for this.

2. (also immediate) Recognise that your son is probably feeling left out of his social circle. Action -> Buy an iPhone today. There is no good way around this if your kid's social circle is already using iPhones. Your values are not the fight on this level. Your kid belonging is. No amount of discussion will fix this. The feeling of not belonging is powerful and deep, it is a survival or protection mechanism. So even beings with a mature "neocortex" are not able to think their way out of this feeling with ease.

3. (long term) Here we talk about your values and what you want to transmit to your kid. Android vs iOS is not a value. What are you really trying to teach him here? I don't know what value you are trying to teach, but be sure that buying an iPhone now will not break nor make that value.

4. (long term for you) I say this with an open heart as something that I am still learning. There is a balance between trying to teach my son a value and recognizing when he is a different person than _should_ and _will_ most probably pick up his own set of values. He might not like what I like and our world-views might get challenged between us. Here the most important thing to do (allegedly as I only have a small kid) is to try to create a space for you both to share your feelings and feedback. While having a hard conversation the important thing, in this case, is to focus on making sure you both understand each other side, respect each other side, and then maybe reach a common conclusion.

If this appears like a prescription please ignore the tone. I am writing this more to me than to you trying to put in writing some things that I try to wrap my head around when taking decisions related to my kid wellbeing.

Adults do this too, btw.

Also wouldnt hurt to buy him a Ferrari and get some hot supermodels to hang out with him from time to time.