Slashdot Mirror
Kids with Cell Phones, How Young is Too Young?
An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that the average age of a child receiving their first cell phone is continuing to drop. A report carried out last year showed that the average age of a child's first cell phone was just eight years old and is expected to drop closer to 5 years of age this year. The author raises the obligatory medical questions that have been argued about in adults for years. Just how young is too young for a cell phone?
I wonder if this survey counted those cell phones that will only call certain preprogrammed numbers, like home or Mom or some such? I would be all over those suckers if I had kids.
Easy. Anyone under the age of 18 -- with virtually no exception.
In my experience, many problems with family harmony can be either traced back to cell phone use -- or cell phones helped compound the problem.
I don't think ANYONE should have a cell phone until they are emancipated *AND* pay for the damn thing themselves.
That said: I've seen the FireFly -- and T-Mobile's new "kidconnect plan". Both look very interesting and may force me to rethink my position.
Like my life on the road isn't hectic enough already with soccer moms in their SUVs changing lanes without looking because they are on the phone. Now I'm going to have to worry about running over little kids stepping away from the ice cream truck with their cellphones stuck to their heads.
It really depends on why you are equipping your child with a cell phone. As TFA points out, many parents are not doing it for social reasons:
If a child can hold onto the phone, this could be a nice way to keep track of children. I can think of two major caveats to tracking: the aforementioned loss issue and the fact that kidnappers will search their victims for cell phones now thus in a true emergency they will not really help.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Who are these kids talking to? When I was 8, I would ride my bike somewhere and meet up with my friends or my parents would drop me off at their house. They definitely didn't drop me off at the mall or have me running around town thinking that the fact I had a cell phone was good enough to keep tabs on me.
Just because your kid has a cell phone doesn't mean they are protected.
If the child has not yet reached the age where they are allowed to engage in activities without parental or some other form of supervision, then they are too young to need a cell phone. Consequently, this age will probably fall somewhat in line with the legal driving age most of the time. So, ballpark figure, probably somewhere between 14 and 16 years old.
Me, personally, I didn't get one until I was 22 and moving into my own place.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
it means being able to track them if they go missing, and it means they can call you when they do something dumb. Concentrate on raising good kids and you won't have a problem with them abusing it anyway.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My mother once said wiselly this:
It's not common that a kid asks for own cellphone with reason "because all other kids has also one". Also it's not common that that reason is taken down and the request is denyed.
But when the majority of the kids has one, then the culture, communication and habits form to rely on cellphones, so a kid without one is forced to borrow other friends cellphones to make the needed calls to support the daily social life of his friend community.So think twise when you deny a cellphone from your kids. He might actually need it or he will be dropped outside from his friends.
I think that this whole cell phone culture is pretty fascinating. I mean, a few millenia ago it was pretty common for kids to live in tribal societies where they knew and had easy access to their friends in physical space. Walk to the next hut over and talk to your friend, if you're not busy doing chores.
In modern society, I think that social networking and technology are bringing people "virtually" closer together despite the fact that many of us now live orders of magnitude further away from our friends and even relatives than our ancestors did. So in a sense, the idea that a kid is "too young" for a cell phone really cuts to controlling that child's interactions with his or her peers. I mean, once they would have been able to physically play with their friends, but now they live 30 miles from their best friend.
To me, it seems like it will happen anyway - we will see kids getting phones as soon as their language skills reach the point that they can appreciate having conversations with people that they can't physically interact with. Instead of restricting the phones, though, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't phones developed which allowed parents to restrict/track contacts in the same way that parents long ago would visually keep an eye on their kids.
It's a different world, but in a way, there's nothing new under the sun again. Just technology enabling old ways of interaction to be feasible (at least in spirit) in a faster, more spread-out world.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
It made me realize that children with cell phones never get to be completly free of their parents. Who remembers, as a child, being able to get away from over-protective parents by simply walking away from a phone? Now, as children get cell phones, over-protective parents will flip out whenever the "battery dies".
No, I will not work for your startup
It use to be
"Give me your lunch money or I well pound you"
Now Its going to more like these
"Give me your cell phone or I well pound you"
It always nice to see even the school yard bully can evolve
In a culture that is innundated with media reports of school shootings, amber alerts and the faces of missing children plastered on milk cartons, is it any wonder that parents want to feel as if their kids are constantly connected to them? Cell phones are an extension of the leashes they attach to toddlers. As long as their kids are within "reach", even when that reach is wireless, parents feel more secure.
It's a mistaken notion, of course. But it's the one marketers are using to get cell phones into the hands of younger and younger children.
Considering the crap most people feed their children, the danger of a mobile phone is a minor addition.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
I'm realizing that I may never have a landline again (I havent had one for years).. So having a kid call her friends is getting a bit more complicated than back in the landline era. I'm still not sure how it will work out.....
Once they are old enough to afford a real cell phone then they can pay for it.
Storm
I have 4 sons, the oldest of which is 8. For my children, there is no place that they go where they are not supervised by adults. So it's not really an issue... yet. But it soon will be. Soon, I'm going to be faced with a dillemma. On the one hand, I want them to have access to a cell phone so that they can call me if they need me. It's a safety thing.
On the other hand, I really don't want them eating up 17x10^23 minutes every month. Nor do I want to worry about the frequency with which my kids tend to lose things. They lose things that aren't important to them. And if I gave them a device that limited their minutes and contacts (e.g. a firefly type device) then they'd probably lose it because it's just not that important to them.
The one thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that I do not want to see some law come in and make the decision for me. Let me decide how old is an appropriate age for my children to have a cell phone. What might be a sensible answer for my kids might not be a sensible answer for my neighbor's kids. My neighbor is a single parent mom. Her 8 year old has a cell phone. She absolutely relies on her kids ability to have a cell phone, and it seems a sensible thing for her situation. Any law, even one that tries to think of all the contingencies, will ultimately fail to account for something. This is better left to individuals to decide for themselves and leave the legislation out of it.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Quite a few accidents are caused by cellphone use however :/
No. They are not.
Quite a few accidents are caused by people being poor drivers, or by allowing themselves to act like poor drivers because they're doing something that's distracting them (putting on makeup, eating a sandwich, looking at the cows in the next field that will be their next sandwich, fiddling with their iPod, yelling at the kids in the back seat, smoking, digging through their briefcase - whatever). Cell phones don't cause accidents, people do.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm kind of against getting kids cell phones in the first place, but if you must, what about a prepaid phone that uses rechargable SIM cards? Give them a 250-min card or whatever for a couple of months, with the understanding that if they run it out, they'll have to buy their own.
-b.
The problem is, with the rise of cel phones, there are no more pay phones. At least, hardly any. I've tried to find one once or twice, and it's hard. As such, any teen who wants to contact their parents either has to have a cel phone or borrow a friend's. You can't even guarantee that if they're at a friend's house, there will be a landline for them to call on (or for you to call them on)! I'd definitely want my teen to have one, just because these days there is a serious lack of other options.
That said, I agree with other posters that until the kid is old enough to be doing this kind of stuff on their own, they probably don't need one. Although the ones people have mentioned that will only call parents or emergency #s sound like they might not be a bad idea, as long as the kid knows when and how to use it responsibly.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I started using a cell phone at 16. The reason, in case you haven't guessed, has to do with driving. My parents were more comfortable with me driving if I had a phone to call for help from (NOT to use while driving).
Why an 8 year old needs a cell phone is beyond me, but if the parents want it then it's their (possibly ill informed) choice to provide it.
I know adults who have no need for a cell phone and 14 year olds who would benefit from having one available, so a specific age is not so important (unless somebody can prove damaging effects from radiation).
-Tim Louden
Where I live (Denmark) it's quite common for 4th or 5th graders to have cell-phones (that would be around 10 years of age). They don't call one another that much (let alone their parents unless they need a ride or something) - they use their phones to send each other text messages. Piles of them. That has become such a part of their pattern of social interaction that kids without cell phones feel left out. And quite frankly, they often are.
Most cell phone plans nowadays feature an optional "all the SMS'es you can send for DKK99 (~$15) per month" that is VERY popular with the young crowd (and certainly their parents).
My oldest son is in 2nd grade now, and in a few years we'll buy him a cell phone. Not for GPS tracking, partly for minor emergencies (of the "missed the bus" kind), partly for "I'm at Johnny's house" messages but the primary reason is that a cell phone is often a required device for social interaction with friends at that age. I may not like that (in fact, I don't) but the social well-being of my son is more important than my personal taste. A group of parents (myself included) have been trying to make my son's school ban cell phones from the classrooms with some success, but after school there's not much we can do about it.
Black holes are where God divided by zero