My oldest is only six, but I have a feeling this question is going to come up in our household a lot sooner than I’d like.
The NY Times broaches the topic with statistics that make my stomach turn a bit, like that half of 12- to 17-year-olds send at least 50 text messages per day, and that more and more kids are getting cell phones at younger ages:
About 75 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds in the United States own a mobile phone, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to an April study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, part of the Pew Research Center. And children are getting their phones at earlier ages, industry experts say. The Pew study, for example, found that 58 percent of 12-year-olds now had a cellphone, up from 18 percent in 2004.
Most of the advice in the story is about how parents should do their best to endure the “but everyone has one!” whining and put off the purchase as long as you can. For example:
Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in children’s use of digital media, cautioned that at younger ages, parents might miss out on what was going on with their children because of a cellphone.
“Kids want the phone so that they can have private communication with their peers,” she said. “You should wait as long as possible, to maintain parent-child communication.”
And:
“Most parents want to give a cellphone to keep them safe, but that ignores the great majority of uses that kids are using cellphones for,” said James P. Steyer, the chief executive of the nonprofit group Common Sense Media, which rates children’s media. He said that with those added features can come addictive behavior, cyberbullying, “sexting” (sending nude photos by text message), cheating in class and, for older teenagers, distracted driving.
I take the above comment back: This is the stuff that really turns my stomach.