Kids with Cell Phones, How Young is Too Young? 514
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?
School age (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, that was in Finland.
Yellow Journalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is it an advert for the Disney "find the kid" phone?
I'm to lazy to find out if their sponsors are fearmongering politicians or money-grubbing marketeers.
Re:How young is too young? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cell phones aren't causing those problems, they are just a manifestation of other problems -- some of which are just part of the normal process of growing up/raising kids.
Why not just lock out all numbers except 'home' and '$parentsoffice' during proscribed times? Allow general use during the time they are allowed to watch TV -- then they can choose between the two.
Finally, one more thing -- ban cell phones from mealtimes, and from family time.
The trick isn't to ban kids from using cell phones -- the trick is to teach them to use them considerately, responsibly, and at appropriate times.
That said, I won't let my kids have a cell phone until they are allowed to go off and do things unsupervised -- their tween years. Then I won't feel comfortable unless I know that IF they needed to contact me, they could.
Now, back to TFA -- I think the health concerns are probably overstated, and are for me a minor concern compared to the social and psychological well-being of my kids.
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
Kid is at school and a friend asks him or her if he can come over? Call the parents and see if it is okay.
I find the idea of kids with cell phones strange at best but I can see the value of it. A differential GPS type set up would be great. If I could use my phone to home in on my kids or even my wifes phone that would be ideal. We often use our phones at the mall or Home Depot to find each other.
Re:Emergency Phone. (Score:2, Interesting)
What I want is for the Cell companies to allows a set number of minutes for "social calling" that can be set by the parent. And when that time runs out they still have all the abilities to make the standard calls to family. I want the system where the minutes can build up over time, and where the kids will wind up with few minutes per day that get added to their minute bank.
What I want is a phone that is designed to be designed to be used by the irresponsible. I want it cheap, durable, with a minimum of features on the phone itself.
It depends (Score:3, Interesting)
This has been expressed many times in this thread.
I'm of mixed opinion about fully-qualified vs. feature-limited phones for younger people who are using them, though. How many people is Joe Twelve going to be actually calling? Sure, he might call his friends who also have cell phones, but it's unlikely he'd make very much use of the gadget if he does have it. Additionally, every single cell phone I've seen (kid-marketed or not) does have the ability to restrict various settings. I had a Qualcomm Kyocera phone that had security options such as restrict outgoing calls to numbers in the address book only, disable adding new entries to the address book, and disable the window where the phone told you its own phone number so you couldn't give it to people and tell them to call you. My Nokia has something similar, I'm pretty sure, although I haven't looked.
These features allow you to easily cripple any phone and turn it into something akin to the LG Verizon MiGi device, except with the ability to, say, re-enable the blocked features if the owner is going away somewhere they need them. Out, for instance, with grandparents, or a friend or friend's family, where they might need to dial other people for a while.
It would also allow the phone to be "unlocked" as the kid got older or got more responsible, or both.
More and more people I know don't maintain landline service, or have that service in the sense that they have wires running out to their house but lines are so poor it's nearly never used. These people have cell phones as their only method of communication, and people tend to not like sharing with other people. I think it's perfectly acceptable to give a kid a feature-limited line on a family talk plan or something in these situations, at a very early age. For others, not so much.
Radiation in the Formative Years (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the fact that I walked to school every day (500m) from I was 6 mean that my parents where bad?
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing this, but, I don't know that I buy into it. There were "bad" people when I grew up...I think it is more hype and paranoia these days...I doubt there is more of it than back then...you just hear about it constantly due to 24/7 news channels having to have something to report!
I mean, are we saying kids today are more STUPID than we were growing up? I certainly knew not to go with anyone else...to stay in public places...and to pretty much obey my parents!! If I could be trusted at that age, why the hell can't kids today be trusted in the same manner?
Until they can... (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the 'medical concerns', I'm convinced that this crap is only ever brought up by people who find phones objectionable for other reasons, and they're just trying to find some way to get everybody else to hate them too.
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, in other words, they did "monitor and analyze (your) whereabouts", given the level of technology available at the time...
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I said "not without a hassle", and when the office closes it's doors, well your screwed on campus without a phone. Trust me I would have prefered if if they flat out permited the kids to use their phones, that would have prevent collect calls from a pay phone when they actually "had" a payphone.
Yes, it's nuts. When I was at this school they at the very least provided a regular phone which was specificly for the students to use to say "come pick me up". The line was typicaly long, but it was an acceptable solution. They had the normal issues of kids dialing phone sex lines, got pay number blocking, problems with toll calls but made it local only, but they decided it was too much hassle.
You would "THINK" they would know better, but to use a Douglas Adams concept, people generate a Somebody Else's Problem field. They in their wisdom decided to get rid of their student phone and routed the kids to the payphone, and well got rid of the payphone. The ONLY way for kids there to make that come pick me up call after 3:30pm is with a cell phone, or use the computer lab and text/email.
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
I hear ya...that's how I bought my first 2 skateboards...and those things were expensive back then....
I've wondered if kids do that anymore myself...
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:2, Interesting)
You're funny... You've managed to take the basic situation of solve your own problem without calling in a life line and managed to compare it with some of the greatest technological accomplishments in medicine. I can't wait to see what you are going to do with the pet rock.
Try backing down a little bit off your soap box and consider this... If every time I get into a little trouble the answer is always to just call for assistance (mom, dad, friends, police) then when will I know how to actually solve my own problems for myself or learn to recognize when I'm getting in over my head?
Take your medical analogy: If you live in a perfectly sterile bubble you will have no chance of death by simple virus or bacteria. But the moment you step outside of that bubble you are many times more likely to suffer serious ailments within 24 hours than if you never lived in that bubble. Similarly, if you never had to get out of a problem on your own, or find a creative solution, you will never survive the first time you hit the streets without four bars on your phone.
Back in my day (Score:3, Interesting)
Give a kid a cell phone and you make them trade that experience for your own peace of mind, all of a sudden you burden them with something there. It's tough though, if I were a parent I'd be too fretful to let my kids run about like I did. Parenting must be a totally different experience now with the internet and cell phones, you're not sure who your kids are associating with. At least back then our parents knew that were were only associating with other kids more or less our age, but with the net, dunno.
Re:preprogrammed phones for kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
In defense of "mandatory reporters", keep in mind that many occupations are legally required to report something that they think is questionable. These people may not necessarily believe that you're being a bad parent, but if they've lost the ability to plausibly deny that they saw it, they could go to jail (and/or lose their job) for not reporting it, if it comes up later and is determined to be abuse. That being said, when these people do call the hotline to report some event, nothing is likely to happen to you. You might get a phone call or a visit asking for details about what happened, if they agree that the event was potentially abusive. But if you're just Average Mom, and your kids are responsible enough to be fine for a few days on their own, they're going to see that and not bother you.
If your house is falling apart and your kids are sitting in piles of their own feces when they stop by to check on allegations that you're leaving your kids unsupervised in an unsafe place, that's another story.
Regarding the safety of children in public, I'm reminded of a news story that made headlines a while back about tourists that parked their strollers outside a store while they went in to shop. Could their home country really have fewer messed up people than we do? Or is it possible that it really isn't that unsafe to do this, but our own society (as a consequence of our sensationalist media) has grown up with the belief that the world is full of people that will do unspeakable things to your children the moment you turn your head?