Before I give you the answer I want to first point out that this is a question I struggled with as a father about 5 years ago. And ultimately there is no right or wrong answer. It depends really on a number of things. In this article, I am going to help try and cover some of these items and hopefully arm you with an additional opinion or additional thoughts on this subject.
Anyone with a child or multiple children knows the struggle is real. You know that they need a method to be able to reach you especially in today’s complex and eventful world. You also don’t want to make the wrong choice and give it to them too soon or too late. By too late, yes this can happen. Some children get phones when they are well on their way into adulthood. In some cases, this can be too late because by this time they may not have been properly educated on being responsible with the phone and sometimes end up overusing it. They may end up being one of those people you see sitting at the restaurant on a date and completely into their phones and not into the moment. You can start to think from there some of the other areas it can affect them.
Now, in my case, I made the decision to give my kid a phone at the very young age of 9. After many school shooting events in the U.S., many parents here went into “emergency mode” and we started dreaming up ways to protect our families and coordinate better in times of disaster or catastrophic events. At least I did anyway. And I know several other people who also did.
One of the tools we added to our “arsenal” was the good old handy cell phone. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like cell phones myself. Being a techie, I was likely one of the first kids on the planet with a cell phone back in the early 90’s. But there was a difference between the phones we had back then and the phones we have now.
Let me explain, and this, by the way, is where the complexity kicks in. The phones today are practically computers, cameras, chatrooms, compasses and many more gadgets we used to use combined into one. It has become far more capable and therefore far more powerful than we ever imagined. I suspect that even the pioneers of mobile phone technology didn’t think it would become this complex. With filters, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, who knows what’s going to happen next? Innovation at every minute will lead to some surprising discoveries and even more power in our hands will certainly be the case.
As a parent, you want to ask yourself a bit before you make this decision. I always try to weigh the pros and the cons before deciding anything like this. For example, let’s say your kid is really into getting distracted easily and that’s just their personality type. That’s ok. As a parent, it is essentially your job to teach them and arm them with the best tools. This includes learning their strengths and weaknesses and helping them “correct” them. This I know is starting to get into a whole other topic. We will save that one for a later time and at some point, I’ll write about dealing with child personalities.
When it comes to a mobile phone, you may want to choose to get your child a flip phone or a phone that is not considered a “smartphone”. Smartphones generally run iOS or Android operating systems these days. Although there are a handful of others out there. Mainly look at the features and what the phone can do. If it looks like it is a smartphone, you may want to wait until your kid is a little older or wiser and responsible. You will also want to learn about restrictions and placing them in effect if you have a kid that you think will break the rules and want to call every Tom, Dick, and Harry that they know. Use judgment wisely.
And one last parting piece of advice. If you do decide to go for it. Make sure that you monitor and control usage, who they talk and text with, what apps they use and what they do with them. You also might want to take this time to pretty much learn everything about your child if you don’t already. Do unscheduled “audits” of their phone. Also, consider turning on Find Friends (which comes in very handy) and if they get out of hand, lock their phone or take it away. Some may think this is a mean trick but in my day, if I did something wrong, my bike would get taken away. Let’s just say my bike was more important than my phone and if I even wanted it back, I had better get my act together (as my elders would say).
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Good Luck Parents and Guardians!
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