How young is too young for a cell phone?

It may seem a bit strange compared to your own childhood of mud pies, getting dirty at impromptu soccer games and spending all day slathered in SPF under the sun, but kids today are experiencing their youth in a much different way: through the screens of iPads and filters on Instagram.

Holidays and birthdays take on a whole different kind of wishlist, where Easy Bake Ovens and colouring books have been replaced with the latest Apple products and video games. This leaves many parents asking: how young is too young?

One mom took to an online forum to ask for opinions ahead of her daughter’s 10th birthday.

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“…she really wants a mobile which is no problem as it will be monitored closely, no social media…just WhatsApp and games. How old was your child when they had their first mobile and was it too soon?” she asked.

The responses varied with most parents agreeing that age 10 or 11 seemed like an appropriate age to gift a cell phone, with strict parental monitoring. Some even suggested that despite smart phones being most popular, at that age kids shouldn’t require internet and the phone should be used for its traditional purpose: to make phone calls.

“My kids were walking home from school at the time so I felt happier they had one. Nothing posh though just a normal phone at that point, no internet or anything,” one user said.

Another sourced their response from Bill Gates’s own parenting advice.

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“Bill Gates said earlier this year that his kids couldn’t get a smartphone before 14, I think that is an ideal but will be difficult to achieve. I would not give a smart phone to a 10-year-old but I think a non-smart phone from a young age is probably necessary.”

Not everyone had a similar approach to cell phone parenting with some parents admitting their child had their first cell phone before they could even spell – at just five.

“Five. But the world was young then and it was only for calls and texts. Since she couldn’t spell she only used it to phone me and her dad, or her grandparents,” posted one user.

While the suggested age varied according to each parent who responded, all agreed that rules needed to be put in place, like only using the phone in the presence of an adult, using the phone for safety reasons while traveling to/from school, and only using parent-approved games and apps.

With growing concerns over the impact screen-time has on our health, these parents are implementing guidelines to combat the statistics while other users questioned whether cell phones were necessary at all for children.

“I didn’t have one until I was 34. And I’m 43 now. Amazing what children can’t live without now.“

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