Apologies for another post on the mobile phone debate. The thing is – it is at the forefront of our minds as our eldest kids are approaching the equally feared and anticipated teenage years. It is also triggered by a recent survey that found that in the UK the average age for giving a child a tablet is two and the average age for a phone is seven.
This survey found that one of the main motivations to give a child a phone is because all the other kids had them and it was not “fair”. An intriguing argument, I feel. Peer pressure is a strong motivator and it is horrible to be left out of a group just because you are not part of a social app, be it What’s App or Facebook. Being a teenager is hard enough. But there is a dark side to smartphones. Some kids in our school were using skype to communicate and had their account hacked into and received horrific threats. Devastating for the children and also the parents. A psychologist friend mentioned that cyber bulling, especially on FaceBook, has become a huge issue amongst teenagers. It is so much easier to bully virtually than in person. The bullying also does not just happen during the day within the confines of the school, so it is harder to escape.
My situation is the following: Coco is going to middle school next year, which means she will be going to school alone, either walking or by metro, and her schedule will change all the time. This was actually not enough to sway me to get her a phone, but then I realised that due to recent events in our neighbourhood (terrorist attacks), I started thinking that it might be good to be able to get hold of her during the day. She also oscillates between her father’s flat and mine, so being able to catch up when there is a change of plans could make all of our lives easier.
So funnily enough, my motivation of getting her a phone is for my own selfish reasons. Coco will be getting a very simple phone with no internet access. Interestingly, because of the Skype incident, she has decided that she absolutely agrees with this.
This is what we do in my little household. I opened up an email account for Coco when she turned 9 on a site called Zilla Dog, which is a child friendly site, where I have to approve all the mails she gets from new “buddies”. It felt like the right balance between her being able to communicate with family all over the world and not receiving ads about penis extensions. We have a desktop computer that she can check her emails on and also do research for school projects. As a search engine we use a site called Qwant Junior, which is a site developed for children and tries to make sure that the search results are suitable for children. We have an ipod that we use to listen to music, mostly on Spotify. But we only have one account, so I can check what the girls decide to listen to. It means that the good people of Spotify believe that I am a big fan of French and American teen hip-hop and so send me the most ridiculous suggestions – I hope that this is all done virtually and no one is judging my terrible music taste.
I think that everyone’s situation is different. Some children spend 45 minutes on a bus travelling to school, so listening to music is a great thing to be able to do (I will never forget my first disc-man, remember those?), others are super interested in photography.
As with so many debates, there is no right or wrong. Our children will not suddenly turn from angels to monsters because they have a phone, I think we can trust them enough for that not to happen. If it does, the phone will surely be the symptom not the cause…
Emilie
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