CBC:
A recent report by the non-profit group MediaSmarts says nearly a quarter of Canadian children in Grade 4 — some as young as eight years old — own their own cellphone.
That number jumps to more than 50 per cent for students in Grade 7.Interestingly (or frighteningly for some parents), of those Grade 4s with phones, the report says about one-fifth are on social networks, even though Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat (and others) all have policies that require users to be at least 13 years old.
Not having kids of my own, I’m always interested in how parents with young ones deal with this. At what age did/will you give your kid a cell phone? Do iOS and Android have “enough” parental controls to make you comfortable that your child can use the phone the way you want them to?
It’s a very current issue at my house. My son (15 months) is magically drawn towards anything with a touchscreen, and since my work involves dealing with a lot of what comes out of Cupertino, there is no shortage of touchscreeny things at home.
One thing I know for sure: I want him to have as little contact as possible with that stuff, for as long as possible. I know how addicted kids (and not just kids) get to these devices, how little attention they have for anything else. Yeah, sure, not every kid. But I’ve seen 4-year-olds with great parents, not the neglecting kind, who offered plenty of interesting activities to their kid, only to be shot down because little Eric wants to play Candy Crush (or something).
It scares me to see the kind of magnetic attraction my iPhone, my iPad, even my Apple Watch have on my son. I know I can’t keep him off that stuff forever, but I would love to see him play with “analogue” toys and look at real books for as long as humanly possible.
Most public elementary and middle schools in California (K to 8) do not allow cell phones during school hours.
I am a parent to first grader and preschooler and I see only 2 valid reasons for giving phones to kids: (1) Find My Friends for tracking my kids and (2) texting with kids for emergency situations (e.g., I will be late in picking you up).
When I do give phones to my kids, the list of apps will be highly curated, Restrictions setting will be carefully combed, and Do Not Disturb setting set to allow calls only from certain approved contacts (which unfortunately cannot be restricted).
I think cell-enabled Apple Watch would do a better job, but it’s too visible and expensive for young kids to wear.
I agreed with you. I prefer my daughter to play “analogue” toys and real books, etc.
My niece & nephews have “feature phones,”. Have since they were about 7 or 8. In the past few years they have gotten used iPads they use at home. (They’re now 10 to 13)
I don’t see a breakdown about how many of these cellphone wielding kids have actual smartphones. I’m surprised that the 7th grader figure for cell phones was as low as 50%.
In this day and age with few to no public phones, cell phones are often seen as a necessity for kids (unless they are being helicopter parented). I figure the prepaid “burner” phones would be popular for this use (especially as replacement costs are minimal, relatively speaking)
We recently gave our oldest daughter an (used) iPhone 5s. She will be 10 (4th grade) in a few months. She’s used our iPhones/iPads in short bursts for a few years now (Games, Minecraft videos).
No restrictions from a software perspective. We prefer to parent with attention and discussion. My wife and I sat down with her and stepped through the setup process and every switch in Settings. We explained and asked questions to make sure she understood. She asked questions about what could happen, and without any fear mongering told her. She knows not to install apps without talking to us first, and to not give out her information.
She knows to ask to use the device (like say during a car ride) and that it is a privilege that can be taken away (Which has already happened once). Her school has a BYOD program, but students are not allowed to use their devices unless there is a specific time to do so.
So far, so good.
Humorously, when she first asked if she could get an iPhone, I said she’d have to wait. After all, it wasn’t until I was 30 that I got my first smartphone.
I’ve got 2 kids in the teens and tbh there is no way that the parental controls even make sense on a day-to-day basis for any of these tools. The simple rule is that acceptable content is not standard from parent to parent, so there have to be so many options for a parental control system to fit, that its almost unbearable.
Attentiveness and teaching is key, at least imo. We have seen some extremely questionable sites from the older of our 2 children but we really only find out when the child makes an error, as prying into a phone thats owned by the child, especially as they get closer to that 17/18 mark feels like an invasion of privacy. When we’ve seen the behaviour and caught it, we discuss and review (and punish if required). My comment to my eldest is basically this, I don’t want to involve myself directly in your personal life, so don’t make it a requirement. Im not turning a blind eye, but you do need to give some control and responsibility to the child and they are going to be massively exposed in the later high school years/college whether you think so or not, due to people simply not caring (acceptable content rule). They have to be prepared, but you want to curb the attitude towards it. From what I’ve seen, this generation has a very skewed view of what to expect from women and sexual content in general due to the high availability of porn from any source, so making sure they have a rounded view is your responsibility.
Once a kid hits 13, if they don’t have a phone, they desperately want one, with the obvious exceptions. Younger than that becomes difficult to understand the ramifications without knowing whats really on the kids mind. Do they develop quicker than other kids? If so what does exposure do to their outlook? Its really an impossible question to answer, besides, every kid is different and case by case is the only answer for age and parental controls.
Great comments so far folks. Much appreciated. I’m going to use them as the base of discussion for the Your Mac Life show this evening!
You can use Apple Configurator Utility to have finer-grained control over iOS devices, including whitelisting of sites.
Use family sharing so that you get a notification when your kid wants to download an app. You have to approve it. Works very well.
My 3 year old son has been using my old iPhone 5 after I upgraded to an iPhone 6 last year. Before that, my wife allowed him to borrow her Galaxy S4. He just uses it for watching YouTube videos. I found that enabling strict filtering in the app works well. On the iPhone itself, I turned off a bunch of stuff I didn’t think he would or should use via parental controls. He is able to find a nice balance between using the phone and doing other things. He doesn’t stay glued to it all day. In fact, there are days where he barely touches it because he would rather go out and play.