What’s ‘Too Young’ For a Cell Phone?
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Is there a perfect age to give your child a cell phone?
Sometimes I long for the pre-cell phone days. Don’t get me wrong; I can’t imagine life without one. I don’t know what I did before getting one. But before there were cell phones, parents didn’t have to deal with the question of when their kids should get one.
I feel quite proud that we held off on our 14-year-old getting one until just a few months ago. To hear her tell it, she was the only girl on earth who didn’t have one at her age. Our reasoning was that she didn’t really “need” one. Eventually, her activities were starting to pick up and we saw that giving her one would ease our minds and make our lives easier.
But we didn’t anticipate her 11-year-old sister making the case that she should get one, too, because she’s “as, or more, mature” than her older sister. I think we were weak from the start.
Again, our thinking was that cell phone ownership should be based on need. Why does that argument seem so weak now? Is it the pressure we felt because “all” of her 11-year-old friends have one? Or were we accepting the fact that getting a cell phone is a rite of passage for this generation?
Or were we simply being wimps?
Whatever the case, we gave in. We’re now (God help us) a four-cell phone family.
VS
