Getting a 12-year-old a phone

amother

Salmon

Wed, Dec 11 2019, 8:24 am

I didn't have a cell phone until I was 21 or 22 iirc. And even though in the last ten or fifteen years things have changed, I honestly don't feel like it should make much difference. Even then I was one of the only kids/young adults without one. It taught me a lesson about why we don't do things just because everyone else does. Maybe I wasn't thrilled about it then (not terribly disturbed by it, either, tbh, but not thrilled), but I appreciate that lesson and the opportunity I had to learn to deal with real life and live face-to-face. I feel like we've lost so much of that now.

If it's really for safety and/or really harming her status not to have one at all, there's something where you can whitelist numbers so she just has, for example, parents, a just-in-case relative or neighbor, something like that. DS had one kid in his class with a phone in 3rd grade or so and that kid could only call or message his parents and much older sister. From what I gathered, he spent every spare moment goofing off with his sister over text or whatsapp or whatever, even during school. Not sure all those moments were spare.

I would certainly, certainly not give a kid a smartphone. There is no reason I can think of that any child actually needs one.