When To Give A Child A Cell Phone

What's the biggest social problem today? Ok, I am leading you for the answer that I want, which is a huge one even without my lead. When to allow children a smart phone has become among the biggest of parental decisions today. Nearly 75% of teenagers had access to smart phones, according to a 2015 study by Pew Research Center.

Those little ones use their devices about 95 times a day on average, according to research firm Verto Analytics. The average kid spent, on average, close to nine hours a day blankly staring into screens while away from school, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that promotes safe media use for children. About half the teens in a survey of 620 families in 2016 said they felt addicted to their smart phones. Nearly 80% said they checked the phones more than hourly and felt the need to respond instantly to messages. Cell phones create great social anxiety in kids. And society does not seem to mind that fact.

Only 12% of  teenagers have no access to cell phones. Lucky they are, though they probably feel they are being deprived. The average teenager with a cell phone accesses or sends more than 60 texts per day. How do those kids even have time to use a rest room? It's no wonder. Face book's Kid's Messenger has an app for 6 year olds. Well, addicting children is easy when you start early enough. Even though the electronic cocaine dealers ( the Google and Face books of the electronic world) scream that they have apps for parents to monitor their kids as they waste time and rot brains each day, the reality is it is not possible to control kids usage on their cell phones absent taking away all access to them.

Cell phone cocaine is too complicated  and changes too fast for parents to understand it. Too, for kids, mobile devices are a social lifeline, and many wage a relentless lobbying campaign at home for permission to join the crowd of kid robots who suck their electronic cocaine non stop. Forget the pleading in previous kid generations for a driver's license or to go on a first date. Kids today see getting their first "cell" as a passage of rite beyond all others.  Thus, the pressure on parents to give in and let them have their own phone is  non stop and deep.

Given that adults seem incapable of sensible use of those phones, how can kids, who do not have the judgment skills of adults, resist using their phones for every imaginable and harmful  use? The can't. Yet, society continues to feed its children the electronic cocaine that so harms those kids. When should a parent give a child a cell phone? There isn't unanimous consensus answer to the question, though most psychiatrists say 16 seems appropriate. Good luck with that! A a baby without a cell phone today sees him or herself like a an adult at a shopping mall without a credit card.....unaddicted and not happy about it.