Unfortunately I would adjust this down to under-8's these days, I understand in principle why not but the social impact in 2024 of being the last to have one is unfortunately too far in the other direction (likely to lead to social isolation). My overall thought is that "having a smartphone" is never the issue, unrestricted and unsupervised use of said smartphone is. Technology and interconnectedness is unfortunately just a reality of the world now and the best option IMO is to teach responsible use and healthy skepticism early. Now that my daughter's in her mid teens, it's become extremely clear that the kids who had "delayed access" are FAR more likely to be "phone obsessed" when they finally get one (delayed gratification I guess?) and also more naive to the risks of being online. A bad combination.

To add to that I wouldn't have thought the same 10 or even 5 years ago, there has been a dramatic shift in how kids engage socially over the last few years -- specifically since COVID lockdowns, I suspect.

On a more practical note away from the shoulds and shouldn'ts -- it looks like overpriced tat and you could get a half-decent actual smartphone for £20 more and stick a £5 Barbie case on it :joker:.

I get what you're saying but I still think that a child that age shouldn't have a phone, granted my kids are older now and thankfully it was perfectly acceptable that a child didn't have a phone until after primary school back then.

On the topic about educating them about online interactions, unfortunately you can drill things into their heads as much as you want but they'll still ignore you and do stupid **** when they're teenagers. I've had a couple of things like this happen with both of mine when they were mid/older teens (which I'm not going to get into on here) luckily we were able to sort these things without any damage but it's a scary thing to navigate as parents - teens and the online world

It's complicated because I agree that in an ideal world they shouldn't have phones and it was far, far better when they didn't but the reality in the 2020's is that it's normalised, so the balance becomes the risk of having one vs. the impact of being the "unusual outlier" whose parents are holding out and one of the only ones who doesn't have one. The way social groups form and communicate in the final years of primary school now, again unfortunately, revolves around the "context" of conversations that they have ongoing in group chats. Lots of social info flying around, lots that they'll all be doing the normal kid-gossip etc about the next day and the kids who weren't able to join in can sadly be very, very quickly left socially isolated at that age. I've seen it happen to multiple kids. There's no way around it. It's one of these situations were there's a "tide of normality" that's a massive net negative for everyone, but can't simply be opted out of without other consequences. Like I said I think it completely changed at an accelerated pace from 2020 to 2022 because of COVID restrictions (as did so many things like remote working). I'd MUCH rather that it was how it was before that... but it just realistically isn't... so all that can be done is a focus on safety and not being complacent.

Fair enough, that makes sense, I hate how that's how it is now because I think it's so bad for kids and how they should be learning to interact with each other. But obviously you have to choose the lesser evil in the situation your kid is put in

I think it can have positives and negatives (for teens anyway) to be fair. My daughter is quite socially outgoing but she now has a very close friend who she met at high school, sat with in a couple of classes, who was less confident by nature but basically started messaging my daughter on Snapchat to say "I really like you and you're really funny and awesome, I'm determined for us to be besties pls" (not in so many words :joker: ) and 2-3 years later they're a very close and quite large friend group that was created by their two groups of friends "merging" through them. I honestly doubt she would EVER have been able to just come out with that face-to-face and I'd be surprised if they're not going to be "life long old friends" at this point.

I try to see the positives in it really. I am generally quite nihilistic about social media/online stuff in terms of human interaction. I do think it's, overall, a disaster for social psychology... but we get the world we're given sometimes :umm2:.

Yeah, can't argue with any of that I guess.

BIB : Yeah me too, I think about it a lot, people (not just children) are getting so addicted to the online world and fakeness as well, it feels like we're sleep walking into a dystopian sci fi film. I know I'm guilty of spending too much time online too

I think we're already there :joker:.

I spend less and less of my actual free time online actually. Unfortunately I have a WFH desk job that involves being online anyway all day so... it's just right there... the beckoning procrastination...