[ChristmasNeeve]

Originally Posted by Quantum Boy

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.

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