Parents – Share your Smartphone Wisdom! What do you wish you’d known before buying your child a smartphone?

[DigitalResilience]

Hi, I'm writing from the charity Digital Resilience. We are a non-profit organisation that helps children and young people (aged 8-18) to become smart and responsible users of digital technology.

Recently, we've been working on crowdsourcing a survival guide for parents, written by parents on this topic. We have been sharing our question on our Facebook page and our Blog.

We are trying to stretch our net of responses as wide as possible and would love to hear your advice for future parents of kids with Smartphones.

I think, so far the key advice we've picked up is:

--> establishing clear boundaries surrounding times that phones should be switched off
--> not allowing phones in the bedroom at night
--> making sure that your child knows the dangers/difficulties that can arise from using social media and messaging sites.

We want to hear your experiences, so we can create the perfect handbook, written BY parents, FOR parents! Please comment/share/like on Facebook, or just on here. That would be lovely.

No smartphone, but a Kindle Fire. DD is 5.

It was a gift from grandparents. I kind of wish they hadn't given it to her. I think she's too young for it.

Our plan is that smartphones are for teenagers and adults, not for kids.

I'm not the kind of parent who believes in limiting screen time for its own sake- quite the opposite. I think forbidding it makes it more attractive later when they do get it. I think reading on a Kindle is just as good as reading a paper book. But I see my DD ignoring me when she's playing on her "pad". I see her getting it and using it when she should be sleeping (though we changed the times she can be on it, so hopefully that won't happen any more). She doesn't read on it much- she watches videos and plays games.