To wonder when my child should have a smart phone?

[DuploTower]

Aibu to be a bit concerned about this?

My oldest is going to high school next year. Several of his peers have already had smart phones for years.

My instinct is that he needs a phone when he goes to high school, he will be walking to after school activities in town etc and it would be handy to be able to contact him to arrange lift times/any change of plans. But he doesn't need a smart phone for this. So an old phone from a decade ago would be fine?

But then I worry that he might find that humiliating and potentially be mocked for it. Could it be worse than having no phone?

I don't think it's appropriate for 10/11/13/14 year olds to have unfettered access to the Internet in their pocket.

And part of me thinks that if half the other kids do anyway - then there's no point in not letting him have a smartphone as he will see whatever they have to show on theirs.

I'm just wondering what's normal. If anyone has any experience on this or opinions.

Plenty of year 7s will have dumbphones not smartphones. It's fine.

You can make his internet access restricted you know, not every child with a phone can use their browsers to do whatever they want

Lots of kids have smartphones at year 7, lots are hand me downs from parents upgrades but some have super cool expensive ones. Try not to get into one up man ship, keep it simple and have find my phone enabled

Give him a second hand smart phone, with a few games/apps, but no internet access.