Didn't see this one coming - 8yo dd and mobile phone....

[Whatsername177]

My lovely little girl has just sat me down and asked me if we can talk about when she will be allowed a mobile phone of her own. She was really polite and respectful, but stated that lots of her friends have phones of their own and use YouTube and Tick Tock and she is starting to feel left out. I praised her for being so grown up and stalled her by saying I'd talk to her dad. However, I just can't get my head around her classmates already having mobile phones. She is 8! Surely that is too young? I know dh will say absolutely no way and I agree with him. However, I do worry she is feeling left behind her peers because dh and I are fairly anti social media for young kids. Are we just old fashioned? I am 99.99% certain she is too young, however, I want to know how out of touch I am with the rest of the world, which is why I'm asking her. Her friends and their parents are lovely and they are happy for their kids to have a phone. What am I missing?
YABU - 8 is old enough for a phone and SM. YANBU - you are a completely correct old fashioned fuddy duddy.

She has a really really shit one that is payg right now that literally just texts and calls to take with her

That's what I've still got now. The teenagers laugh at me, but it sets some kind of vague example about phone usage, and it means I don't feel like a massive hypocrite when I tell them to put their phones away.

We've said no to TikTok

Crossed with you, Getup. It's funny that you should mention waiting for buses. Waiting for buses is a bit boring. But it's also a time when absolutely nothing else is happening - and there's nothing wrong with that. Nobody needs to have every single second filled with Something Happening. It's fine just to stand there and look at what's going on around you and feel a bit bored by the prospect of waiting howevermanyminutes for your bus to arrive. I feel sorry for children who aren't being brought up to do this, and for adults who were brought up to do it, but still think that screens are more worthwhile than watching the humdrum but essential life around them.

DD2 got one on her 10th birthday (going into year 6), because she was convinced that she was the only girl in her year that didn't have one (very plausible - tiny, affluent school). It actually turned out that her friends all used their parent's phones but were saying 'my phone'. It worked well for her, because she's never been one to socialise via phone, and she is very sensible.

DD3, of course, also wanted a phone for her 10th birthday. But she was in year 5. In the end we gave her it and it's been great. Because she was one of the first to have a phone, the novelty had well worn off by the time friends got one. She had been texting family members, etc., only. Now, in year 6, her friends are getting phones but there isn't the mad rush to phone each other. She occasionally organises walking to school with a friend.

Eight is too young, I think.

Secondary school.

My son was in year 6 when he got his first mobile, so aged 11. He has been very responsible with it. However, due to sibling pressure etc my dd (10) got her first iPhone when she was 9 and I regret buying it this young as gets very obsessed with it. I have to confiscate it a lot. Most of her friends also have mobiles so there is so much peer pressure.

This is one benefit of living in a county that still has lower, middle and upper schools. Mine got theirs when they went to upper school at 13, along with most of their friends.

My 8 year old has her own iPad, she doesn’t have her own iPhone.

She has tik tok, you tube and plays roblox. She can iMessage me and her dad and her nan/uncle as we all have iPhones.

I don’t really see a problem with it. Iv watched loads of tik tok and never seen anything dreadful.

She also likes certain you tubers that are all kid friendly.

She will have a phone in year 5/6 as that’s when they can walk to and from school on there own around here. Probably more year 6.

My dd is twelve and a half. No mobile yet, and she isn’t bothered. She probably will get one over the next year or so.

My DC of a similar age have really basic payg bricks so their Dad can call them without going through me. They use their credit calling me to tell tales on each other or to ask what’s for tea (whilst we are in the same small house!)

We had a chat about SM and they accept that they have to wait until they’re older. DD8 tells me that some classmates have TikTok, and their own YT channels! She’d heard of TikTok before I had. They can watch YT Kids on the living room tv, but still live in fear of the Momo rumour (school made a big deal at assembly), which backs up my stance that it’s not suitable for children.

Hasn’t stopped DD8 requesting an iPhone 11 for Christmas though!

Yanbu, high school or the birthday before is standard around these parts!
Just say you wanted to genuinely consider her points but the answer is no from both of you.
I've been put on the spot like this, tricky when you're not expecting it!

Tik too is not suitable for an 8 year old.

My older ds got a phone for his 10th birthday a few years back.
Ds2, who is 8, wrote on his Christmas list this year that he wanted 'a detailed note of when he will get a mobile phone, along with what kind it will be'

Not sure what to do about that one!

WinifredTorrance it's relatively easy to keep your oldest or only child away from games or SM, etc. But many children have older siblings and are exposed to a good deal of stuff that those siblings might not have seen at their age.

Bless her, she seems so mature. However 8 is too young. My older two are 14 and still don't have one / don't need one...

My 11yos still have no phones (y6). Their brother got one in y7. She can access tik tok on your phone if she really wants to and YouTube on any device. She didn't need to be left out, but no more than s certain amount per day and definer no WhatsApp or Facebook.

lilgreen Mon 09-Dec-19 21:20:51

The year 6s that have phoned have had many fillings out due to WhatsApp and being too immature to deal with the ramifications of making groups that exclude some.

They would be having major falling outs without phones too. I grew up when even The Clapper was just a gleam in some genius's eye, and we had real live groups that excluded others and made fun of chosen targets in ways that were downright brutal right there in the classroom and in the playground.

If you think any of that misery can be avoided by keeping phones out of the hands of kids aged 10 to 14 you are sadly mistaken.

What is tiktok? I've never heard of it and dd was unsure.

It's short videos people make and upload, I'm fairly sure it has a minimum age.

You can do fun things like if someone has uploaded themself singing and dancing you can film yourself and have it as a duet.

I've seen it where someone posts a half conversation and someone else fills in the other half.

No way would I let an 8 year old near it. Not because of content but because at 8 you are not aware of what can be done with film. At least not unsupervised.

Have you considered a tablet? One to be kept in the living room for the family and you can look at Tik Tok together?

mathanxiety the idea is that connectivity has brought bullying into the home whereas before it was contained in the school or similar, it often involves a written record or an image/film which has a different effect to a spoken conversation and it has made it possible to keep contacting the victim 24/7. This increases its negative effect.

Bullying happened in the neighbourhood too, and the idea that it was 'contained' in school in pre-phone days doesn't address the reality of its effect.

Bullying took the form of far more than spoken conversations or person to person contact - there was and still is eye rolling, back turning, half-stifled laughs behind a victim's back, scathing looks, shared looks among the bullies, deliberate use of hands to hide purported conversations, sometimes physical abuse like a little kick or a shove, or the 'accidental' destruction of a lunch or spilling of a drink, exclusion from parties, picking someone last on PE teams, all sorts of horrible stuff.

All phones do is make a victim more contactable in terms of length of time of exposure to the bullying.

lilgreen states that in her observation the Y6s who have phones have had many falling outs. I would bet the farm that those without phones are also experiencing a huge amount of immature and very horrible behaviour. Phones don't cause this shit.

I think that's the issue though! Phones don't cause the bullying, of course not, but they do make it so the bullies can have access to their victims all the time. Also, as the interaction isn't face to face, what is said can be worse - think keyboard warriors.
My issue is that with a phone, with social media, our children can be contacted by anyone. They can access things we don't necessarily want them seeing. Friends can send things which are not appropriate.

I know they're able to do this regardless, but the phone does make it easier for these things to happen. No matter how much you can teach a child not to say something untoward, or send an inappropriate picture (even innocent ones), the ease and temptation is there. It just takes one bad person to have your child's image (even if it's innocent) and then have them being blackmailed, believing they've done something bad.

Plus, my children are 14. I don't want them exposed to social media just yet as I believe they're still too young to understand that what's presented on there is an unrealistic image. I don't want my daughter feeling inferior to what she sees and I don't want my son having a warped sense of reality of what life (or women) should be.

So yes, I do think 8 is far too young. But each parent is different and there's no right or wrong I suppose. We all have our own boundaries as parents.

Also, as the interaction isn't face to face, what is said can be worse - think keyboard warriors.

You are sadly mistaken there. Even about blackmail in the pre phone era. Four girls and three boys from my home and school communities took their own lives during the late 70s and the 80s thanks to bullying and blackmail.
.......

I honestly feel that at 14 your children will surely have seen enough of TV and movies to understand that what's on a screen is not necessarily a reflection of life, and also that if you are not sure your values are securely ingrained in them by 14, when will you be assured of that?

It's your choice of course. I am not trying to change your mind. Just wondering, because at 14 my DCs were four years from leaving home for university and dorm life. They were settling in in a huge public high school after spending the previous ten years in a much smaller RC school environment. I personally felt that turning big swathes of teen experience into forbidden fruit might have an effect that was the opposite of what I hoped for.

Good on you OP! Also, your standing firm helps others (like your SIL) stand firm too.

Fwiw, my oldest is 14 and doesn't have a phone. We have a family emergency phone for when she or her brother is out with mates. They have tablets (synced to my account and locked down) for school work & games, and chat to their friends via email or hangouts (that I reserve the right to check anytime.) We tend to run in tech conservative circles though, none of her friends have fb/insta/WhatsApp/tiktok to my knowledge and she hasn't asked. The most she asked for was Spotify. Not every kid has a phone by 10 and they get by just fine.

Dd is y6. Most of her friends have phones. She doesn't. She walks to and from school with friends and is out and about with friends after school and at weekends. If she gets desperate she goes to a friends house and uses their phone to ring me. She also uses the landline yo phone friends in the evening for a chat. It's a very 1980s childhood but it works for us!

@mathanxiety that's good, we can agree to disagree :-)
I personally think if someone is being bullied via phone, they have no escape (I appreciate they can turn their phone off). When I was younger, if someone was being bullied, at least they would have respite at home in a safe haven. Bullies have access to that safe place using the phone contact as a medium. I'm in Australia and several children this year have committed suicide due to the relentlessness of the bullies and calming they have no escape.... I'm not saying that people can't say nasty things in real life, you've sort of misquoted me somewhat. What I said is some people would say things in a non face to face aspect that they perhaps would not say face to face.

As for my children being 14 and not having phones, they really do not need them. Neither do they ever ask. So it's not something forbidden for them. Most of their friends do not have phones either. It's actually really refreshing.

The comment you made about them being exposed to TV and knowing its not real life is very different to what people are exposed to on social media! I've got friends in their 40's who still can't gather the concept that social media isn't real life - so I don't expect a 14 year old to appreciate that. TV and social media are worlds apart!! Luckily for me, neither are into TV anyway, think it's literally been turned on twice in two years! (*disclaimer, TV isn't forbidden so they won't crave it, we just have no interest in it / Aussie TV is crap)