To be shocked that 97% of 12 years olds have smart phones?

[Rhayader]

My DCs school does not allow smartphones and most of the schools around here are the same. The kids all have Nokias (and often an AirTag or similar for tracking).

I can’t believe it’s 97%! Am I totally out of touch? She’s never even asked for a phone.

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/23/children-who-dont-have-smartphones

I agree, save those conversations for the dinner table when they get home when you can have a proper in person interaction with them!

And this great idea to keep them safe while travelling to school.....has also made them a target for muggers. It has absolutely not made them any safer. A mobile phone cannot stop anyone from being mugged or attacked. If they could, I'd be all in!

Absolutely! And knowing where your kid is at every minute of every day doesn’t stop anything bad happening to them. Just shows you where they are… or at least, where their phone is.
It also sends a message to them that you don’t trust them to be able to navigate the real world on their own and it teaches them that the world is a dangerous and unsafe place. Of course, it can be. But not in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Add to that the constant barrage of social media lives, only doing things so you can film them and put them online for the likes, having constant access to your friends inner thoughts and what they think of you, and the potential for seeing explicit and damaging material - I cannot fathom why people can’t see how dangerous they are!

Not surprised at all. It's standard for kids around here to have phones once they're at the age where they walk to school. Don't think they have Nokia's though.

@Errors 😬

I had a lovely conversation with my mother the other day about what age I was the first time she let me go to the nearby shops on my own. I was 8. Of course, there no smart phones then but I found out the other day that she surreptitiously ‘spied’ on me the first time, just to make sure I got there and back safely and that was enough. She knew I was mature enough to do that and I had no idea she had followed me the first time so I got all the confidence that comes with those little freedoms and she got someone to go to the shop for her for a pint of milk 😂

Nowadays, if you saw an 8 year old walking to the shops on their own you’d probably call social services and accuse the parents of neglect.
We’ve got this the wrong way round - less freedom with phones, more freedom in the real world is what’s needed.

My kids' school has got rid of planners this year and everything is now on an app.

All their homework, communication from teachers and timetables are all on it and the kids all needed to be logged in before September.

I don't know any 12yr olds who don't have a smart phone and most of them had them in Yr 5/6.

@Errors

So you want to have a situation where a 17 year old can drive a car, leave home and have sex, but not have unrestricted access to a smartphone? I have to say that is one of the most ludicrous suggestions I have ever read on here.

Personally I don’t think cliff-edge age restrictions are particularly effective. The current approach to alcohol actually allows gradual introduction for that reason. 16 year olds can have wine or beer with a meal. Many countries with far lower rates of alcoholism than the UK have even looser rules.

I see 18 year olds going off to uni each year and I can tell you the biggest issues certainly don’t arise with those who have gradually been introduced to alcohol previously. They are with DC who have never been allowed a drop and end up off the rails upon gaining independence.

Yes you can. And I am aware one kid can write a message. Lab blah blah which is why my children didn’t get phone until Secondary and why they are checked regularly at ages 12 and 14.
Open conversation is what needs to happen, my kids both left the whole class grp messages early on because it was ‘spammy’ and they knew THEY would get I trouble or their class mates would for inappropriate stuff on there.
And as for seeing one meme - yes that could happen but again, I would report that, most parents would TBH.
The group chat thing - really is t that much of an issue most of the time. It’s when parents give year 5 and year 6 kids phones and expect them to be mature enough to use them that gets me. They aren’t. And the only issues I knew of with What’s App and the like at school were with the primary aged kids.

‘My kids' school has got rid of planners this year and everything is now on an app.’

Our school does use Googleclassroom for homework etc BUT they ban all phone use in school itself.

So no class or teaching in school needs a phone and the punishment for being seen with a phone in the school is immediate detention that day, then phone back after the detention.
Get caught twice the phone is taken and given back in a meeting with a parent & tutor where the issue is discussed…

So again that’s crap parenting.

@Errors

Toddlers in prams using iPads is an issue with parenting though, not smart phones or technology.

I don’t like seeing DC at restaurants glued to phones or tablets either. It wasn’t an option when my DC were that age and they coped fine. It seems very different on our regular visits to Spain where DC of all ages interact with each other and adults (even in bars late at night!)

Not really sure that has anything to do with banning smartphones though.

@Errors You have a 6 year old. How much of what you’re posting about teenagers is based on experience of parenting a teenager and how much is media scares as being terrified is a bit extreme.

WhatsApp isn’t mandatory on a phone. Add age limits to block apps on phones. Add parental controls to prevent any app being downloaded without approval. Add time limits on use and block certain contacts after a certain time of day. Check the messages that are sent, check search histories and photos. No phones in bedrooms over night.

I dint think children should have phones before year 6 but it’s possible to manage their access and use without insisting they have a brick phone.

A lot of internet filters and tech restrictions are arms races with your kids (in my experience anyway). My DS (8) could get around the Google filter using some kind of command prompt thing when he was 7 and my DH had to build a bespoke internet filter that sits on a raspberry pi.

The DC have a totally different network to us and it operates on a white list with a bot that messages us asking for access to a website - there’s different options for yes/no, allowing access to the whole website (ie the whole of bbc vs just the bitesize bit) and “just for now” or “forever”. Also a special function for YouTube videos because there’s so much junk on there but also so much valuable stuff. DD is working through a multi-video sketching tutorial atm but I don’t want them watching hours of unboxing videos or Mr Beast walking on hot coals to win a car or something.

DS also watches a lot of coding tutorials like the Coding Train but it’s probably a matter of time until he works out how to get around it again. In year 9 DH managed to get access to every teachers email inbox (but he did report the vulnerability to the school who reported it to the third party email client they had purchased - turned out to be a flaw in all of their systems across all the businesses and schools they had as clients).

We are not anti-tech and our kids are pretty proficient with computers (especially DS who could probably do all of the coding bits of a GCSE in computing atm in JavaScript or Python).

DD has gone on a scout camp this weekend and didn’t even take her brick phone, I would like to ask if she was cold last night but I guess it will need to wait until Sunday afternoon when we pick her up…

My 12 year old and all his friends only have bricks. They are in year 8 of a prep and I think not being in the senior school yet has helped.

That's exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote that.

I mean fair enough, I see your point there. Didn’t think that one through 😂
Perhaps 17/18 is too old. But I certainly don’t agree that 12 is the right age either.

Ok, I concede that I have no experience of parenting a teenager nor any idea of the differences in maturity between 10 and 16. I’ve been glad to read the measured posts about it because it has calmed me down somewhat.

It’s like everything though isn’t it. Moderation. Children / teens who have never been allowed even say junk food go off the deep end once they have their own money and cannot be stopped. Binge eating junk at every opportunity on play dates/parties while mum/dad isn’t looking stopping them.

Everything is ok in moderation if done right. Better to have a wine with family Sunday dinner at an appropriate age then be let loose to the streets at uni never had.

Hell even tv. Some parents ban it bar 30mins. Those are the children on play dates glued to the tv because it’s almost never allowed.

Dare say I’ve even had veggie children trying to sneak a ham sandwich. I didn’t allow it but they sure tried. I also didn’t tell on them. But I wasn’t going to be the one giving them meat behind their parents when if they haven’t been used to it could upset their stomachs.

I'm pretty confused by it, when we're always hearing about how many people are struggling financially. I just wonder how this tracks with 97% of parents seemingly being able to afford to get phones for children?

So if a kid doesn't have a phone, what happens?

Mobile phones aren't especially expensive.

Making the children buy a particular type of phone is actually worse in imo than banning them. How does everyone afford iPhones?

I don’t know what happens, because everybody has one…

Sorry i meant smartphone in general..