What's a normal age for children getting their first mobile phone?

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Ds is ten. He has a friend at school who is always on at him to get a mobile. Ds says "All the children at school have one." This has never, will never, be an argument that works on me, I need to have other factors to convince me to go down this road.

Further questioning: I said, "What do they all do with them?"
Ds: "Use them to make prank calls and play games."

I said "If we got you a mobile it would be cheap and not very good, probably no games on it at all. It would be functional. It wouldn't be like mummy's phone (my one has all the bells and whistles, internet access, games etc). If I get you a phone it won't impress your friend, the boy with an I-Phone."

Ds: (mutinous expression).
Me: "Would you take your phone to school and show your friend?"
Ds: "No. It would stay at home. But my friend would ask me all about it."
Me (pragmatic to the end) "Okay so lie to your friend that you've got a HTC Desire. He will never know. Give him my number, you can borrow the phone and chat to him whatever."
Ds: "No, I want my own phone."
Me (despairing) "If you had a mobile of your own, I'd spend my life saying "No playing with the mobile, you can have it later for twenty minutes, just like all the other technology in the house."
Ds: "No I could play with it whenever I want because it would be my phone."
Me: "You're in cloud cuckoo land if you think just because it's yours I will let you play with it whenever you like."

I cannot get ds to pretend my phone is his phone, he is getting hassled all the time by his friend and here's me and daddy being all hard as nails about him owning his own mobile. I don't like small bits of technology, my children are constantly walking off buses leaving scarves, hats, cameras behind, a mobile would be no different. And NO WAY would he get to play with it all the time. So my decision at the moment is "no" to mobiles.

So what is a good age for a mobile and what is a good phone to own? I mean a really basic cheap one? Should I say no his whole life and teach him the value of refraining from materialism? Or does he need to learn just what a hollow promise phone owning is through his own experience?

Capiche, Just as there may be an "over simplification" on my part, I am sure that you are also aware that your anecdotal evidence actually 'proves' very little too. One counter example does not count for much.

I (and Lljkk) have merely noticed that many of the people on here who have said that their children have mobile phones have got them because they mostly seem to live in rural areas and children are dependent on public transport, or there is a culture of children 'playing out' a lot. In contrast, lots of other people on this thread have also commented that their children don't have them and don't need them, as they are always with adults. I have merely noted the correlation. Most of the justifications for mobile phones on this thread have been for the freedom of the child - (to catch public transport / going to 'big school' / to be able to play out). This might be an over simplification, but it does seem to be behind many of the motivations behind those who have let their children have phones.

That's not quite how the front page of the Telegraph seems to put it.

The overwhelming number of studies showing 'no risk' have been paid for by the mobile phone industry.

They can always pay for enough studies to outweigh any genuinely impartial research.

youngjoly

You aspire for your children to have the life you had in the 70's

In the 70's there were no mobile phones

tramlinky i agree with you

Here.

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation, has classified the radiation emitted by handsets as ?possibly carcinogenic? although it did not find evidence of a clear link.

"Its decision - putting mobiles in the same risk category as lead, the pesticide DDT and petrol exhausts - will put governments under pressure to update their advice to the public on the potential dangers of talking on mobiles for long periods of time."

"It has long been known that the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones are absorbed by the body, much of it by the head when the handset is held to the ear.

"But research into the possible health consequences of frequent mobile use has proved inconclusive because the technology has only been widely used for a few years while it can take decades for tumours to develop.

"Last year a landmark IARC study, known as Interphone, disclosed that making calls for more than half an hour a day over 10 years could increase users? risk of developing gliomas - a type of tumor that starts in the brain or spine - by 40 per cent."

telegraph earlier article

It's a relief to me that this is finally being covered properly in the press. (Although the Telegraph has consistently covered the risk better than most.) The Express often covers it, but is generally so bonkers it undermines the story. The Guardian, needless to say, is scrupulous in never mentioning it.

Well, damn me if the Guardian hasn't felt obliged to cover this story as well. I'll eat me hat.

Here.

tramlinky I agree about the Express, and that's the thing that gets my goat about the Mail too - the DM frequently has much good sense to speak IMO, (no, I'm not joking ) but it falls down by being hysterically bonkers and undermining its own good arguments.

Blimey, someone who agrees with me about the Mail. Their columnists are serious bigots though.

Capiche - You say children in the 70s didn't have mobiles, and whilst that's correct we did have public pay phones. I remember being about 7/8 and being taken by the brownies to the payphone and taught how to use it, and to make reverse phone calls, if needed. When I was allowed (at about 7/8) to go beyond our local vicinity to the park, shops etc I was always given 10p, so that if I needed help, I could phone home and mum could come and get me. Unfortunately, there are no working public phones where I live now. A mobile phone merely replaces the previous system of being given money to be able to phone home if we needed to. Your argument over simplifies the issue here.

Seeker - you also say "I'm just curions about people saying that their child needs a phone because they get the bus and things like that. Generations have managed without!" but a change we have had is the erosion of public transport. Where I live now, our buses now come once every two hours. It is under currently under threat to be reduced further. Our last bus home comes at 6pm. School / leisure facilities is in another village a good 5 mile walk away. So what do you suggest if the (very unreliable) bus is late, or early or the child misses the bus? They walk the 5 miles down narrow country lanes alone? Wait two hours at a bus stop for the next bus? Really? You would want a 12 year old child to do this...?

True youngjoly.

At age 16 I used to attend amdram rehearsals in the next town. Coming back I had to catch a bus from the community centre into town, one from that town to the next town, then another one home to my estate.

At the 2nd town in the bus station there was a phone box. Without fail every week I called my parents from there to let them know I was getting the x oclock bus and would be due at x. oclock so they could meet me at the bus stop. Or if a bus ran late and I missed the last bus home I could get another bus with a slightly different route and they could meet me at that stop

Now that would not be possible as the phone box isn't there. Hence the need for a mobile

It's chicken and egg, though, isn't it? Payphones are being removed because allegedly "everyone" has got a mobile. My dc still use payphones. They only use their mobiles in genuine emergencies.

The removal of payphone is a desperate problem IMO.

I suppose it's the 'safety" thing that I don't get. My children both have phones, and it makes our lives MUCH easier. Far less hanging around (particularly for me!) no need to come home or find a phone box if there's an unexpected invitation to tea, all that sort of thing. But I don;t think it makes them a single iota safer.

In fact, i might argue that it makes them less safe, because they don;t have tho think about how to handle any tricky situation they might find themselves in - they just ring me. In my day (when it was all fields round here) if I missed the bus I learned how to deal with it. My dd just calls the mum-taxi!

Actually several psychologists have written about how mobile phones have become an umbilical cord, attaching children to their mothers. I know quite a lot of mums who obsessively check on and thus control their dc. Unless they switch the phone off, the dc can't escape constant maternal monitoring/instructions.

And I think seeker is right that it makes dc less independent; they just ring their parents at every opportunity.

In other words, a mobile phone can infantilise a child, especially a teenager.

So seeker, you really do think that a 12 year old girl who misses the bus home would be safer walking the 5 mile journey herself, across roads with no pavements and possibly in the pitch black? (this would be the case if someone missed the last 6pm bus home in winter). Honestly, can you answer that is safer than calling for a lift? (given, as previously discussed the lack of public pay phones around). Honestly, I would love to see your justification as to why this is safer, seeing as you are so insistent on this point.

Btw, this is the reality for 12 year old girls around here, I'm not making it up.

DS1 is going to secondary school in September. I am going to get him a basic phone on PAYG but I do not want him surfing the web or sending/receiving photos. That is my biggest worry.

There is already a lot of silly low level bullying by email and Skyping going on between girls at the school and I dont want DS part of that or receiving pictures or taking and sending pictures either that I can't control.

The school bans use of phones during the day anyway.

Your situation seems a bit extreme, youngjoly, like mine. I live in the depths of the country too. For my dd, a missed bus/train would, at the worst, mean an hour wait at the station followed by a 20 minute walk across some fields - and ideally I would rather she didn't do eeither. Because it would be a waste of her evening and boring for her. And I'm glad she has a mobile phone so she can call me so she doesn;t have to do it. But she has done it in the past and came to no harm. I don;t think she is any safer not doing it - I just think it's more convenient.

And very few people, I guess live in the sorts of situations we do, For most an missed bus or train means an 20 minute wait or a half an hour walk. Hardly life threatning!

youngjoly you are citing a one of extreme case

most teen girlss are text/sex/ting luv,hunnning and burning their ears off for a few hours every day

That's also my experience. They sleep with the phone, switched on, next to their head; they consult it first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.

Especially if they can get Facebook on it.

When they stay over at my place, I make them switch it off at night. For the sake of my dc's brains, if nothing else.

"youngjoly you are citing a one of extreme case" - In English..?

Do you mean one example...? Well, no I'm not actually. I'm citing the example of what would happen to the hundreds of girls who live in my village and other local villages in our area if they did not have phones. In our village - there is no secondary school, no leisure facilities, nothing much for teenagers to do within our village. Depending on which secondary school you go to, you may or may not have a school bus, and if you go to the grammar school - it'll be at least two buses. And, our village has one of the better bus services around here. Several smaller villages around here have no bus service at all.

Given the fact that Miss Read, Larry 5, mummymeister and nometime have also expressed concern over rural living, use of (unreliable) transport over great distances and some of these posters have also mentioned lack of public phones... I really don't think it is "one" extreme example, do you...?

'one-off' sorry

they'd cope young joly that's what would 'happen'

whose over protective???

Life goes on with out mobile phones in 'villages' towns and cities the world over