What age do you let your kids have a tablet/iPad?

[nonamemummy]

Curious as to what age people let their kids have tablets/iPad?

My youngest just got one at age 10. He saved up and bought it himself. My older child has a phone and a laptop, no tablet.

My stepdaughter got a tablet for her 6th birthday. It's a kids Kindle with access to selected apps only (she mainly uses it to watch cartoons on Netflix). She has no access to the internet as such.

Mine has had an iPad since she was nearly 6 - but she has SN so struggles to physically handwrite and uses it to type a lot of her school work on at school. There was a period where both of them were obsessed with playing on them but because I didn't make an issue of it - the novelty's worn off and they tend to self-regulate, use it to email their grandparents and then bugger off to play with toys or read a book.

My 2.5 year old has my old iPad that was gathering dust (it’s super old but works).. obviously very basic, it just has a few educational apps on it that she plays with for a short period such as while I make lunch. It’s also handy for the 4/5 hour car journeys we make every other month to the in-laws. We download a loada favourite TV shows for a couple hours entertainment!

Most of her NCT toddler pals of the same age have Kindle Fires for using apps too..

I think so long as supervised & for limited periods, they have their place 😊

My ds is 3.5 yrs old. I also got out my old iPad a few months back but he just wanted to sit on it all day long. So I told him it ‘broke’. But last week we started playing some kids games on my phone, some colouring, numbers and colours stuff etc. I was thinking about getting a tablet but I’m just not sure. I feel like he’d just become addicted and want to be on it 24/7 again and it was hard to take it away from him last time. But it would be good for long car journeys, or even just when I need some peace to do some chores around the house! I’m just not sure...

We recently got DD age 4 a Kindle, the one that's aimed at children.
We did this because the only section of her preschools report on her that she was behind in was use of technology.

There I was thinking I was doing her good limiting screen time spending lots of time outside learning all about nature and role playing with her; actually I'm holding her back and she should have her head in a tablet all the time. It's the way of the world these days.

Oh and our Kindle doesn't work in the mornings or in the car

Dd got one at 4 ahead of a big long haul flight, which was handy. We’ve pretty much always limited it to weekends only though.

3 again only at weekends.

My 2.5yr old inherited my old iPad about a year ago, she uses it once or twice a week for about 30 mins to an hour total. She has the cbeebies apps and the hey Duggee apps and it feels fairly educational. It's just another game, she'll spend half an hour playing with jigsaws, half an hour on the iPad, it's all sedentary problem solving and learning activities to balance out with active stuff. I don't demonise the screen.