So.....will it be social death to start year 7 in September and not have a mobile phone?

[MrsFogi]

Dd doesn't have a mobile and seems to be in a serious minority in year 6 but doesn't seem too bothered. In year 7 she'll be walking 5 minutes to and from school. So I suppose there is a case for getting her a very simple phone to be able to contact us in an emergency etc. But.....does every child need a smart phone these days? Will it cause her irreparable social and psychological damage not to have apps etc?

Every child has one without exception at DS's school. He's not particularly tech minded and we didn't give it to him when he first started in Y7 but it became pretty clear that if he didn't have one he would be socially ostracised!

Depending on school and DC personality. DS1's school require an ipad, so DS1 use his ipad for social media, he only has a basic phone for emergency. This worked out fine for him. Most of his friends have iphone, but he doesn't care much about it. And this didn't affect his friendship at all.

For DS2, I guess he would like to have things his friends have. As he does pay attention to what is popular.

I second pp on using Life360 to see where your family are!

And buy a sim free smart phone and get a Giffgaff sim on a rolling monthly contract. No credit check, just choose your data/minutes/texts. My kids are on the £7.50 goodybag. I top up their ££ if we go abroad so they can text is necessary, but otherwise they mostly use it to text and on wifi in the UK.

My sons are 13 and15 and barely touch social media apart from the odd messages on snapchat or holiday snaps on Insta. Their female friends spends their lives on snapchat however. We also use Show my Homework app, and they sometimes use them at school to make videos for drama and English lessons.

I also expect them to keep up with the news and weather and manage their spending with their online banking apps. So smartphones are a priority here

Life will be easier for them to have a phone for all the reasons above. Dare I say it, depending on how affluent the kids are then anything less than an iPhone will be looked down on. Obviously If you can't afford this then they need to accept this. I personally love the fact that every day when I send my DC off to school I can use my find a friend app to see that they have arrived safely at school (train ride away). I can then relax until they leave at 3.30!

I agree, everyone has a phone in year 7..fwiw mine go to an independent school and many have iPhones but many, including my children, don't. Most have their parents old iPhone but we don't have iPhones, so just bought the kids cheap smart phones. Nobody cares.

My dd got an old iPhone 4 in Y6 but she never used it (although all her friends did and were already on social media etc).

When she started Y7 last September the phone thing just hit her. It took her about 5 months before she asked for Snapchat. IME snapchat is how they keep in contact after school. FaceTime is popular too. Remember how we used to phone our friends after school even though we'd seen them all day?

It's a hard thing to learn, but my dd was careful not to 'name' friends on Instagram and Snapchat. There's a thing where people like to name friends on their bio and of course over the year peoples names get taken off and put on. It can cause huge upset. Dd was canny enough to not engage with that in the first place.

Quite proud of her really.

I put DS on a £10 per month contract with Tesco which got him a decent Samsung (longer battery than Iphone). The advantage of Tesco is that you can stipulate a cap should they overrun data usage - DS's cap is £2.50 so if he loses it or it's stolen no big bill. He doesn't run out of data because at home & school he uses WiFi.