This is obviously a fake. No baby would want to be seen with an outdated piece of technology like that. A baby would obviously go for a Palm Pre or maybe an iPhone.
So how old do children have to be to earn a mobile device? My oldest daughter is 7 and she is probably one of the last ones in her classroom to get a phone. If I didn’t think she’d lose it I’d buy her an iPhone. Really! She already knows more about my iPhone than I do.
Will our future children get their first phone when they are born? As a kind of welcome gift? What do you think?
Wow, at age 7?! I’m under 30, but do remember I got my first mobile when I was 16 (and I was one of the first in my class).
My first question would be: what does a 7 year old need a phone for? It sure comes in handy when being kidnapped or in some other trouble, but there are better device for that out there (with real time GPS tracking, etc). Does a 7 year old even understand that using the phone costs money? How would you prevent them from signing up for expensive SMS services, etc? The only somewhat legit reason I can come up with is peer pressure from other tech savvy 7 year olds.
I may be old fashioned, but I’d say: you’re old enough to have a phone when you can buy it yourself. And if you don’t have enough for an iPhone, save some more ;)
Makes me wonder why mobile operators don’t offer family-packs.
(they can contact me for inspiration anytime :-)
I agree. I stopped reading comments when i see a lot of tweets between it.
I like the experiment, and i think there is a place for tweets, but i don’t think the comments is the place for it
Boris,
having the twitter comments mixed with the normal ones is awful…
6 of the 9 comments are just retweets, no real comments… they are more bookmarks that comments, really not nice, you need to change this…
My plan is for them to get it at 17. I believe that 7 is way too soon, even if every other 7 year old has got one. There is no need to follow other people’s mistakes, and we need to teach our children this.
Yeah, we’re looking into hiding them but there seems to be a bug with the backtype plugin we’re using. Give us a couple of hours
When she was 7 my daughter started asking for her own cell phone. Some of the “our parents never spend time with us” kids in her class had them. Once I explained that “Daddy would have to spend more time working and not be home to play” she stopped asking.
What does nature do? Guess thats THE problem!
You mean an iPhone is modern? Sure, it’s got MMS, a great camera and… oh wait..it doesn’t…
When an iphone costs a quarter [pardon the US currency] then your cat will have an iphone — much less a child old enough to talk.
And you will not have to worry about losing them or, more likely, inadvertently destroying them.
AND — I am glad you got rid of the tweets that were nothing other than the url.
The question whether a 7 year old ‘needs’ a phone is the wrong question. It reminds me of a John F Kennedy quote:
Some people look at the world as it is and ask, “Why?” Others look at the world as it could be and ask, “Why not?”
I can’t think of a reason NOT to give my daughters a phone. You guys are asking the wrong questions. I know technology is scary and your gut feeling would be to ask yourself “Why does a kid need a phone” but the more interesting question is “how would it enrich my child’s life if she had a phone?”
Would it make her safer?
Would it help her deal with new technology at an early age?
Would it make her more connected to her family who don’t live in the same neighborhood as we do?
Would it help her deal with technology in a more sophisticated way?
I think the best way to teach our children to deal with a changing world is not to hide it from them but to teach them how to work with it. This is something that Confucius understood 450 years B.C:
“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.”
Now that’s what I call an early adopter!
Agree with what you’re saying Roy. My girl is 8, and luckily, there are only one or two phone owners around her class here in Scotland – they are the exception rather than the rule.
My daughter knows the value of money, and is pretty tech-savvy, having bought an iMac with her own money at a car boot sale last year, but she really doesn’t need or indeed actually want a phone – and I think it is all down to peer pressure – she has a growing collection of silly plastic toys called Go-Gos, and that little hobby is entirely peer-driven. Because a large proportion of the kids in her year have them, everyone is obsessed by them.
Our rule is pretty much the same with these as for phones – if you can pay for it, you can have it – otherwise, it’s not going to happen!