Kids and Smartphones
My oldest son is 11. He'll be starting high school in September, and my wife and I want a way of keeping in touch with him as he'll be making his own way to school. The default here would be to get him a phone, but like most 11-year-old boys, he's an idiot and we don't trust him with one.
So, as a test we've lent him an old phone of mine to see if he can be trusted with one under some limitations:
- The phone never leaves the kitchen.
- He only gets an hour of screen time a day between 09:00 and 19:00.
- Mum and I can vet everything he's been doing on it.
And it turns out, dear reader, that rule #1 was the most important rule we could have set. He's the last of his friendship group to get a phone, so they all have WhatsApp groups with one another.
The problem is those other kids are never off their phones, and my son having these kinds of rules in place makes him weird.
But I don't care.
He regularly has missed calls on his phone from midnight from his classmates. These aren't just calls to him either. They're group calls to the entire class.
Like, what the fuck are these parents doing letting their kids have phones in their bedrooms and giving them free rein? It beggars belief and confirms every concern I had about giving him a phone.
Lucky for us he's generally a good little sausage, and so far there's been no need for us to take his phone, reprimand him, or correct his behaviour, which I'm very proud of.
I just hope it sticks. It's only been a week...