At What Age Should Kids Get A Mobile Phone?
Our 11-year-old has a mobile phone, and in 2022 it's hard to argue not having one for emergencies, and hell, even just sending her to the park with friends.
It's not the phone so much that has become an issue, it's social media of sorts. She does have a Facebook account that her mother created for her years ago, but we rarely let her use it herself. What we do allow is Messenger Kids but have banned her from YouTube because of content she was viewing and fully knew it wasn't allowed.
The issue we're having is not so much what she is viewing, it's what other 11-year-old kids are sending her. Classmates of hers, well, one in particular clearly has parents who don't care what their child views. I'm no prude, and I'm not ignorant to what I tried to look at when I was young, but there has to be a line for an 11-year-old.
All I can do to describe the idiot app TikTok like videos she has been sent massive quantities of, is say they are incredibly sexually suggestive or flat out sexual in content. We haven't addressed this with the parents of the kid yet, but it's a conversation that needs to happen. Not to play Judgy McJudgerson right out of the gate, but my guess is they could care less.
The worst part about that kind of content coming through, is it's sent on Messenger Kids. I get that they can't monitor everything that is sent, but it's supposed to be a safer place for kids to interact and it clearly isn't. Trust me, I do know kids get exposed to so much at school anyway, but it would be nice if these so called "safer" apps did a better job. At what age do you think a kid should be given a mobile phone?