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When is it OK to get your child a cellphone?

When is it OK to get your child a cellphone?

It’s no longer question of ‘if parents will get their child a cellphone,’ but a matter of at what age.

Mobile devices offer access to limitless information, profound new means of communications (and some not so profound), as well as wondrous forms of entertainment at your fingertips.

But how do parents know when their children are ready to handle this brave new world?

Well, on average, parents seem to be deciding that the magic number is about 10 years old, according to research from Influence Central. And the age at which parents are comfortable giving their children appears to be dropping. In 2012, the average age kids got their first cellphone was at 12.

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Noni Classen, the education director at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, told Yahoo Finance Canada that there’s no perfect number and that she gave her own children phones at different ages because they didn’t have the same level maturity.

“The benefits need to start outweighing the risks, and once that happens and you can see a real (advantage) of them having one,” said Classen.

“It does get to that point where they need one to stay connected with people and for the great purposes of … parents being able to stay connected with them.”

Classen admitted that it is hard to deny children the devices because kids often feel pressure from their peers.

However, she said when kids start to do things on their own and aren’t with parents all the time, like when they are seven and eight years old, both parties want to find a way to stay in touch.

While parents may be worried about their children’s first phone, Classen compared the process to the education and practice that will eventually go into preparing them to get behind the wheel of a car.

“We don’t just give them the keys and off they go,” she said.

“We get them ready for it, and we teach them the rules and … and they have to learn how to stay safe and … they have to practice for a long time.”

Classen said one of the most important things parents can do is to set ground rules around the device.

In particular, with younger children, Classen said, they need to know that the phones belong to their parents and they are just letting them use them.

“From the outset, you need to set up the expectation that they need to be using it responsibly and safely, that it will be monitored and that there are limits to its use,” she said. 

This allows parents put restrictions around when the phone can be used and for how long, so it won’t interfere with class time, chores, homework and other day-to-day activities in a child’s life.

 She suggested keeping younger kids away from their phones in their bedrooms and when they’re going to sleep, in the mornings and at school.

A study released in May, which polled 1,240 parents and children, found that 50 per cent of kids said they were addicted to their smartphones. A further 66 per cent of parents said their kids spent too much time using their mobile device, and 52 per cent of children agreed.

The use of smartphones also often became a point of conflict, with about 36 per cent of parents saying they argued with their kids about device use every day. 

There are also issues such as online predators, explicit content, cyberbullying and what many parents are finding increasingly more concerning – sexting.

A poll of parents in the United Kingdom with children aged 18 or younger earlier this month found that 78 per cent of respondents were either “fairly concerned” or “very concerned” about their children sending sexually explicit content to others, compared to 69 per cent who were concerned about alcohol misuse and 67 per cent about smoking. 

Classen said this is a legitimate fear, as the Canadian Centre for Child Protection also operates Cybertip.ca, which she says has received about 200,000 reports of the online sexual exploitation of kids.

Furthermore, the Internet safety book “The Boogeyman Exist: and He is in your Child’s Back Pocket” surveyed 70,000 U.S. children and found that on average sexting began in Grade 5 and kids starting looking at porn at eight.

Because of this, Classen said parents need to be aware of the capabilities of the phones they’re giving to their children and the necessity of teaching them that there’s content that they can encounter or be sent that can be inappropriate.

In fact, she said her organization runs student advisory groups where kids as young as Grade 3 will reveal that they’ve encountered naked bodies on the Internet, often inadvertently through search engines.

But she said children need to know that what they’ve done isn’t wrong and that they need to understand it is OK to tell their parents that they came across something inappropriate.

“They can’t punish them because of that because they also need to be aware how easily that can happen,” said Classen, stressing that parents need to maintain “open lines of communication.”

“Even when you’re teaching kids all these things to help them and how they should use technology appropriately … they’re going to make mistakes because they’re kids.”

That’s why she also stressed that it is important children understand that there will be regular checks, which are not an invasion of privacy, but rather about a parent’s duties to protect their child.

Classen said if these expectations are laid out when kids are younger, it is easier to perform random checks when they 14 or 15 years old.

She added that with sexting it is no longer an option to tell them you can’t ever do it because that’s a very common way for children to start dabbling in dating, but they need to understand the consequences of losing control of their content.

“If they made a mistake, that’s all it is,” she said.

“You don’t need to start talking about how that’s going to define the rest of their life and using fear mongering.

Classen said that parents need to be constantly vigilant, even when children are playing something seemingly innocuous, such as a game.

She said they often have a social aspect where individuals can “sexualize the conversation,” by asking for or exposing them to inappropriate content. Children can also be lured outside the games, outside of the safety checks that many have put in place.

Jenifferit Sidhu, a media relations officer for the Toronto Police Service, also said it is difficult to give an exact age at which kids are ready for their first smartphones, and said it ultimately comes down to the parents to decide when their child is ready for the responsibility.

 Sidhu echoed Classen’s sentiments with regards to the fact that parents should limit usage, educate them about potential issues -- such as cyberbullying, sexting and explicit content — and monitor their activity.

“There are rules and guidelines that the parents should instil to ensure the proper usage of the phone -- pending the age of the age of child -- and they’re educated that once something is put out on the Internet it is out there forever,” she said.

Sidhu said some children may seem responsible, but lack the worldliness to understand new spaces, such as social media.

“There’s an innocence, which the parents should address, in that keep the circle small,” she said.

“And let them know you will monitoring social media sites: they will be your friend on Facebook; they will be following you on Instagram, and they should have the passwords to those accounts just to make sure there is an open dialogue that there’s nothing to be hidden.”  

Sidhu recommended the app Visr, which offers parents customized alerts if their children engage in what they deem concerning activity on social media, but keeps everything else private. It monitors for issues such as bully, explicit content, violence, late night usage, drugs and 17 other categories. 

She also said parents need to explain to their kids not to accept a friend request or give their phone number to a stranger, and have high privacy settings.

Sidhu advised parents to buy their kids dumb phones, or devices with limited capabilities.

Devices such as the Punkt, only offers users the ability to text and make phone calls, or the Light Phone, which can only make calls and is limited to 10 speed dials.

If this isn’t an option, Sidhu said parents can get their kids phones without a data plan. 

While there may not be a perfect age for kids to get their first smartphone, both Sidhu and Classen said protecting them from the risks involved ultimately comes down to continuing education and dialogue between parents and their children as they explore and test their limits in the new space.

“The biggest thing is that it's not a 30-minute crash course because it is so integrated into their lives,” said Classen.

“It is constantly using teachable moments and … reminding them that it is a public space and they can easily lose control of what they’re sharing.”