Kids and Cell Phones - It's Not a Toy

We are obliged, as parents, to raise our children the way we see fit.
And, as part of that obligation we must ensure that our children are given every opportunity to both enjoy their life while they are still young and to gain the knowledge to be able to deal with our world when they have grown older.
It is amazing to me the things that kids have available to them these days.
Our children are becoming more vulnerable to phone and internet threats because they utilize these tools daily (sometimes by the hour or every minute).
When I was growing up, we were lucky to have some miniature cars and trucks that we used to build our "city" in the neighbors back yard dirt pile.
Many kids have their own computers at very young ages. They are quite useful in their school endeavors, but also in accomplishing other tasks as well.

And, the cell phones! It seems like just about every kid you see has a mobile device either stuck to their ear, or the bud is there.
But how safe are these devices? How old should your child be when you get them their first smartphone? What mobile dangers are we putting our children in front of because we didn't know that they existed? What horrible things are being presented to our children because they have these devices? Do we even care if there is something going on that we could avoid? We found the following today: "How many parents insisted after Columbine and Sept.
11 that their children be reachable at all times? How comforting to give kids cell phones, so that urgent reassurances were never more than 10 digits away.
" Read more: http://www.
time.
com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1883376,00.html#ixzz1Kla6Dtwd And from http://pediatrics.about.

com/od/otherparentingissues/i/kids_cellphones.
htm In our family, there are two very differing opinions on this issue.
Our eight year old wants a cell phone already, which isn't too bad, because it distracts him from the fact that he also wants a dog, but I don't think he needs one yet.
At what age are kids ready for their own cell phone? At what age do they 'need' one?" These and similar questions should be in the forefront of the parents decision to provide a smartphone to their young ones. We do not have any small children in our home any longer, but if we did, we'd probably have some very strict rules over the usage of those devices by our young ones.

We might wonder if we have the controls in place to monitor our children's usage and we could put spyware on those devices quite easily, but would we? We don't know.
It is definitely your decision. Make it wisely.