After getting a phone for our 5-year-old, I received predictable opprobrium and skepticism from other parents, and honestly thought they might be right. But after a while, I think it’s actually a great idea to get one this young, for three reasons: 🧵
1. If you’re buying smarthome stuff and your kid doesn’t have an easy way to manipulate it, you’re depriving them of agency to a shocking degree. Imagine what your early childhood would have felt like if you had to ask permission every time you wanted to use a *light switch*.
2. You’ve probably gotten them a tablet of some kind, right? A phone is just a small tablet. And small is more ergonomically friendly to small hands for a lot of cases. Most of the same educational games exist in both form-factors.
3. If you put it off until as late as possible, then by the time they get one, they’re so desperate to catch up with peers on social media that they’ll often ignore everything else they can do with it. All the bad, addictive stuff with the horrifying downsides we’ve come to associate with phones+kids, none of the “bicycle for the mind” stuff. Ours, obviously I hope, doesn’t have any social media. Their favorite apps, and I’m not even kidding here, are Calculator, Weather, Maps, and Camera.
I want to be measured in the way that I say this because a sample size of one kid over less than a year is hardly definitive, so, I’ll say it this way: I *suspect* withholding tech has similar effects to withholding sugar. I’ve seen other kids who will use up 100% of their screen time, grudgingly do the minimum physical activity that they’re required to, then rush back to screens. We haven’t had that issue. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=160&ContentID=32
@glyph Can your little one read? I was thinking that I'd get my kids phones as soon as they can actually use them for texting and when they can read stuff like contact names, etc.
Of course, as a free range style parent, it was basically never in doubt that I'd be giving my kids phones young, since I want them to be independent and the cell phone is probably the most powerful tool for providing autonomy and safety (to anyone) that exists in the modern world.
@pganssle not quite. iPad games have been instrumental in getting them as far on the road there, though. There’s a bunch of content out there in i(Pad)OS land for pre-literate kids.