Good afternoon ladies. I hope everyone is having a fantastic Thursday afternoon. I just wanted to hop on real quick and have a little chat with you guys because I've seen this thing on the internet where it's saying that studies have shown that the average age a child receives their first smartphone is around age 10 and I was wondering if you waited to get your child a smartphone until you felt like they were old enough to have one. For me, my daughter received her first smartphone when she was about six or seven years old. She was given an iPhone that was a hand me down from myself. A couple of her cousins had it, her big sister also had it. So it's gone through quite a bit of people in our family, but she received this phone because she wears a CGM. That means it's a continuous glucose monitor. It monitors her sugar levels. It lets her know when her sugar is too high or when her sugar is too low. It also sends alerts to my phone and lets me know what her sugar levels are, especially when she's not at home. But I gave her the phone because I wanted to be able to monitor her diabetes and be able to, you know, keep her in safe ranges. But in my opinion, it just depends on how the family feels about phones and devices. Like for me, iPhones, I love it because you can lock things from your own phone. You can connect their phone to your phone so you can monitor things that they're doing. You're able to lock apps. able to do a lot of things through iPhone so that's why I allowed her to have it at such a young age but also for her diet.
I feel like I'm gonna give my child their first phone when she needs it to get ahold of us at a friend's house. So maybe when she's like 10 or 11, but have it have safety blocks and not a full on phone just like to be able to get ahold of us.
I definitely agree with you on my daughter has an iPhone and iPhone gives you the option to lock on like downloading apps and YouTube and things like that my daughter only has a couple of games on there that I have downloaded for her and she has Netflix and obviously her Dexcom CGM that monitors her glucose and she can call and FaceTime me as well
Do you know I was about 12 when I got my first phone and although at the time I was super excited and I felt like I needed it sooner with everything I think I'm gonna wait I'm definitely gonna wait I'm not even introducing my kids to a tablet yet and they're still super young so I mean if they need to contact me I would leave them I mean I say that now but I wouldn't leave them with somebody that I don't trust enough to call me in case something were to happen that I need to depend on them to make him
Like if I were to leave them at their grandparents house, obviously like my parents would tell me You know if something were wrong and I wouldn't have to depend on my kid to call me or text me in case something were to happen and Obviously, I do want to teach them how to use a phone like I would teach them how to use mine No problem. I would give them mine if they really needed to you know if they were going to you know, I don't know I'm just giving an example, but Yeah, I think I would definitely wait till probably I want to say high school
But again I'm saying this now I know things might change in the future it's still so many years away from now but I know it's gonna go fast there's a lot of new technology out that will allow your kid to make phone calls and stuff and text you in emergency cases like through watch or through a phone that blocks everything except for calling honestly I think if they track phones were still a thing like in the future or just like a flip phone if that's all exist I'm definitely gonna get my kid that if needed
I completely agree with you I was 16 when I got my first phone but I had to pay for it myself and I would babysit my younger cousins so I could pay my phone bill and at that time it was like a boost mobile church phone but like I said my daughter got one early because we use it as a medical device as well
Oh I definitely don't want my kid to be like an iPad kid always absorbing your phone and have to use it every five seconds but the same time I don't want them left out in school when they're in like fifth grade and they don't have like the iPhone 20 you know so I would say it depends on because I feel like I got a little flip phone when I was in fifth grade but it was only for emergency contacts and obviously I couldn't like play games on it or anything so I would say maybe like yeah like 10 or 11 is a good age
Yes I completely agree with you that is why I lock my daughters phone and iPhones give me the option to be able to lock Eno lake downloading games in other apps
With the way the world is set up now, I don't want to give my daughter or my future children no type of smart nothing until they 18. I know that's unrealistic, but I wish it was a thing like that because I feel like it's just warping the minds of the children. However, I feel like I will be doing that maybe like fifth grade when they're transitioning to middle school. that's how it is in my city.