Mobile phones: how young is too young?

I was recently asked by my cousin (age 7 years) at what age did I own my mobile phone. I answered her truthfully and said, when I was 15. The reason behind this question was that some of her friends in her year already had mobile phones, which begs the question, How young is too young to own a mobile phone?

The general routine for a seven year old kid is: wake up, go to school and return home. Where is the time for using a mobile phone? The simple answer is, there is none. However parents give in to their child’s consistent pleads with a common chant being, “everyone else has one, why can’t I?” This is a scary thought, are we depriving our kids from the opportunity in just being kids? We want them to grow up to be responsible adults but this doesn’t mean we need to immerse them so heavily in this environment at their age.

Additionally by giving kids their own mobile phone, they will not understand the finances involved in paying for these pieces of equipment let alone the monthly bills. We may make our child more popular at school, but we are teaching our kids the wrong ideals. We need to teach them to value money and not just accept that it comes out of thin air.

I close, by saying that I believe that when a child can pay in full for their mobile phone and the additional costs that accompany it, then they may own this piece of technology.

As a side note ~ in Australia the number of mobiles exceeds population. There is a total of 21.26 mobile phones in operation around this country. This is surely a scary figure.