Ok, Edgy Mama has probably already addressed this somewhere in her wonderful column, but i will still ask.  What age cell phones.  What options for what ages (internet, texting, camera, etc)?

I know several kids who were hoping to get technology in their pockets this Christmas that didn’t, but perhaps they were too young?

Does it just come down to however much a parent can afford or are we as a society wide open for technology?  And aren’t cellphones disallowed in school?

When I was a kid, beepers were the thing to have. Not that any kid needed one, but they were a kind of status symbol, stuck midway between showing your parents were wealthy and that you had the potential to be a drug dealer. I knew kids in middle school who had them, and apart from being distracting on occasion, they were more-or-less harmless. So, I’m going to give a non-parent answer here and say 10 is probably the earliest I’d go.

But not one of those fancy phones. Just a crummy TracFone like I have. No features except calling. Well, let’s not be cruel: It should at least have Snake or something on it.

My niece is 10 and has one. I don’t approve. She texts and stuff with her friends. I find the whole thing rather distressing.

Jason Bugg - 29 December 2008 01:09 PM

My niece is 10 and has one. I don’t approve. She texts and stuff with her friends. I find the whole thing rather distressing.

Yep, my son won’t have one till he’s at least in high school. Ridiculous.

You can get a Tracfone with a camera and Bluetooth and web capability at Wal-Mart for $30 now. Just add to the 20 minutes it comes with and that’s all they need. I don’t believe they don’t even need one until they can drive themselves away from the house anyway. Where’s a 10 year old going that they need to be phoned up? Running errands? Lunch with business prospects?

Exactly. What secrets do they possibly have that we shouldn’t know about. No ten year old kid had an abortion on Christmas eve.

Not to mention the well-documented effects of frequent cell phone use on a young humans brain.

give your kid a CB.