There are many milestones in the relationship between parents and their children. The first step. The first word. The first time they turn to you and say: “Please stop, you are embarrassing me.” To these, we can now add the moment a parent solemnly hands their child their first mobile phone. But what’s the right age for this to happen?
According to Dr Linda Papadopoulos – a child psychologist and ambassador for Internet Matters, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to children’s online security – the beginning of secondary school is a good starting point. “It makes them contactable and means they can get in touch with their parents if things go wrong,” she says. “A lot of their peers will get a phone at that age, so it means they can communicate with their friends and feel part of that.”
Some believe that the right age may be even earlier. The moment when children start travelling alone on a regular basis is a commonly recommended start point for a phone – which in some cases could be a year or two before or after they start secondary school. Sean Hargrave, a tech journalist and father of three, says: “It’s when your children are spending more time on their own. Their independence and geographic borders start to widen, so it makes sense to trust them with a smartphone.”
Statistics suggest that most parents tend to agree that secondary school is the right age for a phone, with a July 2018 survey of 1,000 parents by Tesco Mobile concluding that the mean age most think a child should have their first phone is 11. But a mobile is more than just a phone, it offers access to a multitude of information and ideas. Much of this is positive – a child can use the phone to look up bus timetables and talk to friends, as well as let adults know when they require the parental taxi service – but parents still need to remain engaged, continually talking to children about their internet use and monitoring the sites they access and the amount of time they are online. For this reason, some experts suggest that there’s no such thing as a right age for a phone, with it depending entirely on the individual child, the parents and the circumstances.
“When a child first receives a smartphone is a parent’s choice,” says Andy Burrows, head of child safety online at the NSPCC – which has introduced a guide to children’s online safety called Net Aware. “What’s most important is that mums, dads and carers have early conversations with their children.”
For Papadopoulos, it is essential to have these conversations. These shouldn’t be lectures, but instead should encourage a child to think critically. “Until now, they will mainly have communicated face-to-face; now they are communicating using texts, memes and emojis. What does it mean if they send a picture to one friend and not another? How do group chat dynamics work? Invite them to talk to you and think about these things.”
Having seen three children reach an age where they are entrusted with a phone, Hargrave has had some testing moments, but also feels children get a lot from their new devices. “They are using them for so many different things – they might be playing games, making films, watching TV, chatting to friends, researching homework,” says Hargrave. “It’s not just sitting in an armchair tapping screens. One of my kids makes films, another does arty stuff, one researches astronomy. They are a force for good, it’s just about having parameters.” And once the boundaries are established, children will be better equipped to enjoy their new device no matter what their age.
Encouraging a healthy dynamic around mobile phone usage might even be easier if children get their first phone at a younger age. Hargrave believes that retaining parental access to the phone is essential, which is easier to do with an 11-year-old than a teenager. “The phone is a great safety device and it’s also great for them to communicate with their peers, but you need to keep an eye on it,” he says. “You need to have a conversation, let them know you will look at their phone periodically. You should only do it when they are there and the phone is in front of you. It’s not right to rifle around behind their backs.”
It’s natural for parents to worry about their child in any new situation, and mobiles are no exception. While that can be mitigated by the use of parental controls and location tracking, these technological solutions don’t absolve parents from the responsibility of parenting. “We know that this is something parents worry about,” says Papadopoulos. “Up to now, everything the child has done the parent will have done first. But now the child will be using apps the parents have never heard of. It can make us feel insecure. But you do need to engage. You can’t just say: ‘I don’t understand.’ That’s not good enough. You need to understand, you need to get on the apps and figure them out for yourself.”
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