What Age Should I Let My Kid Have a Cell Phone? Advice For Parents on Setting Rules & Boundaries for Kids & Teens with Cell Phones
All of My Friends Have Cell Phones! Has your child been begging you to get her a cell phone? Is she lamenting she's the only person in her peer group without one. She may be right. A study by Common Sense Media , an organization that conducts original research to ensure the digital well-being of kids, reports these mind-blowing statistics: By age 11, more than half of U.S. kids possess a cell phone. By age 12, two-thirds of kids have a phone. By age 14, teens are as likely as adults to have a cell phone. About 20% of kids as young as eight have cell phones! What's a parent to do? Cell Phones Are an Artificial Form of Communication Buying your child a phone today isn't like it used to be when rotary and touchtone phones were the standard forms of communication. If you grew up in the age when extension cords from a wall-mounted phone could stretch to nearly every room in your house, you remember spending hours on it talking to friends, family, and love interests. The b...