Should kids have a smartphone?
There is no doubt cell phones have vastly increased the speed in which people can contact one another. They have become quite the convenience in the modern world today. Cell phones can be seen in constant use anywhere you look, however, people struggle to know the proper age in which we should be able to obtain one of our own. It is apparent not many people have reached an agreement on how old one should be based on the range of age when children are given these devices. As opinions vary, it is evident young children before the age of fifteen are not ready to have a mobile phone based on the lack of responsibilities it requires to obtain one. Children in our modern generation have gotten use to technology being all around them.
Most children from the ages of fifteen and younger can’t remember a time when cell phones and computers did not exist. In households today, seventy percent of families with small children have a tablet (Kids Wireless Use Facts). Parents with infants in society this generation use games and apps on their devices to preoccupy young ones attention. Studies show that thirty­eight percent of children under the age of two use mobile devices for media (Kids
Wireless Use Facts). While infants and children should be learning and developing their own sets of skills, their minds are inside of a touchscreen or glued to a television. These unhealthy behaviors can leave them open to a lack of imagination and creativity. Seventy­seven percent

of children under twelve years old in tablet owning households download games to play (Kids
Wireless Use Facts). That seventy seven percent of children are losing the opportunity to roam the outdoors and explore to places their mind can conjure from their own thoughts. Instead of imagining the tree in their backyard as a castle needed to be conquered, they are shooting flying birds at little green pigs with one swipe of a finger in their living room. After all, you don’t see kids running around bases or kicking a soccer ball in the net while holding a phone sending a text message or facetiming someone. The journal Computers in Human Behaviors published a study that found sixth graders who went just five days without exposure to technology had an increased ability to read human emotions in contrast to the children who had their normal access to televisions, phones, and computers (Pew Research Center). Their research furthered even to where they could indicate that screen time can have negative effects that ranged from adolescent obesity and irregular sleeping patterns (Pew Research Center).
These cell phones are putting children at risk in more ways than just one.
In elementary school, and especially middle school, parents often run their kids around to activities outside the home such as sports practices, after­school activities, friends houses, and even trips to the mall with a group from school. Parents have claimed they gave their child a phone in order to maintain contact with them in case their child needed to reach them for any sort of an emergency (CBSNews). In agreement to these parents concerns, it shows that over half of parents have given in to letting their child have a cell phone. Fifty­six percent of children ages eight to twelve have a cellphone (Kids Wireless Use Facts). The vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud at the National Consumers League, John

Breyault, found that in 2012 nearly sixty percent of parents offered a cell phone to children the ages of 10 (CBSNews). A percent of parents have also tried expressing that giving their child a cell phone can show them how to be responsible by making sure to not let the phone get damaged, lost, or stolen. Including the responsibility of keeping within their range of minutes and data is their way of seeing how responsible they truly can be before they let them start to make their own decisions as they grow older. As one could make sense of this argument, it has an obvious flaw. This group of parents have forgotten how truly dangerous the world of smartphones is and make a mistake by testing the waters for responsibility when there are so many cautions they don't hesitate to consider.
Eighty­nine percent of kids with smartphones have social media apps they have access to without restriction (Kids Wireless use Facts). Fifty one percent of those use these social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter multiple times daily (Kids Wireless Use
Facts). These numbers might seem fine to you, however, when you factor in that only sixty­one percent of these teens actually protect themselves with privacy settings on their social media sites (Kids Wireless Use Facts) that can be quite terrifying. Thus said, cyber­bullying is also a large issue in today’s online behaviors. Every year, forty­three percent of children report being a victim to cyber­bullying and nearly a quarter say they didn’t know how to handle it on their own (Kids Wireless Use Facts). Several studies have linked frequent cell phone usage to lower school grades, anxiety, and even unhappiness (Pew Research Center).
As technology has advanced it has open up several doors and allowed us to do things once thought impossible. The progress is still growing and our smartphones are guaranteed to

become more useful and enable us to use faster shortcuts in the future. With this power comes the responsibility to take care of everything that comes with a phone. Giving a child a phone to teach responsibility is a very risky action with all the dangers they are not able to handle themselves. When children who can’t transport themselves places need to contact a parent there is always an adult nearby whether it be their friend’s mom, a coach, or teacher who would gladly lend them a phone. In order to save creativity and not allow the youth to rely on screens and touchpads we need to let them learn from their own experiences and create their own thoughts rather than reading or watching it from someone else. Protecting children from cyber­bullying, extra stress, and a loss of imagination is why we need to wait before we hand over such a helpful, yet exceptionally sly and dangerous tool.