My little sister is four and a half. She sends me things in the post and I often get a call from her asking when I’m next going to visit. But, a few days ago I received a text from her. Considering she can’t spell her own name yet, you’d think this is a little young to be owning and using a mobile phone and when I asked the world of Twitter, many seemed to agree.
But is it really that controversial?
Let’s be honest, she’s only carrying it around because she wants to be like the bigger girls and her geeky older sister - she wants to feel like a grown up. Really it’s the same concept as her carrying a little handbag around, no one bats an eyelid about that and yet you’d imagine the same people that are up in arms about her using a mobile would presume that she’d got a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of Rose and some make-up in her handbag.
I really don’t want to sound like ‘that girl’ here, but I think many people have an issue with things like this because it’s different to “what it was like in our day” – and “my day” wasn’t really that long ago. We love to say things like this are preposterous because when we were younger we used to write letters to our friends and didn’t have a mobile phone and even then it was as big as a house brick and had to be carried by four of us, it goes on and on.
But I also appreciate that there are risks when it comes to giving young children this kind of technology and with it, freedom.
Firstly, playing around on mobile phones and contacting people takes up a lot of time, attention and concentration which it’s fair to assume will have an impact on how children learn and develop. In the latest issue of Wired, the cool little stats column tells us that 85.5% of UK children between 7 and 16 own a mobile phone and shockingly, only 72.6% of the same sample own a book.
Secondly, if young children cannot comprehend the implications of mobile phones then they surely shouldn’t be trusted in terms of running up bills – for anyone stupid enough to hand their child a contract phone – or contacting people they shouldn’t, or taking it to school.
And finally, establishing this direct line into a child’s life could potentially cause problems if the number is given to the wrong type of person.
Most of these risks won’t be affecting little children like my sister - she’s only really carrying it around as an accessory and has barely actually used it - but, the problem lies with those who are a little older who have already got into the habit of using their mobile phones on a daily basis. Should we put this down as yet another effect of our technology obsessed, information overloaded new society or actually do something about it before you can buy two packs of nappies and get one Bluetooth headset for free?
Image via FastCompany