My 4 year old wants a mobile phone,

Please re-read my above comments and you will see i've already answered that.

Sure, let them use them. But it should not become part of their entire daily life. Not all children will be IT geeks. Most wont at all. They will also be taught the basic IT skills that most people need later on in their schooling life.

[L3nny]

Originally Posted by maxinc

I guess the real question here should be ... iPhone or Android? Don't bother with Windows Phone ... LOL

Originally Posted by Daimo

Please re-read my above comments and you will see i've already answered that.

Sure, let them use them. But it should not become part of their entire daily life. Not all children will be IT geeks. Most wont at all. They will also be taught the basic IT skills that most people need later on in their schooling life.

Sorry, clearly I must improve my reading skills, I must spend too much time playing with gadgets. I still couldn't find a middle ground in your reply, just a very restrictive point of view (when seen from my side of the fence).

Trusting they will be taught basic IT skills is, IMO, handing over a part of the problem for someone else to solve, and again, IMO, we've all seen the educational system failing more often than we'd like to admit, why trust that they will be able to make good on this one?

Originally Posted by Filipe M.

Trusting they will be taught basic IT skills is, IMO, handing over a part of the problem for someone else to solve, and again, IMO, we've all seen the educational system failing more often than we'd like to admit, why trust that they will be able to make good on this one?

because every class is fitted with them these days and they are all expected form approx P3 to do research on the PC so basic IT skills will be taught.

Gone are the days of story time and playing games in the playground - too busy texting their friends who are next to them because they have to use all the stuff the contract gives them. And they learn nothing and M&D always pay the bills at that age.

Indeed, I didn't write much either.....

Not restrictive at all. I work in IT, I am an IT administrator, I use PC's all day every day, and the days I forget my phone are the best one so I have a very good insight into IT useage and technology.

My generation (80's) and every generation got on fine before hand. Yes the world has moved on, yes kids need to keep in touch. More time goes on, more children life their life behined a PC, instead of living in the real world.

NO a 4 yo does not need a mobile. Why would you be allowing a 4 yo out by themselves anyway? why would they be any reasonable distance from home without supervision? They are 4, not 14!!!

Yes children should use PC's. They do... Yes they can be allowed to use them. No they don't need a phone, and no they dont need to be carrying laptops all day in a bloody primary school. Thats certainly keeping their childhood isn't it. So, seeing as 4yo's are so mature now and should have laptops, are you going to buy a new one when each ones broken??

Hell I couldnt' even keep my braces in my gob as a youngster, and at £40 a pop, my parents would go livid each time. Maybe you can afford to re-supply your child with new laptops all the time, but me, it stays at home, where the child can learn all they want, at home, if they want to, and have an interest in it (and arguabley, the parent can also learn with the child).

Originally Posted by Daimo

Indeed, I didn't write much either.....

Not restrictive at all. I work in IT, I am an IT administrator, I use PC's all day every day, and the days I forget my phone are the best one so I have a very good insight into IT useage and technology.

My generation (80's) and every generation got on fine before hand. Yes the world has moved on, yes kids need to keep in touch. More time goes on, more children life their life behined a PC, instead of living in the real world.

NO a 4 yo does not need a mobile. Why would you be allowing a 4 yo out by themselves anyway? why would they be any reasonable distance from home without supervision? They are 4, not 14!!!

Yes children should use PC's. They do... Yes they can be allowed to use them. No they don't need a phone, and no they dont need to be carrying laptops all day in a bloody primary school. Thats certainly keeping their childhood isn't it. So, seeing as 4yo's are so mature now and should have laptops, are you going to buy a new one when each ones broken??

Hell I couldnt' even keep my braces in my gob as a youngster, and at £40 a pop, my parents would go livid each time. Maybe you can afford to re-supply your child with new laptops all the time, but me, it stays at home, where the child can learn all they want, at home, if they want to, and have an interest in it (and arguabley, the parent can also learn with the child).

Fair enough, but then again I never said a 4 yo should be given a mobile phone or a laptop. My position was merely defending they should be allowed to play with and learn to use what to us, older generation (... I can't believe I just wrote this...), seemed like something out of star trek only 20 years ago.

As for laptops in school, our education system allows / requires kids to have them from age 6 (I will agree that 4 would be a step too far), as a learning complement. The laptops that were initially supplied were built specifically for kids (netbook based, only even smaller), weigh next to nothing and are supposed to be a bit more rugged than your average Acer POS. They come preloaded with learning software, running on the usual suspects. Of course since we also have a lot of posh people that *hate* Windows or Linux and will use nothing but Apple products (because everyone else is the spawn of the devil and considered the plague, yada yada yada), now they are allowed to use the iPad. Don't ask. I don't want to know, and no, I don't have the funds to replace it if / when it breaks. Hell, I wouldn't even buy one for me, but that's another story altogether.

Putting the iPad example aside, my point of view on the use of laptops in classroom is quite simple: if it allows kids to carry only one thing instead of a backpack full of books that will break their backs and cost more than the flippin' laptop did in the first place (yes, we have to pay for school books and they change every year), then I'm all for it. Make it light, small and rugged (okay, pick any two...) and we may have a winner. For the paper people in the room, I also love the feeling of holding a good book in my hand and reading from it instead of a screen, but with the quality some of the school books are printed, trust me, you get less headaches from a screen.

My daughter (aged 6) began being taught how to use a computer 3 years ago, both at home and at the nursery, and at that time she could already choose her own DVDs by hopping on a stool and changing disks on the DVD player (as pretty much all kids seem to be able to do now, much to the amazement of their grandparents). She got her first mobile phone for her 3rd or 4th birthday (can't remember as I wasn't the one buying it), and it was the Imaginarium fixed thingy, that could only receive calls or make calls to fixed pre-programmed numbers.
How many times have I seen her use it? None.
Did she need it? No, as she was always under supervision.
Does she need it now she's 6 (and btw, she was given a different one - Hello Kitty themed! - when the first one broke - again, not by me)? No, as even though she's now in primary school, she's still constantly under supervision.
Does she care? Yes, because even with the phone off, without a SIM card or anything harmful, her imagination allows her to play with it as grown ups do, while holding something in her hand that is not a piece of make believe plastic.
Would I have bought it for her? Probably not.
Does it make her happy? Yes.
Is it worth it? You tell me.

As you can see, my position isn't that different from everyone else's. I'm only 33 (going on 34), I use computers and gadgets for pretty much all the time I'm awake, and yet I'm also sitting on the fence when it comes to kids using this kind of stuff, and when it comes to mobile phones, radiation is a concern that will make me try and make sure she uses a mobile phone for as small periods of time as possible.

I'm not an expert on kids or anything like that, but my best friend has a 5 year old, and we strangely had this conversation a few weeks ago.

I personally think that giving a 4 year old a mobile is a little bit useles. I let my friend's little boy first use my blackberry, then my iphone. he also plays with my digital camera and is perfectly capable of finding the games section of the Cbbies website from a laptop. but he doesnt really know quite what he's doing. He told me he was changing the settings on my camera to "make it better" and when i looked, yes he had found his way into the settings menu, but he didnt actually understand what he was doing, he was just scrolling through the menu and pressing the buttons.

Same with my phones - he wanted to text his mum, and could recognise her name from the phone book but couldnt really text that well, at 4 or 5 your writing skills are very limited.

He is very inquizative and if he was given a phone for emergencies to carry in his bag or something, the odds are he'll have run down the battery within 2 minutes, or it'll be turned off for school and if he did get lost/separated, he probably, at 5, not even think about the phone in his bag.

I personally think it would be a bit of a waste giving any 4 or 5 year old a phone, my friend's boy has no concept of value when it comes to phones, he doesnt understand that my iphone 4 is worth about £500 and when he drops it, completely by accident because he's 5 and is clumsy, that i might be a bit worried, and accidents do happen - the expensive phones kids want, they would probably break, and if you gave them cheap ones for emergencies they wouldnt be interested in and would have them turned off in a bag and forgotten.

Saying that, we're going to glasto this year and he's being given a mobile phone "just in case" so maybe im being hypocritcal?

[yorkie_chris]

Originally Posted by Reeder

I was 13, at the height of my school social life and I wasn't paying the bills. What was I meant to learn?

That running up £700 bills when trusted with something results in getting the living f*** kicked out of you?

Maybe I grew up in a different sort of environment lol

Originally Posted by yorkie_chris

That running up £700 bills when trusted with something results in getting the living f*** kicked out of you?

Maybe I grew up in a different sort of environment lol

Like you, I think I woulda died had my Mum and Dad got a £700 bill......

[yorkie_chris]

Then again at 13 I had 3 or 4 of my own air weapons, was out with a shotgun on a regular basis and had been looking after my own motorbikes for a couple of years.