This month, Bill Gates declared to a french network ( RTL) that he only allowed his son to have a cellular phone by the age of 14. Is this a reasonable model, are there any studies suggesting or justifying an optimal age for joining ? Thank you.
The Bill Gates method? You mean get friendly with engineers; ask them about their work and then steal their stuff? I wouldn't recommend it.
@ Ben, The question is simple, constructive and related to cellphones and children, with no somber deep negative thoughts in mind, at all.
I think I feel the same about giving kids phones the way I feel about giving kids calculators or GPS. If you give a kid a calculator before they have a full understanding of math, they will not develop a good sense of mathematics. I think a phone for "emergencies" is appropriate. They make your kid safe and helps locate them. Maybe it also teaches them to be careful with electronics, but I don't support giving a kid a full phone. They will not learn to effectively communicate with people or effectively vet people.
A good analogy. I travel a lot in the US and have gotten in the habit of programming my GPS before I leave for the airport to my destination. When I get there I blindly follow directions to my destination. In the end I have no real sense of where I am. I hate this and have reduced my dependency on GPS. It is not good sense. In the "old days" you would go to the airport and the rental car place would give you a map. You would study it for some time and understand the area. You then would plan your trip, (maybe with the help of the person at the counter). But you had a sense of where you were. You may have the same habit as I do with GPS. If your GPS went out, would you be totally lost? Many times I would be.
I think a kid with an iPhone and only Facebook friends is "lost". Clearly, being adept at social media and the use of a cell phone is an important skill that is required today for communications. The skills that are needed in electronic / phone communications are extremely important, but again it's like being skilled at using a computer. You have to learn the basic concepts first.
I recall tutoring a group of kids in Washington DC and asked them to quickly give me the average of the numbers 12, 15, 2, 6, 9, 11. The kids went head down into their calculators and two shouted out 22! The others looked glum because they had been beat. I asked the rest "Does that seem right to you?" They all shrugged and said, "Guess so. They got it first."
The kids were so use to using calculators that they failed to be able to see that this could not be correct.
Phones for kids? Give them a good flip phone that is out of service. You can always call 911 on a working phone regardless of subscription. Or get them a basic phone with prepaid service or service that is limited to calling the phone numbers of their parents and close relatives. I wouldn't ban phones entirely for children because I think they are an invaluable safety tool.
@ Ben I totally agree, I may add a point, today it is important to know, understand and use today's tools. Children have a great ability to learn if they are intersted in what they are learning. The sooner the better.. as for the GPS, at least, I completely lost my way twice using GPS the following picture seems almost to reflect a realistic case ! Please clic on the picture.
That's the problem with GPS. It's the "urban canyon" effect that causes the locations to be miscalculated.
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