Babies With BlackBerrys: Kids Increasingly Wielding Cell Phones
At an age when we were still playing with plastic toys, 10- and 11-year-old kids today are downloading games, sending text messages and surfing the Web with cell phones. After the communications fall-out of 9/11, many parents saw cell phone ownership as not just a priority, but a safety measure. Providers cashed in on family plans, and the nation took up talking and walking. Yet, now we have a generation who can't remember what it's like to dial.According to the New York Times, a recent study (PDF link) from Mediamark Research and Intelligence found that the percentage of cell phone owners among kids aged 6 to 11 has doubled since 2005. According to the study, boys are to blame. While girls are still more likely to have a mobile device than boys, the gap between them closed in the last five years to 21.8-percent for girls and 18.3-percent for boys (it was twice as big in 2005). Overall, about 36-percent of kids in the previously mentioned age group own a cell phone. That's just staggering, since even the youngest among us didn't get our first cell phones until we could legally drive [Edit. Note: To be fair, back then, they were brick-like and made horrible noises when the call didn't go through].
Kids today have a much better grasp on technology than we did back in the day. Nowadays, it's practically a necessity for a busy 'rent to be in contact with their tyke at all times. Yet, maybe parents are lighter in the pocket these days, too. Because an iPhone certainly costs more than a Barbie. [From: The New York Times]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mhalloway123 said 5:32PM on 3-31-2010
Babies with blackberries - now that's a little much! I mean, I'm all for kids even as young as 8 yrs. old having cell phones for a variety of reasons but blackberries!? No way! I think fors starters, parents should just let their kids test out the water with prepaid phones (like Net10) to elminate having to worry about overages and contracts. Once the kids show promise, you can always upgrade.
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