Should 10-11 Year Olds Be Allowed to Cruise the Internet?

Do you really want to start down that road of giving her things just because her friends have them? If she doesn't need it, she doesn't need it. Done.

I would not give a 10-year-old a phone, no. Nor a teenager.
They go to school. Or sports. They have schedule. Why give them a phone so they can waste time with a screen? They are not on a deserted island somewhere (in which case a phone would be useful).

At home, my little ones cruise the internet with a time limit, though mos days we're kept busy enough we don't use screens. They look up specific kid stuff and I'm not really concerned. We'll have to adjust the conversations as they age, about safe use.

The decision entirely depends on your family's unique needs and your child's readiness. Unfortunately, presumptuous and even judgmental comments, i.e., Patty K's "No 10 year old needs a phone" only serve to stifle the thoughtfulness that goes into making the decision best suited to one's own situation. I don't believe there is a pat answer to this question, but I will provide my frame of reference for providing my daughter with a cell phone.

My soon-to-be 10 year old received her phone at age 9 while in fourth grade this past year. As a single, working mom it has allowed us to maintain open lines of communication that only serve to increase her safety. We live in an urban suburb just outside of Chicago; so many things are within walking distance from her school. She and her friends often walk to the library after school. She calls/texts when leaving for the library and calls/texts when arriving. I can also reach her if I am running late or need to communicate with her. The library advises not to call their number unless it is an emergency- her phone then allows for that direct communication between her and me. In fact, my daughter used her cell to reach me while at the library with children in her age range who were making a video to post on YouTube. She is aware of the safety issues involved with posting a video and wanted my help in navigating what to say to friends so they wouldn't post the video. I am thankful she had access to her phone when she needed me.

She will also use her phone to contact me after school should plans change and she and her best buds would like to walk to one of their homes. She can reach me to ask permission, and then to check in when she arrives. In fact her close friends that do not yet have phones of their own will often use my daughter's phone to reach a parent when needed. Her phone allows her close knit group of friends and the equally close group of mothers to watch over one another. She also has her phone when she is with her father, and when a family friend takes her to ballet on Wednesdays. I like that. I can reach her and vice versa should she need me.

Back in the day, I used to chat with friends using a landline (rotary and all!). Nowadays, most folks no longer have landlines, including us which helps cut down on superfluous costs. I am not comfortable with her utilizing my cell to communicate with friends given I also use my phone for work purposes. Having her own cell allows her to communicate with her friends without compromising my phone's usage.

Given that I work in a field that focuses on domestic and sexual violence, I am well-versed on the both the dangers that lie "out there" and the dangers that lurk closer to home. We discuss these things. Her access to a phone is an additional safety measure we were more than happy to implement this year. Naturally, by establishing rules, boundaries, and utilizing parental protection mechanisms, we are able to provide the age-appropriate structure to teach her how to use technology, including the internet, safely and with discretion. This will hopefully result in increasingly responsible usage on her part.

Finally, my daughter will occasionally say things to me via text or by calling that she would be unlikely to share were we face to face. This is an added bonus that I never anticipated. She's literally texted from the other room a few times about something sad or embarassing that happened at school, and we've texted back and forth to discuss it. Now, of course, this doesn't replace in-person communication, it just augments our existing strong lines of communication. As long as she's talking - through whatever medium - I'm listening! Her phone has allowed us to stay in touch, to enhance our communication, and to increase her safety.

I am sure you will make the best decision you can for your child :) I wish you the best of luck!

wasn't an issue when i had 10 year olds (i just came across a letter to santa from my older, asking for a computer 'although i don't really know how to use one. all i can do is type on a keyboard.' so sweet and utterly archaic!)
but i see no need for a kid that age to have a device that wasn't locked down with parental controls. they're available pretty easily, right?
but then, i'm a dinosaur.
:) khairete
S.

My oldest daughter will be 11 in 20 days. She has a phone. We have Verizon, so I enrolled in this family base program they have. Its $5 a month. I get daily emails of who she talks texts. I can also limit her data usage, block certain websites, and I can block her from talking to certain people. You can also block the times her phone works. ie..she can only call me and/or her step dad during school hours and no one after 9pm. You can set the hours yourself. She has a phone for when she goes to friends houses or in general when she's away from me. She came at me with the whole "everyone else has one" and when I got her the phone I did inform her that she didn't get it BC everyone else has one. She got it in case she needed me. And had the talk that just BC someone has or does something does not mean she has to have it or do it either. I don't regret her getting the phone as she is very responsible with it, and when she does something its the first thing to go, which has been a great reality check for her! We just moved to a new school district, and they allow cellphone use during certain parts of the day, I do not allow this and she doesn't take it to school with her. That part I can't let go! Lol

I agree with Lillian C. that it's a decision that's specific to your family's circumstances.

As far as having "free reign" on the internet, you can easily enable restrictions, also known as parental controls, on an iPhone or iPad.

I assume they have the same for Android phones or tablets, but I don't own one.

So you can hope the parents of daughter's friends know this and enabled restrictions, and if you decide to go forward at some point and get her a phone with internet access for whatever reason, just know you can restrict the media/content she's accessing with the phone.

My kids didn't get phones until they started middle school, because that's when they started taking the bus and going places after school (library, down town or a friend's house) and I wanted to be able to reach them. They didn't get smart phones with internet until they were in high school.
I know it's common these days for elementary kids to have phones, some with internet, but really plenty of parents still keep these devices and their capabilities limited.
I know it's hard in the midst of "everybody is doing it" but really everybody is NOT, and as the parent it's your decision, not hers.

Um, no.

Just because I see all the other parents letting their kid jump off a bridge, doesn't mean I will let mine! Lol.

I do what I feel is right for my kid. Other parents don't get input.

IF I let my 10 yo get a phone (if she has a lot of extracurricular activities or something... I highly doubt it will happen though. I plan to hold out until it is actually needed) it would be a basic flip phone to call or text on... Maybe a camera phone for pictures. I don't know, that will depend on my daughter when she gets to that age. She does NOT need internet access 24/7, especially if that access is unsupervised.

My DD is learning that as soon as "everybody else" falls out of her mouth, the answer will be "not in my house" or "no".

My sks had a shared computer with monitoring on it in a public space. For a very long time, the internet was not available on their phones (that they got from their mother) and they used that computer for their surfing. They still found trouble (one used Google Images and one had a friend help her find an early version of Chat Roulette...). And now what they can find is way worse.

In my experience, a 10 yr old neither needs unfettered access to the internet NOR does she need a smartphone. Or any phone. My SD only got one at 10 because her mother bought it and it was a glorified toy. She didn't NEED it for exactly what you describe - almost always with an adult. At that age, my SD was in after care, so she left an adult to be with an adult to be picked up by an adult. Even going to a friend's house was a 10 min. bike ride only. Any phone my DD does eventually get will be heavily monitored.

You don't need a reality check. SHE does.

Our 12 year old still doesn't have a phone of any kind, and I think he probably won't have one until he reaches high school and starts being out and about without us or another trusted adult. We use your logic (kid doesn't need it). He attends a private school where most of his classmates had phones by 4th grade; I think he and my equally fuddy-duddy colleague's daughter might be the only ones in their class without a phone at this point. The 'everyone else has one' argument carried no weight with us, and he actually hasn't asked in about a year. For us, the issue isn't as much about internet access as it is about having an expensive piece of technology which just serves to distract them from being where they are located in the moment.

Internet access is another question--our kids have pretty free access via our computers at home, however they also are quite sensitive to cursing and other inappropriate items which can show up online and right now, they aren't drawn to it.

And this is why God made parental controls.
The internet is a help, and a useful tool. IF they use it safely!
My 11 YO old has two devices, both with parental restrictions that require a password, set by us.

I'm not really clear on what you are asking here. Are you saying you aren't giving your daughter a phone, and judging those who did/do? Are you looking for arguments to support your position to your daughter? Or are you genuinely considering giving a device like this to your daughter, and looking for approval to do so?

Or really, are you looking for a way to avoid the internet part of it while still giving in on giving her a phone so you can completely avoid the argument/discussion with your daughter?

What other people do is not really relevant to me, beyond my daughter's exposure to things due to her relationship with those other people.

My daughter turned 13 last month, and we gave her a phone (yes, a smartphone). Most of her friends have had phones since at least 6th grade (10/11 yrs old). But our daughter had no need for a phone at that age. This year, she is going out for cross country (after school practices, where she will bus from her school to the high school when school is dismissed, for the practices, and then will hang out until the activity/athletic bus is ready to take the kids home). The athletic bus doesn't drop them at home, but 3 miles from our house at a gas station, as a central location. (It's still a great help b/c the school is 30 miles away).

She's been involved in activities outside the home for years. But, as you said in your post relative to your daughter, never without adult supervision and access to call if she needed to do so. Now that is changing.
She already has internet access at home. She is a responsible child. And I limit the data she can use anyway. Her wi-fi access (at school) is restricted by the school's filters as well.

So.
Do all kids have and need smartphones at 10 yrs old? No. Do they all get them or whine if they don't... No. My daughter didn't really care (or so she said). They can't use them or have them out at school anyway..

She has to be reminded to take her phone when we leave home... it just isn't that big of a deal to her. Maybe b/c we made her wait. Maybe not. Maybe she just is unusual to some degree... it wouldn't be the first thing she was outside the mold about.

Son, turned 16 this summer, just got his first phone for Christmas last year... at 15 1/2! Yes, it's a smartphone. Now, my husband is the only one who has an old flip/non-smart phone. LOL
Son took up a sport, and that pesky athletic bus dropped him off down the road at that gas station I mentioned earlier, in winter, in the dark, where there is no payphone... at 7:30 pm at night.
It just seemed to make sense.
Believe me, internet access for kids the ages of mine is no new thing. Teaching them how to manage the settings on their phones to avoid running up data charges... that is a small learning curve. ;)

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Oh-- and it sounds a little silly and lazy, but it was a consideration. We all (except my husband, who will be getting one for Christmas, lol) have the same brand phone. This way, our charging cords and stuff (both in the house and in the car) are all the same. When someone's phone needs charging, we can plug it in. This is useful, for instance, on vacation, which we just came back from. We actually were able to let the kids shop together while husband and I split up and did some shopping on our own at a mall. It was nice not having everyone tired, and annoyed at someone else's shopping habits, and taking the entire day to do what we were able to do separately in about 3 hours.

Also.. smartphone texting is nicer than flip phone texting. Just ask my husband. To look at a text, or scroll through a list of texts, or see a conversation.. well, you can't see a conversation on his phone. Just one text at a time. And so annoying if you are typing one and someone sends you one simultaneously. I figure, they will have these phones until they are out of the house, most likely. For several years at the least. They have come in handy to be "more" than a pay as you go flip phone.
Son just got his driver's license for example. So glad he will have a map and gps with him everywhere he goes, in case he gets lost or something.

"Well, I'm not everyone else's mom, and I said no."

I think you have good points to ask back to your daughter.
It's hard raising kids right now when so many parents do just pass off their old phones to their youngsters. And some parents just feel like they want to get those devices for their kids as presents, too.

That said, I think kids still need time to be kids and less inducement to sit on their butts looking at a screen, no?

Our son is still far too young to be completely alone. When he hits middle school age (his school is a K-8), *maybe* we'll consider a simple pay-as-you-go cell plan for him, similar to the ones his father and I have. (we don't have smartphones, we like to leave our computers at home). If he needs a computer for actual research and school, he can absolutely use ours at the kitchen table. Smartphone? Turn 16, have a job to pay for the phone and the plan, and that will be your business-- as long as you don't make it my business by misusing it. Then it will just be gone for a long, long time.

I suppose that kids are all going to stumble upon things on the internet that they shouldn't from time to time. But we don't need to help that along, now, do we? :)

Depends on what you mean by cruise the Internet. My 11 yo grandson looks up sites that give him information about his interests. His sister started doing the same at that age. She also played games, used sites to draw and color. They didn't randomly cruise.

Neither had a phone. They used a desk top computer and tablets. Sometimes my phone. My granddaughter got her first phone at 12 1/2 or so, when in middle school. Just a basic phone with no Internet access. At that age she called friends and she and her parents kept in touch. This was the beginning of parents less direct involvement in friends get together. For example she could stay after school or go to a friends house as long as she called to get permission.

Another reason for my granddaughter's phone is they don't have a land line and parents mostly didn't want her to use their's as often as she wanted to talk with friends. She got a smart phone this year. Most talk is done with texts.

When a child gets a phone depends on need and maturity. My grandson is immature and not very social. I doubt he'll have a phone for several years. In response to the comments that kids don't need phones I suggest that they do at the very latest high school. I think even middle school. Texting is a large important part of communication as are other available apps. Consider how much you needed a phone, even just a landline when you were a teen.

Hi S.,

Our youngest is 9, and some of his friends have smartphones, which prompts him from time to time to ask for one.

My standard answer is, "Different families make different choices. Your dad and I agree you don't need a phone." That pretty much ends it right there.
He does have a Kindle Fire and plays on an iPod (mine) occasionally, but there are parental controls on those. Internet access for school is on the computer in a common area in our home.

Our older three got phones when they started high school and needed to reach us for rides, permission to go places, etc. At that time, smartphones were not yet the norm. Just regular phones and later those that could send texts, so we didn't have to deal with the whole smartphone-internet access thing when they were younger.

I really do believe different family circumstances warrant different choices in this matter. If I were a single parent and other people were watching my child, taking him/her places, or if he/she were in the other parent's house with other adults unknown to me, I'd want my child to have a way to contact me at all times. It's more of a need in this case than a want.

In your situation, where your daughter wants it just because of the "everyone else" reason, the best parenting thing you can do is not give in to that line of thinking.

Hope that helps.

J. F.

hold off on getting her technology as long as you can
not for the safety of internet thing, I've never found that to be a problem cause my daughters who are 15 and 12 are pretty disgusted by anything sexual or they don't catch the sexual innuendo. But those internet linked devices are time suckers, the girls both became quickly addicted to checking all their different things, repeating vines (short videos) etc. They stopped playing games, going on bike rides and just started sitting around.
If she insists on a phone get her a basic call and text only one, a pay as you go, that she can take with if you drop her at the mall or a friend's house or if she is going to walk to the park and you want her to have a way to contact you.

We have considered giving our 10 year old a smart phone, it's only $10-$15 per month to add her.

BUT she has yet to show us she can take care of living things, pet chores, yet. So I'm surely NOT going to trust her with a phone, even if it will only cost a penny or a dollar. U S Cellular has the BEST cell phone plans.

She spends a lot of time on the desk top BUT it's sitting in the living room and the screen is facing into the room. Anyone walking by can see what's on her monitor.

My kids are older than your daughter. They don't have phones because they don't need one. My youngest (12) asked for an iPhone because he wanted to play games on it. I laughed at him. If he needed a phone for communication, I'd get him a basic non-smart phone.

They do have internet access via their own computers. When they were younger, we had the KidZui browser and they used that. It does a great job filtering. 5th grade was about the time when they started using the internet for school and needed less restrictive access. Google Safe Search was usually okay, but not always. Even the school's filters don't catch everything.

All of my kids have free reign to the internet, they also know we have access to see what they look at and what they are doing. They are 9 times out of 10 playing on Starfall.com or something of the like, other times they are watching Minecraft or dance video's on YouTube. Sometimes things they shouldn't see pop up, and they always come tell us right away so we can get rid of it and they can cruise on.

As far as a smart phone - nope! My daughter is 11 and a lot of her friends have smart phones, she can have one when shecan afford the $30/month upcharge on our bill. So not before 14 or so. We may change our view on that in the future, but a "dumb" phone is all she needs right now.

My son, almost 12, has a phone with internet access. He never uses it. There is no reason for him to. They are never on the internet at home either. The only time they look at the computer at home is when I find a video or an article I think would interest them and I call them over and show them.
You can give her a phone but make sure there is no internet access!
L.

I am with you Mama. No 10 year old needs a phone nor free rein on the internet. Stick to your guns!!!