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28 March 2024

Why do primary school kids get smartphones?

Published
By Shuchita Kapur

As cell phones evolve into gadgets for entertainment, children as small as four and even three can be seen playing games on these small, hand-held computers.

Whether at home, shopping malls, food courts or even in the cars, little fingers can be seen scrolling the touch screens for all their worth. Kids love it, and parents find it an easy way to placate them – in short, to keep them occupied and off their back.

Add a couple more years, and children seem to be for their very own mobile phones – and not just the parents’, which they might have used to play games on.

Some schools in Dubai permit children in the primary sections to carry their own cellphones on the condition that they are switched off during school hours. These devices, however, tend to become gadgets to be flaunted – an iPhone 4S could well prove to be a primary school kids’ claim to fame even it might have been handed down by daddy, who might have just upgraded to the 5th iteration of the Apple handy candy.

A prominent IB school in The Springs area does not mind primary school kids carrying phones in their school bag, provided its use is limited to before and after school, not during school hours.

“I gave a simple phone to my son in Grade 3 but had to upgrade it to a Samsung Galaxy S2 because of the peer pressure on him. They don’t want just a phone but a smartphone, and know each and every application,” a parent told Emirates 24|7.

This website ran a poll on the issue, asking patents to tell us if and why they would give their under-10 school child a phone, and if they would restrict its usage.

An overwhelming majority of parents who participated in the online poll run by Emirates 24|7 (77 per cent of respondents) claimed they are against giving their children under the age of 10 any kind of phone, smart or otherwise, while another 4 per cent said they weren’t sure what approach to adopt when it comes to handing down these gadgets to children.

On the other hand, almost one-fifth of respondents (18 per cent) said they believe there is nothing wrong with giving a mobile phone to kids below the age of 10. Among this 18 per cent, while 3 per cent would readily give in to the demands of their kids and give them a smartphone, 15 per cent said while they would do so, they would also monitor what the little kids are doing with their gadgets.

In contrast, tech-savy Japan has many children who use mobile phones in the country. ZTE Corporation (a telecomm company) recently announced that sales of its series of mobile phones for children in Japan had surpassed the one million units mark by the end of 2012. The ZTE mobile phones for children are customised for the use of primary school kids.

In the US, a recent AT&T survey found that 34 per cent of 8 to 17-year-olds with phones owned a smartphone and the number is only expected to increase this year.

[Image via Shutterstock]