Raising responsible digital citizens

Should there be a certain age a kid should have a smartphone? That is the question that came to my mind immediately I saw this prompt. Moreover, children of today don’t wait anymore for their parents to give them a phone before knowing how to operate phones, and that makes most parents feel like getting them a phone would work and keep them busy as well.

Well, I wouldn’t say parents shouldn’t take care of their children or give them whatever they think the children deserve or need as well, but there are some certain things I don’t think it is important or necessary for a child to have until they are wise enough, which a phone is one of them.

A phone on its own is a very big distraction for adults, let alone children. I have seen a few people who wouldn’t get off their phones for the whole day, meanwhile they have some more important things to do than sit with their phones and keep laughing or watching videos online for the whole day.

the image is mine

Now, for children, phones might serve as toys to them, which most parents think is keeping them busy and distracted, but in my own opinion, there are some certain stages when we shouldn’t think of introducing phones to our children; if not, parents wouldn’t be able to control the child from how he or she handles phones as time goes on.

When we were growing up, there was nothing like gadgets; even our mothers didn’t have them, not to talk of children. I still remember that I was in SS1 when my elder sister, who lives in Lagos, brought me the first phone I used in my life, and it was a Nokia phone, and it didn’t browse. Despite the fact that it didn’t browse, I was distracted by the phone.

I stopped reading my book or going through whatever I was taught in the extra lessons I attended because I was always on the phone playing games, and of course I became popular in my class because of the phone. I always have credits on my SIM card, so some students became my friends just to send messages to their boyfriends in another school, which I love the attention and all that.

Children will always be children, and at some point my mom noticed that I no longer took anything seriously except for the phone, so she took it away from me until I finished my secondary school before she gave me the phone back.

the image is mine

To answer the prompt question, I think after secondary school it is still cool for a child to own his or her phone so that they wouldn’t be exposed to the world of the internet that might end up distracting them or making them take the wrong path because a lot is happening on the internet that might not be healthy, helpful, or good for children’s upbringing.

Parents shouldn’t make such mistakes by giving a small child gadgets because we are in a computer age, and before a parent realizes what is going on, the child might have gone too deep in the internet world, so opening an account for a child is not something I would advise since the child doesn’t know what to do with it. Children should be allowed to grow and know what to do with certain things before giving them to them.