Should I Buy My Six Year Old a Cell Phone?

Okay, so you’ve read the post title and instantly think I am nine different kinds of crazy, right?

She’s six. What on earth does she need an expensive piece of technology for? She’s just going to lose it. Kids don’t need to be connected every hour of every minute.

Look, I know the reasons for not buying them are there and they’re all good reasons. In fact, my knee jerk reaction is there’s no way she needs a phone.

But then, when I start thinking about it, well… I think I’ve changed my mind.

Should I Buy My Six Year Old a Cell Phone?

We don’t have a home phone. We haven’t for several years, and I love it. I love that telemarketers don’t call me, I love that I don’t have to field phone calls for my husband, and I love that there’s only one phone number to get  a hold of me. Because of this, I always have my phone with me, and it’s rare for me to miss a call. What I am trying to say here is, I plan to never ever have a home phone again. If she wants to call her friends, then she has to use my phone or her father’s phone. We both keep things like work email, important contacts, etc. on our phones. She could accidentally post to Facebook or Twitter– or even call someone I just don’t really want to talk to right then. Plus (and yes I am aware this is totally selfish) — if I am having a conversation with a friend via text or chat, etc. then I don’t really want to give her my phone so she can chat with her grandpa for twenty minutes in the middle of it.

I don’t want a phone my daughter can take to her friend’s house or to school. I basically want a replacement for the home phone for her to be able to use. If she wants to talk to her friends or family, I want her to be able to do that without having to pry me or my hubs away from our phone. And, for $9.99 a month added to our family plan, it’s WAY cheaper than getting a landline! The phones I am looking at to get her are free when you add them to your plan– so we are really just out the extra ten dollars a month for this.

My daughter has had my old iPhone for years. (Which I can’t just add calling to, because they require you to also add a $15 data plan, and I see no need for that.)  It doesn’t have a calling plan on it, and it basically works like an iTouch. She can play games on it, it has WiFi, and she even has a free texting program she uses to communicate with her grandparents. But the texting is a bit cumbersome–she uses one of those free to text programs. It’s filled with ads, it takes forever to load, and it’s just, in general difficult to use.

But I think the texting for her is a GREAT thing. I love the idea that she can send her grandparents little messages of love when she’s missing them, and that they could reply back when they have a free minute. We live about an hour away from all her grandparents, and really anything that makes her feel more connected to them is important to me. We already have unlimited texting on our plan, so adding it to her phone wouldn’t be any extra cost to us.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that I got this message either:

Dude, as a mom… you just can’t beat that. So, does my six year old need a cell phone? Well, I am starting to think that she does.

Note: This post was originally published in January 2012…but I still wonder how young is too young…