Times have certainly changed. To my generation, making a phone call involved getting permission from your parents to use one of those amusing looking red telephones with a circular dialer. The duration of the call got plenty in trouble. When it came to entertainment, video cassette recorders ruled. Nintendo wasn't mainstream. Safe to say me and my fellow 80s babies grew up in the dark ages.
This is now the information age, the Internet is everywhere and anyone can have it regardless of age. People with children born after turn of the millennium feel like empowering their kids with cellphones for the purpose of 'communication'. Others will go the extra mile and purchase that Galaxy something or iPhone X simply because they want to their child to have the best. In as much as the intention of father/mother being honourable, results may vary.
My worry about this growing trend is whether these parents are aware of the dangers they open their children to by handing them a device that puts the power of good and evil at their fingertips, literally. Back in the day (the 90s), pornography was passed around like a true contraband, 1 cassette would make its rounds in one classroom till the tape gave up. These days, Google any key words and you have want you want. Then you needed friends; now? Who needs them? Websites providing simple mp3 downloads have porn site popup messages with the sole purpose of enticing visitors looking for a song into doing something else.
The online world is full of weird people preying on young naive users of social networks. A hunting ground for sexual predators with easy targets who think they can trust a person on yhe other end of a conversation via facebook inbox or twitter DM. Parents are allowing 13 year olds to join Facebook, the lack of supervised access is scary to say the least.
Then there's cyber bullying which takes the simple form of more than 2 people ganging up on a Facebook commenter or twitter retweeter. I have witnessed it first hand and these were adults going at it. Think of what would happen if a 12 year old got teased or taunted. The lack of mental strength would make their decision making poor.
I seriously think we need to 'world' proof these smart-devices we put in the hands of our offspring. Applications exist that can limit a phones functionality; download them. Check on what your children are doing before it is too late. Before handing that phone to your daughter ask yourself if it will benefit them in terms of building their character. Before buying your son one ask them if they know what the pitfalls are. If they have no answers then let them get a smartphone when they come of age!
