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The Quad City Times ran an article asking that very question.  When it comes to cell phones, how young is too young?

This is a question that parents of my acquaintance discuss together all the time.  Several of my kids’ friends’ parents have caved in and gotten their kids cells, even though they said they wouldn’t.  This makes is really hard on our family, where the rule has been that nobody gets a cell until they’re freshmen in high school.  But by the times kids are freshmen, almost all of their friends have phones already.

My friends who get their kids cell phones aren’t the kinds of parents who spoil their kids and buy them every new shiny gadget.  On the contrary, these are kids who have chores and have to buy their own extras.  But they are also active kids, in sports, theater, and other after school activities.  But some families have kids in three different schools; last year I had a child in the middle school, intermediate school, and elementary school.  Getting them home from school was a feat of scheduling and logistics worthy of a military general, involving older kids riding the bus halfway home and picking up the younger kids…assuming everyone was going home after school on a given day.

If someone missed a bus, everything messed up.  The capability to call each other would come in very handy in those situations.  One parent in the Quad City article said, “Just a few years ago, a child with a cell phone was seen as over-the-top spoiling. Now, many families view it as a basic communication tool and safety precaution.”

My husband and I spend huge parts of our parenting lives trying to avoid that sort of “over-the-top-spoiling,” but what if this really isn’t about that any more?  We live in a small town, but things happen.  What if it’s about basic communication and safety now?

I do think that elementary school is too young for a phone.  These kids are never alone, anyway (at least, they shouldn’t be!).  But they have more freedom in middle school, and with more freedom comes more risk.  And with more risk comes more need by parents to be in touch, even at a distance.

I guess, as with most things, we all have to use our judgment.

The Sony Reader

I hang with writers, editors, and even a few publishers, and I hear it over and over. The market for traditional books is dwindling, and the market for alternatively published books is growing.

For writers, this sometimes means seeking publishing sources like self-publishing, if they are dead set on holding that book in their hands.  And we readers don’t care that much who published a book or how, as long as we can curl up with it at the end of a long day or sneak in a few pages over our lunch break. 

Kids are no different from adults that way.  I know a lot of kids who like to read, boys and girls, and I think the flap about kids not reading is no more true now than it ever was–in all times and places, some people are readers and some aren’t.  The difference in kids now and kids in any other cultural era is that kids now are much more electronically savvy.  They do not require a CD in order to have music, and they might not require a book in order to have text. 

In addition, kids just have so many devices in their hands already.  If they already have a cell phone in which they can read a book, it’s not that big a leap to an iphone or even a Kindle.  There are dozens of ebook libraries out there for kids to borrow books from, and many places from which you can buy them, or even get them free. 

We’re only partically wired at my house, and we all love to hold a book in our hand.  But it was recently brought home to us that having a familiarity with ebooks might not be such a bad thing.  My daughter went on a week-long mission trip with a group of teens, and brought a bag stuffed with a dozen books she couldn’t bear to leave home.  She got through them all, too.  But how much easier would it have been in terms of space and the things she had to haul around if she’d just had a phone or a PS2 with her favorite books downloaded right in?  It certainly would have been one less heavy bag to carry!

I don’t think traditional books will ever go away, but I think that like with so many things, we have to keep our eyes and minds open to new things.  And as parents, we have a responsibility to do that, so that we still have some oversight over what goes into our kids’ minds.