Anonymous wrote:Yes - it was a 5th grade graduation present for our oldest before starting MS. It has proven invaluable when staying after school, attending practice, hanging out with friends or going to a party when pick-up times can vary. Nearly all her friends got one at the same time and the few that didn't relied on using friends' phone for communicating with their parents.

I have seen this several times.
My kids have had several friends who are phoneless in 6th grade and they just constantly asks to borrow other kids' phones.
It's fine but ultimately the parents are just mooching off of other parents.

my kids got smart phones in 6th grade as they walk to school in the city.
All their friends had phones beginning in 6th.

by 7th grade the kids communicate by Snapchat (not text). it's how the all meet up.

My kids play zero video games and spend no time on ipads.

They're great students and play sports year round.

I decided to pick our poison.

My rising 6th grader just got one of our old phones. With starting middle school she’ll be walking and using public transit and be home alone after school. No landlines, so I want her to have a phone for emergencies. Divorced parents, so it’s nice for her to not have to use my phone if she wants to talk to her Dad.

She can’t install apps without parental permission, and has strict screen time limits. At the moment she Her school requires kids to keep their phones in their lockers during class. She knows that if she breaks the rules she loses the phone, so at least for now I’m not too worried. I have no doubt she’ll outsmart them parental controls soon, but she’s trying really hard to be responsible enough to earn a newer phone and a longer leash at the moment.

How do you organize an iPhone that doesn’t have social media, just phone and texting?

I was in 6th grade in 2006 in the midwest, 80 percent of kids had phones. Every popular 6th grader had one. Of course this was before parents worried so much about phone safety, and iPhone didn't come out until 7th grade. By 8th grade I was the only one in my friend group without one. I struggled socially.

Gabb watch for my 7th grader.

Rising 9th grader got first phone (Gabb) after 8th grade graduation.

Yes, and most of her friends have their own phone, too.

No, she has a smartwatch connected to a cellular plan so she can text or call if the public bus is running late.

No.

It makes sense to give a kid that age a basic just-a-phone. Smart phones are a bad idea obviously.

Mine did and almost all of her friends did too, as did my oldest in 6th (now 9th)

Rising 8th has a Gabb (dumb phone). Rising 6th has nothing and neither do most of his friends.

Our got one when he started middle school so he would have a reliable way to reach us if he was staying after school, going to a friend’s house, etc. It’s also when we started doing more carpooling for travel sports and wanted him to have a way to reach us in an emergency since there wouldn’t be a parent staying at practice. We didn’t want o give him one that young, but when we realized most of our answers to “what if” scenarios relied on someone else having a cell phone, it was hard to justify not getting him one.

Plus that’s how all of his friends communicate, so if it wasn’t a phone, it would have been an iPad at home with virtually the same result.

He has an iPhone but it is pretty locked down entertainment-wise with parental controls, minimal apps (and needs approval from my phone to download new ones), etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, she doesn’t. It’s bad for their brains, truly. We will wait till 8th grade or beyond.

Social media and game apps are bad for their brains. A telephone is not. The problem isn't the phone/text, it's that parents turn over the entire internet when they hand their child an iPhone or iPad.

This. +100

My 12yo is really not interested in his phone. Bc its a dumb phone. It can make calls and texts.

So he uses it to make plans with friends, or contact us if needed. But he's not glued to it all the time. Bc there's no youtube, or social media, or games on the phone.

He'll have a dumb phone until at least 15 or 16