The risk of giving a smartphone to children
Our children start asking us for a smartphone from the age of eight. Many parents fall into temptation and give in to that desire or requirement. Other times, and to the annoyance of the parents, it is a relative who gives the smartphone to the child for his Communion, at age eight, or for his birthday. And they do it without consulting previously if the parents think it's okay or not.
Once the child has the mobile phone In your hand, you have to start worrying that you do not misuse it. Or if not, take it off directly and explain that it is too small to have that phone, that you do not need it at all because it is always accompanied by an older person.
The problem arises when the kids know perfectly the handling and the possibilities of this technology, while the parents do not have the remotest idea.
The usual thing is that our children claim that we buy them the latest model that has come to market, because they have their friends and reject one with fewer benefits. They are state-of-the-art devices that allow us to do almost everything; sometimes even talking on the phone, which is the least used.
What many parents do not know is that these smartphones have absolutely everything, just like the computer we have at home or the laptop that we carry from one place to another. That ignorance is such that they can buy one of those devices to their ten-year-old son and at nine o'clock at night send him to bed so that he does not see some of the many television programs that are broadcast at that time and that are very undesirable for his age.
The child goes to bed obediently and the father is delighted because he has his son safe from inappropriate content. The problem is that neither the father nor the mother finds out what is happening around them. They do not know that the phone they have bought the child allows them to play anything or watch any television program, from almost any country, at any time. And it is enough that they have told him that he should not see a program so that the kid's curiosity leads him to see it. It is the law of life.
Parents are delighted because they think their son is sleeping soundly when, in fact, the kid is watching the program that his parents do not want him to see. Everyone happy, but at what price?
