Most of the kids here at Cedar Grove Middle have phones. There are kids that are abusing the privilege to have one. There are a lot of kids that say that they have a phone. I recently took a survey asking if kids should have smartphones. These are the results: out of 39 people, 30.8% say maybe, out of 39 people 66.7% say yes, and a whopping 2.6% of people say no. Now this is not a lot of people voting, but the fact is, they are all in sixth grade. I think until they are 13 or older, they should not have a phone. Almost 90% of the kids that were in the survey have a phone and that is a lot!

These are some of the things that the kids I surveyed said, “I feel kids 10 or older should have phones if they know how to work it properly and take care of it and don’t take advantage of it.”

There are a lot more but that was one that caught my eye. “I think kids might be able to have phones because it is good that they are able to talk to a parent/guardian if they aren’t around, but there are also bad things that come with having a phone. A kid could get addicted to the phone and not pay any attention to family or schoolwork. So I think if the parent/guardian thinks their child is responsible enough to have a phone, then they could have one.” They have a solid point. I feel that the second one is more of what I would have said. There are things on the phone that are just not stoppable; like social media.

You may think that your child’s phones are safe, but they are not. Many kids have been kidnapped by sharing their home address or telling people to meet them somewhere. These people may not be who they think they are; they may end up getting kidnapped by an older man or woman. This may or may not be the person that they were talking to online. According to the Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center website, there are almost 840,000 children that are kidnapped each year.

This is a hard problem to fix, but just waiting until your kid is ready to have a phone could be a preventative measure that parents should consider.