My son started middle school. In elementary school it was the only one of the class without smartphone. We would like to wait for the end of the third before giving one, as she often advises. But my husband and I work both and we have no grandparents or other adults who can support us. We were wondering if we can entrust him with a mobile phone with only WhatsApp (without installing any other app) so that it can also have contacts with the new companions. Last year they communicated like this and he was very marginalized. What do you recommend?
Piera
Dear Piera, your letter deals with a theme that continuously returns to this column: What is the right age to get a smartphone?
It is clear that having a smartphone in hand will push your child to want to do everything others do with the smartphone. If you give it to it to prevent its experience of exclusion, it will happen that with the smartphone in hand the things that others do with that object will be more and more and that your limitations will make them inaccessible.
This is to tell you that having a smartphone with very restrictive rules will not solve the frustration associated with the sense of exclusion.
At the middle school you must decide if you want your child to have in his hand A tool to communicate or a tool to navigate. When out of the world, Its achievement can be guaranteed by a mobile phone that makes phone calls and sends SMS.
Owning a smartphone automatically will move him from the ability to communicate to that of navigating. Things that as parents you will have to monitor and regulate with great attention and with infinite effort.
I am always a little resistant to advise to give a smartphone to a 11 year old just because he goes to middle schools and all his friends have it. Because for me the crucial question is: But are your companions who have it, are making a good use of it?
Often, having a smartphone also means using it for all the uses it allows, many of which are totally unsuitable for a pre -adolescent.
Having said that, however, I want to deal with a second theme that appears in your letter: you tell that Your child will take a smartphone because you have no references and contacts in your city.
I advise you to do everything so that your community is not for you a place without relational references. Probably, also because of the work, you have invested little in friendships and relationships with other families. The risk is to close in a bubble. But The pre -adolescence of the children requires us parents to be well inserted in a social network. It is there, much more than in the smartphone, that you will help your child not perceived himself excluded.
