Should Kids Have Cell Phones? [Reasons Why Should & Should Not]

In today's world, parents are in a dilemma about whether to buy their kids smartphones or not. Some argues why kids should have cell phone because of online education, friendship maintenance and kids' safety. The other insist why kids should not have cell phones due to cyber addiction and inappropriate content online.

In this article, we will answer the question should kids have cell phones with proper reasoning. Even when you give your kid a smartphone, you can have complete parental monitoring with KidsGuard Pro.

• Part 1. 5 More Reasons Why Kids Should Have Cell Phone
• Bonu Tip: How to Protect Children Online If They Have A Cell Phone?
• Part 3. 5 More Reasons Why Kids Should Not Have Cell Phones

Why Kids Should Have Cell Phone

There are strong reasons why kids should have cell phones in today's world. These reasons are enough for strict parents to change their minds to buy their kids a smartphone.

1. For Safety

When kids are in their school or tuition class, parents are always worried about the safety of their kids. When they have a smartphone, they can contact their parents immediately if they get into some trouble. Moreover, parents can install KidsGuard Pro on their kid's smartphone and track their current location anytime to ensure that their kid is where he is supposed to be.

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Furthermore, parents can set a Geofence area within which their kid is supposed to be. When their kid crosses the set range, parents will get a notification and take action accordingly.

2. For Urgent Calls and Texts

There are many parents who question should kids have cell phones in school. The answer to this is an unequivocal yes. There are going to be times when you may get late to pick up your kid from school due to any reason. In such times, you can call your kid and explain the situation.

Accordingly, your kid can wait up in the school without any worry. Similarly, the school may get over earlier due to some reasons, or your kid may feel unwell; he can call or text you to pick him up early. The same situation holds true whenever kids are away from their parents.

3. For Online Classes

In this world of digitization, there are times when teachers take online classes. Besides, teachers are willing to clarify any doubt of their students through video calling. This is because the regular time slots for classes do not have enough time for doubt clearing.

Parents can give their smartphones to their kids, but this is going to be highly inconvenient if calls and texts keep coming during online interactions. Therefore, buying a dedicated smartphone for kids seems to be the best solution that they can use for education purposes only.

4. For Contacting Friends and Group Studying

Parents should allow their kids to talk to their friends not only for educational conversations but also for general conversations. A lonely kid cannot have proper mental development, and he can develop negative traits of shyness, depression, and much more. By giving your kid a smartphone, he can keep in contact with his friends through calls and messages.

Moreover, in today's world, kids are doing group studying online through group video calls. For this to happen, a smartphone with an internet connection is a necessity. Group study has its distinct advantages over self-studying, and learning can be done with fun and friends.

5. For Getting Access To Educational Apps

There are several popular educational apps available online through which kids can take tuition on any subject. There are teachers and videos for learning any skill they are interested in. To get access to these educational apps, a smartphone is necessary. Some of these apps are completely free, while some are paid. Besides, parents can subscribe to any teacher through these apps, and the teachers will take live classes online.

6. For Becoming Punctual And Discipline

Being punctual and discipline is always an issue for kids. Getting up at the right time, remembering what to do on which day, achieving certain goals in a specific time period are all nightmares for kids. Technology can help kids in these cases, and a smartphone will be a personal assistant for your kids.

They can use a reminder app to get alerts at the right time regarding anything they have saved beforehand. Kids can set alarms for all the different jobs in a day, starting from getting up in the morning to finishing homework in time. Moreover, they can use a calendar app to save important dates so that they can remember them timely. Furthermore, your kids can take digital notes on the go using a smartphone.

7. For Helping Them To Get Home

It is not unusual for kids to get lost in the crowd even when they are with their parents. In such a scenario, kids can easily call up their parents to rescue them. They can share their live location on WhatsApp or Google Maps, and parents can reach the exact destination and pick them up. Not just that, when kids go out with others, and in case they get lost, their smartphone will be their main tool to ask for help.

8. For Teaching Responsibility

When your kid gets late to come home on time, he can call you up and inform you that he will be late and explain the reason behind it. This is how kids grow up to be responsible. Before handing him a smartphone, you should make him earn such an expensive item. This earning could be through his manner and behavior, his performance in school, or excelling in different traits.

This is how you can make your kid learn financial responsibility and value an expensive thing like a smartphone. He will learn to protect expensive things and handle responsibly. Besides, do not give unlimited internet data to him. Instead, buy a plan with limited daily data so that he does not waste it on useless things. Therefore, a smartphone is a perfect medium for parents to make their kids learn responsibility.

9. For Keeping Them Occupied

Kids are restless by nature, and you cannot let them sit at a place peacefully without keeping them engaged. In today's world, a smartphone is the best tool for engagement for kids. They can play games and do not disturb you. There is nothing wrong with playing games for some time as it helps to enhance motor skills. Apart from that, they can watch funny videos which will keep your mood positive. Besides, they can take photos and videos to create memories for the future.

10. For Keeping Up With The Trend

Most parents are giving their kids smartphones so that they can get accustomed to the tech gadget. If used responsibly with parental monitoring, smartphones actually make the kids sharp, develop different essential skills and widen their knowledge. By exploring different useful apps and websites, they will naturally grow a liking for modern technology and come up with new ideas in their minds.

If you don't give your kid a smartphone, your kid will be outdated and held back in comparison to others. This can make a huge difference in the long run as far as their mental development, creativity, and personality traits are concerned.

11. For Strengthening Parent-Child Relationship

Last but not least, any relationship is based on the trust factor. Kids generally feel that their parents do not trust them in anything. Giving a smartphone to them is a huge step towards strengthening the trust factor in parent-child relationship. You can clearly say to your child that you are trusting him with a smartphone, and you hope that he will not let your down. It is also going to be an opportunity for your kid to prove himself and make you proud. The gesture of trusting your kid with a smartphone can work wonders for your relationship.

We hope that, as parents, you have understood the reasons why kids should have cell phones in school, at home, or anywhere they go. However, you should have complete monitoring over their phone activities.

Bonus: KidsGuard Pro Helps Parents Protect Kids Online

Starting from call logs, messages, photos, videos to social media activities, different app activities, and browser history, you can check on everything from your phone or computer with KidsGuard Pro.

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Moreover, you can check his location in real-time and set a Geofence so that you can get an alert when he crosses the range. Furthermore, you can record calls and take screenshots and photos with his phone camera in real-time.

Therefore, we suggest you to give a smartphone to your kid for his usefulness. Before handing him over the smartphone, you should install KidsGuard Pro for Android so that you can do complete parental monitoring and provide parental guidance for his betterment.

How to See Everything on Child's Phone with KidsGuard Pro

KidsGuard Pro is intent on doing all parents a favour on protecting children away from online risks, by its powerful features, concise surface and easy setup. Follow the steps below to see everything on child's phone.

Step 1. Have a KidsGuard Pro account and choose your own plans.

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Step 2. Download and install the App on kid's cell phone.

Step 3. Monitor your kid's phone and protect them.

Why Kids Should Not Have Cell Phones

There are many reasons to justify why some parents are reluctant to give their kids cell phones. However, you can easily overcome these reasons with proper parental control and monitoring.

1. Exposure To Inappropriate Content

The main reason why parents are against the idea of their kids having smartphones is due to the widespread of inappropriate content on the internet. A smartphone without an internet connection will be useless for kids who are into online studying. However, the internet is full of content related to violence, adult stuff, bullying, and much more. Such content is extremely disturbing for kids, and it can have negative influences going forward.

2. Addiction To Smartphones

There are unlimited things on a smartphone to get addicted to it. Kids at a young age get addicted to gaming apps. Some kids get addicted to social media platforms, and this diverts from their focus and concentration. However, by limiting screen time and internet data availability, you can stop your kids from getting addicted to smartphones.

3. Poor Performance In Studies

It is quite natural that if kids are spending more time on their smartphones and less time on their studies, their performance will deteriorate. It is one of the main reasons why parents are against their children having cell phones. Performing well in studies is the primary goal of kids, and if they are getting distracted and diverted from their goals, their future will not be bright, and they have to suffer for wasting valuable time.

4. Aggressive and Indecent Behavior

There are inappropriate behavior based contents your kid may come across on the internet. This type of content may try to label such behavior and attitude as cool and appreciable. However, in real life, they are considered totally inappropriate and unacceptable. For example, there are memes and videos where bullying, discrimination, beating up guys, teasing, and flirting with girls can be shown as cool attitudes that everyone around appreciates.

Your kid may start to believe that such behavior will make him stand out among all and get all the applauses. This can ruin the teaching and upbringing of the parents, and smartphones are totally responsible for such influence. In fact, parents can show get complaints from parents of other kids and even from school teachers and neighbors.

5. Lack Of Physical Movement

There is no doubt that when your kid gets a smartphone, there is no need for him to go outdoors and play with other kids. It is quite common for kids to play online games on their smartphones in a group rather than playing outdoor games.

Due to this lack of physical movement and outdoor games, physical development gets hampered. There are common issues like indigestion, obesity, sleepiness that are quite common in kids these days due to spending excessive time on their smartphones.

6. Slow Development and Physical Issues

Overexposure to smartphone slows down brain development to a greater extent. This is noticeable when the kids start to show lack of attention and concentration signs, inability to retain information in their memory, lack of sharpness in their activities, and much more. On top of that, eyes get hurt the most when kids use smartphones for hours. Even their posture can get negatively affected due to smartphone usage for hours.

7. Mental Illness

It has been found by experiments and research that kids tend to grow various mental illnesses if they spend too much time on their smartphones and less time in the physical world. They start to show signs of anxiety unnecessarily, symptoms of depression are also common. Besides, attention deficit, bipolar disorder, and even autism can be due to excessive smartphone exposure.

8. Reduces Sleep Time

When a kid gets a smartphone, he starts spending too much time on it. There are games, social media apps, videos, and much more to stay engaged for hours at a stretch. Naturally, sleep time reduces, and this impacts their mental growth and physical development. Moreover, this leads to fatigue and lack of concentrate on studies.

9. Overuse Of Technology

It is important for kids to learn that human beings should drive technology and technology should not drive human beings. By getting addicted to smartphones, kids are becoming slaves of modern technology. Soon, there will be a phase when they cannot live without a smartphone. When parents will try to take it away from them, the relationship will get hampered, and kids will start showing anger and misbehavior.

10. Alters Parent-Child Relationship

While giving a smartphone to your kid may be a sign of growing trust in your relationship, it is going to hamper the relationship in the long run unless taken care. A smartphone is a perfect gadget to spend your entire day with it.

Therefore, both the parents and their kid are likely to spend less time together, and the bonding starts to weaken. Kids start to ignore their parents' instructions and do not consider themselves answerable to their parents. They start to consider their parents as critics, and the depth in parent-child relationship starts to loosen up.

From the above, it may seem like the answer to the question should children have cell phones is no. However, you can easily overcome these negative points when you monitor what they are doing on their smartphone as well as limit daily smartphone usage hours.

In Short

It is quite clear that the benefits of your kid having a smartphone outweigh the negatives only when the smartphone is used responsibly. However, you as parents cannot expect your kid to be so responsible and morally correct all the time given their young age.

That is where the responsibility of parents comes in, and you need to monitor all your kid's phone activities. You can do it easily with KidsGuard Pro. You can monitor every single activity on your kid's phone remotely.

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