Child Wants Cellphone, Reception is Mixed.

Child Wants Cellphone; Reception Is Mixed

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Kate and Hannah Stacks with Hannah’s Firefly cellphone.
By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: March 29, 2007, NYTimes.com
TO her parents’ amusement, Hannah Stacks, a third grader in Rye, N.Y., started asking for her own cellphone at age 6. To their consternation, she never stopped. Last fall, after a psychologist suggested tracking her behavior, Hannah, at the sprightly age of 8, got her phone as a reward for not being mean to her little sister for 30 days.

Andrew Henderson for The New York Times
GOING WIRELESS Ryan, front, and Luke Vitale received phones from their parents, Bob and Cindy, for safety reasons.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
MY FIRST NETWORK Hannah Stacks, 8, a third grader.
“I was so torn because, of course, I wanted her to stop beating on Kate,” said Hannah’s mother, Kim O’Connor, a clinical social worker. “But I also thought, at the end of 30 days, what will I have done?”
After securing a foothold in the teenage market, cellphones are quickly emerging as the must-have techno-toy among elementary-school society. Companies are sating the appetite — and expanding demand — by offering special phones for children like the bright blue Firefly, which features only five keys, including ones with icons for speed-dialing a parent, and allows users to call a maximum of 22 numbers.
Industry analysts say the ’tween market, defined as 8- to 12-year-olds, represents one of the major growth opportunities for the wireless industry. Some 6.6 million of the 20 million American children in that age range had cellphones by the end of 2006, according to an analysis by the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm in Boston, which projects there will be 10.5 million preteen cellphone users by 2010.
The number of 8-year-olds with phones, Yankee Group estimates, more than doubled to 506,000 over the past four years while the number of 9-year-olds jumped to 1.25 million from 501,000.
Children want a cellphone for reasons obvious to them. It looks cool and makes them feel grown-up. It conveys a certain status. And it lets them stay in near-constant touch with friends and (oh, yeah) parents.
For parents, the decision of when, or whether, to buy children cellphones — paralleling the age-old debate over the appropriate age for ear piercing — is emotionally charged and value-laden, raising ticklish questions about safety and status, maturity and materialism.
Some parents and child psychologists say the need for cellphones among such young children, who are rarely without adult supervision, is marginal, and the gadgets serve mainly as status symbols, quickly lost in a tangle of toys, batteries hopelessly out of juice. Others, though, say the phones are an electronic security blanket for both parent and child in a world of two-career households and split-custody arrangements, Amber alerts and color-coded terror threat levels.
“My kids are never left alone, so this is an emergency backup system,” said Cindy O’Neill Vitale, who bought cellphones last summer for her sons, then 8 and 10, before a weeklong vacation with family friends. “I honestly believe that we live in a time now where it’s important to be able to have access for whatever reason. God forbid there’s another 9/11. I was in the city that day and I couldn’t reach them.”
Dr. Cornelia Brunner, deputy director of the Center for Children and Technology, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, said cellphones can serve as “transitional objects” for young children suffering separation anxiety from their parents, and that phones with “reasonably interesting games” might have some “redeeming educational value.”
“Dolls are unnecessary too,” noted Dr. Brunner, a developmental psychologist. “The only harm is an economic one. Kids whose families can’t afford all this junk are made to feel worse and worse, and some parents end up shelling out money that would be better spent elsewhere.”
The Firefly, introduced in 2005, costs $49.99, plus $15 an hour of talk time (paid in advance); it comes with a backpack clip. Competitors include Enfora’s TicTalk, $99 plus $25 for 100 prepaid minutes, and Disney Mobile’s three youth-oriented phones, unveiled last summer, with a price range of $29.99 to $99.99, plus calling plans that start at $24.99 for 200 minutes.
Brian Schillaci, principal of Indian Hill School in Holmdel, N.J., which spans fourth to sixth grades, said he has seen a sharp rise in the number of students using cellphones. When a committee devised new rules four years ago saying cellphones could not be visible or in use during the school day, Mr. Schillaci said, there were only a handful of incidents a year; now children are sent to the office once or twice a week for cellphone infractions.
Despite the popularity of the child-friendly phones, some industry analysts say they have a short shelf life because what seems cool to a 7-year-old feels babyish to a middle-schooler. Verizon is phasing out the LG Migo, a simple bright-green phone with a limited keypad that allowed users to program only five numbers, replacing it with the LG VX3450, which has a silver flip design, text-messaging capability and two embedded games (it costs $20 plus a two-year calling plan).
With a subtly playful bean shape, the new phone allows parents to restrict calls and messaging. And like the Migo, it features a global-positioning satellite device so that parents can locate the phone, and presumably the child, from another phone or a Web site. (Disney’s phone also offers such tracking, and the TicTalk is being retooled to include it.)
“An 11-year-old boy wouldn’t be caught dead carrying the Migo,” said David Samberg, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless. “With this new phone, it still gives parents control, but if the child is entering that pre-adolescent period, this phone is not going to scream: ‘My mother’s watching me.’ ”
CHARLES GOLVIN, principal analyst at Forrester Research, a technology firm, said the tracking features, which can find a child down to the exact cross streets, were proving popular among parents. “As the parent of a 13-year-old girl, I embrace the concept of invading her privacy to give me peace of mind,” he said. “A lot of the appeal for the parent in giving a child a cellphone is safety.”
Scott Pierce, who lives in White Plains and is a news photographer for WWOR-TV in New York, bought the Migo for his daughter, Morgan, when she turned 11. Now 13, Morgan recently graduated to a real phone, and her 10-year-old brother, Darien, gladly took the Migo hand-me-down.
“He’s not at the point where he can walk around alone,” Mr. Pierce said of his son. “But you never know. You’re getting off the bus, and you have predators who swipe kids. What if the bus driver has a heart attack? Or the bus is stranded on the side of the road? Things happen.”
After a feverish debut, the once-coveted cellphones often are quickly forgotten by young dialers who, after all, can barely be convinced to say a few words to grandma over the phone, and likely have few peers with phones to call.
“As soon as we purchased the phones, they lost some of their razzle-dazzle,” said Christie Lavigne of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., whose 7-year-old son, Dylan, and 9-year-old daughter, Gigi, each got a Firefly for Christmas. “The first three days they had them, they were calling me and my husband 20 times. But then the novelty wore off, and I think they’re at a healthy place.”
Audrey Gray, a single mother in Philadelphia who shares custody of her son, Jackson, 8, and travels on business once or twice a month, said that when she first bought her son a phone at age 7, he “was like a jealous boyfriend calling me all the time.”
“He’d call me from the cafeteria, screaming, ‘Mom, I’m at lunch,’ and I said, ‘Great, buddy. How’s it going?’ and he yelled, ‘Good. Do you want to talk to Gabe?’ Then he called me from math class and was whispering, ‘Hey Mom, I was just calling to see how you are,’ ” she recalled. “Then I never heard from him again.”
But Ms. Gray, a senior editor of E-Gear, a technology magazine, said she had “zero agony” over the decision to get Jackson a phone. “He did lose it, of course, like 17 times, but we seem to find it,” she said. “There’s something comforting about having a direct connection to him. We don’t use it, but I like knowing it’s there.”
Parents say that the incursion of cellphones into ’tween society has ratcheted up the electronics race, with mobile phones joining laptops, digital cameras and iPods on children’s wish lists. Because cellphones are still something of a novelty among 7- and 8-year-olds, those parents who cave sometimes feel a chill from those holding out.
Phyllis Schneble, a marketing executive in Fairfield, Conn., is proud to buck the wireless trend: she has three children and said the oldest would not get a phone until she turns 16.
“Generations survived with a dime tucked in their shoe,” she said. “Ninety percent of the calls made on cellphones are not critical or even substantive — mostly pure fluff and nonsense. Where are the casual conversations on the street, in the halls, when everyone is plugged into their own world?”
And Mrs. O’Connor remembered the complications when Hannah’s flashy phone made its debut last fall.
“Of course, the first day it’s handed to her, she takes it to school, and her best friend starts screaming and crying that she wants a cellphone,” she said. “Her mother looked at me like, thank you for ruining my day. That afternoon I had a talk with Hannah: ‘You have a cellphone. It’s a privilege. Please don’t advertise it to the other children.’ ”
But it was hard to hide from Mrs. O’Connor’s younger daughter, Kate, who survived Hannah’s abuse to turn 6 and recently started campaigning for a cellphone.
“She said her life would be complete if she had a cellphone,” Ms. O’Connor recalled. “We said you can reapply when you’re 8.”