iPhone for a 3-Year-Old?

I had a really cool useless pager in middle school and got my first cell phone (see above) in high school. Texting was in its infancy and cost 10 cents per message. Screens were green and black and could do barely more than make a phone call and run the game Snake.

Fast forward 11 years and I see elementary school kids with iPhones. I don’t get it.

My wife and I have vowed that our children will not receive a phone until they are “going places without us”. I suppose that starts happening in middle school, so maybe 12 or 13 years old. And I have already told myself that the Iron Curtain of access will be drawn 23 of the 24 hours of the day. I say this now, and I hope that I have the same conviction when my daughter pouts her lip and says she is the only one at school that isn’t allowed to have her phone or text, but it makes me vomit a little in my mouth when I see grade school kids with their faces buried in their cell phones.

In a recent article a mother allowed her 3-year-old child  to have an old deactivated-iPhone to play with. My daughter won’t be 3 for, well, 3 more years, so I am in no place to judge another parent. After all, the extent of my parenting thus far has been figuring out new ways to soothe my screaming child and mastering the Yoga-ball-bounce-to-sleep method. But reading some of the comments left by other readers leads me to believe that I am not the only one that thinks this is a little silly. (However, I won’t jump to conclusions like some folks and call her a “lazy” parent.)

I am a self-proclaimed techy, so I am not opposed to children learning technology as young as possible. But from an outsider’s perspective I would like to think there are other alternatives to introduce technology to a toddler than handing them their own iPhone. I suppose the argument could be made that it might teach them responsibility and being careful, but can a 3-year-old comprehend that just yet? Maybe, and I am just ignorant, and who knows what my views on technology and toddlers/kids will be in 3 years, but I just can’t wrap my head around this yet.