I just gave Lauren her own mobile phone. 

Gasp! Horror! I imagine you asking, “What? So young?”

Hear me out, will you?

In this age of technology, every parent will have to face this question at some point: when to give a kid their very own device. To me, age isn’t as important as the kid’s maturity level, ability to follow home (and schools’) rules, their sense of responsibility, and the family’s needs.

How to determine when to give your child a mobile phone

Here is a list of practical questions to ask yourself before giving a child their first mobile phone: 

• Is there a need for her to have the phone?
• Does your kid need to be in touch for safety reasons?
• Does your kid tend to lose things, such as water bottles or homework folders? If so, think twice because they might lose an (expensive!) phone, too.
• Would having easy access to friends benefit them for social reasons?
• Do you think she’ll use cell phones responsibly — for example, not texting during class or disturbing others with their phone conversations?
• Can she adhere to limits you set for minutes talked and apps downloaded? 
• Will they use text, photo, and video functions responsibly and not to embarrass or harass others?

If you think your kid isn’t ready yet, you can always say, “No, not yet.”

As for us, Lauren comes home on her own from school nowadays, so I had initially thought that it could come in handy for her, in case she needs to call me or her father. However, after a chat about responsibility and possibly losing the phone, Lauren herself had decided that she shouldn’t bring the phone to school. The phone stays at home and will be used when she needs to reach us or when I need to call home to check on them. Also, we probably should have one anyway given that we don’t have a landline and my helper’s phone is switched to silent mode during the day.

What to consider when giving your child their first phone

Getting a regular service plan for your kid can get expensive. For your kids’ first phone, consider these options:

• A mobile plan that doesn’t lock you into a long-term contract
• A “feature” phone with large icons and a limited range of functions
• A service plan with built-in parental control for content-filtering and more
• Low-cost, post-paid carriers such as Circles.Life
• A parental app to control and limit the usage of their apps

For Lauren’s phone, we are using Circles.Life $5 for 2GB SIM-Only Plan, which cost me well, only $5 each month. It comes with 2GB of data, 50 minutes of talk time and 25 SMS per month, which in my opinion, is more than enough for a child.

What I like about the $5 for 2GB plan is that the plan does not automatically charge me if Lauren exceeds the data cap. The data will be cut off unless we top it up.

I sat Lauren down and explained that the data, call and sms are limited. It’s interesting to see that she finally gets the concept of limits for minutes talked and apps downloaded, so she has to learn how to exercise restraint and ration her data and talktime each month. 

If she blows it, she won’t have data or able to make any calls for the rest of the month. It’s a perfect opportunity for me to teach her about responsible financing and mobile data usage. 

I haven’t told her that she can use her own money to top it up yet. She can well afford it given that she gets $10 of allowance each week. I reckon if she does have higher data and talkative needs in the future, I’ll let her pay her own way then.

Protect Your Child with Parental Controls

Circles.Life plan also comes with Parental Control, a service that blocks potentially harmful content that is categorised as adult content, hate, and intolerance, as well as weapons and violence. For an additional $2.99/month, I think it’s well worth it just for the peace of mind, knowing that my kid isn’t exposed to such dangerous content. 

I know most of us would like to delay giving mobile phones to our kids for as long as possible. Perhaps what we should consider instead, is setting and maintaining reasonable boundaries around technology.

Having said that, even though Lauren has her own phone now, she isn’t starting her own social media account anytime soon. That’s a discussion for another time.

You can find out more about Circles.Life $5 for 2GB SIM-Only Plan at https://www.circles.life/sg/5dollarplan/

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