From what I've seen and heard, it's very risky to give children access to smartphones at an early age. It's going to cause damage to them quickly because the digital world is so corrupt, and the space is filled with content that is not rated 18 but is very adult, especially in this age where people post all manner of things just to generate engagement and get paid hugely.
Parents have the responsibility to guide their children well by keeping them away from smartphones in their infant years. The only phone they should be allowed to use at that stage is a non-smartphone , a phone they can use to make calls and send messages. And by messages here, I mean SMS. There's a stage they'll get to before they'll be allowed to have access to the internet. This is my opinion!
With the trend of Instagram and TikTok in this modern age, children have been bought over by these platforms, and most of them who have access to smartphones don't concentrate fully on their education. No lies , this is one of the major disadvantages of children having access to smartphones in this age, because it's destroying them, and the world seems less concerned. Truthfully, it's almost impossible to control because these days, smartphones are cheap and common, and parents prefer to buy smartphones for their children rather than the simple phones we had during our time in high school.
Truthfully, it's ideal for a child to get along with digital tools and become tech-savvy because the world has advanced into a technological era. The earlier children adapt to the technology world, the better for them. This is very true, but the problem is that it is very difficult for parents to control what goes on in the phone once it is given to the child. When they take the phones to school, they get influenced or "infected" by their corrupt friends and end up getting involved in things that are adult-oriented. This is why primary and secondary schools do not allow students to bring in phones to the school because they know what'sup.
Giving a child a smartphone can be seen as a normal thing in the advanced world, but in Africa, where parenting is very strict and things are hard, children tend to develop a hunger for unappealing things quickly. In these days where internet fraud is very rampant and even teenagers are partaking in it, giving a child a phone without monitoring will easily lure the child into internet fraud through the influence of the people they'll meet in school.
Thanks!
I saw this prompt in a community but couldn't publish there because I'm not a bonafide member of the community.