Growing up my mother was very strict with my siblings and me when it came to owning phones and talked more about how phones that are accompanied by the word "smart" Thinking about this whole thing has made me remember how my mother didn't even get me the first phone I used so you might be wondering, well it was given to me by my big sister after purchasing a brand new phone, she decided to support with my life with the old one.
I didn't get to use a phone till I was done with my senior secondary school because my mother didn't disapprove of it, in her words "phone is a bad influence" I had to abide by the rules governing me at the moment because leaving her house wasn't part of the plans at that point of my life. After taking my final exams in my senior secondary level, my big sister decided to gift me her old phone, and I was excited. Now take note that the phone can't be used to source the internet; it can only be used to take calls and return calls. Ooh! It can also be used to send text messages.
I started using my first phone, "without smart," at the age of seventeen. Then, after a while of finishing senior secondary school, my big sister got another phone again and gifted me the old one. I think I'm an inheritor (if there is any word like that) of phones. At that moment, I was the happiest because I was among those in the league who were using smartphones.
But currently, "welcome to the digital age," or should I call it what the prompt called "the smartphone age," I'm not the type that usually chats on other social media platforms aside from WhatsApp because that place is crowded with people I know, so I chat there.
One faithful day, I was going through feeds on Facebook when I got a notification for a friend request that was sent; normally, I don't check out these people's profiles, but this particular one was different. So I checked this person's profile and went through his account, "looking for nothing." When I came across his date of birth, I immediately became speechless and just rejected the friend request. What's a boy of thirteen years doing on Facebook? Was the only question roaming my head.
When I was at that age I don't think I even knew how to create a Facebook account talk more of setting it up. In the world today, children of different age brackets own smartphones and use different social media platforms.
At what age do I think children should be allowed to own smartphones? Firstly, the world has changed a lot; gone are the days when children would stay in high school till the age of eighteen because most of them round up their senior secondary school before they even get to the age of fifteen. So I think children at the age of fifteen should be allowed to own smartphones and access the Internet. Because at that stage, they are thinking of rounding up their high school, so they need to socialize and explore certain things.
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