Last Christmas, Basia Dziecharska was working for Verizon wireless when a customer wanted to buy cellphones as presents for his daughters, ages 14 and 8.
How absurd, she thought. No 8-year-old needs her own phone.
But sometimes the best way to survive parenthood is to have a strong backpedal. A few days ago Dziecharska gave her own daughter a cellphone. She’s 7.
“You’re the best mommy in the world,” Izabella squealed when presented with her first big-girl phone.
Dziecharska caved after Izabella traveled solo this summer to Pennsylvania to visit her father. If a second-grader can fly across the country, she can surely handle a cellphone, her mother thought.
“It’s cool,” Izabella declared. During a recent slumber party she called home three times – just because she could.
In the 1990s, the debate was whether high school students should own cellphones. That discussion mostly disappeared after the Columbine High School tragedy. Today, the buzz is all about keeping grade-schoolers connected.
But is this new “need” nothing more than gimmick disguised as good parenting?
By some counts, one-quarter to one-third of fourth- and fifth-graders in area schools either have their own phones or routinely use their parents’. Some callers are as young as kindergarten.
And cellphone makers and marketers are only too happy to make all this kiddie chat happen.
Earlier this year, Firefly Mobile launched a specialized phone targeting 8- to 12-year-olds. It comes in eight colors, including Bubble Gum, Slime and Limeade.
Close on its heels is the TicTalk phone by Enfora, scheduled to be available on the Internet by the end of the month and in stores later this fall. The phone is designed for smaller hands and targets kids ages 6 and up. Enfora has partnered with educational toymaker LeapFrog and loaded games onto the phone.
The Firefly and Enfora phones come without traditional keypads, so children are limited in their ability to make outgoing calls and parents can prepay for minutes. The Firefly phone uses pictures instead of numbers.
“Cellphones with training wheels” is how Mark Weinzierl, chief executive of Enfora, describes the phenomenon. He plans to give his 5-year-old a phone when he reaches kindergarten.
“I don’t think it’s too young,” Weinzierl says. “Kids today are incredibly technologically savvy.”
He says control lies in the hands of the parents.
Other phones for the preteen-and-under squad are on shelves or in development by Walt Disney Co. and Hasbro, as well as a Barbie offering from Mattel.
That does not include the enormous marketing effort underway by regular cellphone carriers to give away phones to families so members can stay connected.
Parents want this, says Fred Bullock, chief marketing officer for Firefly. For them, a child with a phone in a backpack represents peace of mind.
And in fact, back-to-school aisles are loaded with children’s backpacks conveniently equipped with cellphone holders.
Also, Bullock says, families are busier than they used to be. The logistics of dropping-off-
and-picking-up can be eased if everyone has a cellphone, he says.
Maybe, says Margaret C. Campbell, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Colorado, but she also sees a carefully crafted agenda.
Grade-school children are one of the last frontiers for cellphone companies. Current figures show 80 percent of adults carry cellphones. To continue to grow, companies need to find untapped markets.
Teenagers already are yesterday’s news, with an estimated 45 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds having cellphones and 33 percent routinely text messaging, according to a study recently released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
If companies can get younger children in the habit of using phones, the kids will probably be consumers for life.
“I think what the marketers are doing is very clever,” says Campbell, who specializes in consumer behavior. “They are positioning this as a safety issue.”
Kids pester their parents for a cellphone because it’s cool. But most parents won’t give in for that reason alone. They will, however, buy if they think they are keeping their kids safe.
“Suddenly, you’re not an overindulgent parent,” says Campbell. “You’re a caring parent.”
But Campbell, the mother of an 8- and 12-year-old, wishes more parents would think long and hard about the true necessity, especially for younger children. “How often is your 8- or 10-year-old alone these days?”
Campbell wonders if parents don’t get their grade-schoolers cellphones and other electronic gadgetry because they don’t know what else to buy them.
Colette Hepp’s two children, ages 12 and 15, have their own cellphones. The youngest got his earlier this month before starting middle school in Highlands Ranch.
Middle school is a clearer line of demarcation, because children are often less supervised, says Hepp. She guesses between half and three-fourths of the middle-schoolers in her neighborhood have phones.
“I don’t want to criticize other parents, but I don’t know why a small child would ever need one,” she says. “It just becomes an expensive toy.”
And maybe more than anyone bargained for.
Kendal Lowry was 9 when she got her cellphone last Christmas from her father. It was fully loaded with a camera and Internet access. Kendal’s mother, Diane Lowry, was not pleased, thinking her daughter was too young. But slowly she warmed to the idea.
One night, though, she saw Kendal playing with the phone and told her to put it away. When Lowry picked it up, she noticed a search engine running. She clicked on it, and up popped pornographic images. A quick check of the memory function showed it was full of pornography.
A fourth-grader at the time, Kendal wasn’t quite sure what the pictures meant. She said a classmate had done the downloading.
“I was just beside myself,” said Lowry. She immediately took the phone away. It was later replaced without any functions beyond calling and text messaging.
Dziecharska is also closely watching usage these days. If Izabella’s phone, a family spare, is lost, there will be no replacement. It cannot go to school – most elementary schools do not allow them to be used on campus – and cannot be used to call friends. Only family members have been programmed into the speed dial, as has 911.
At this point it is still an experiment-in-progress.
“What Mommy giveth,” says Dziecharska, “Mommy can taketh away.”
Staff writer Jenny Deam can be reached at 303-820-1261 or jdeam@denverpost.com.
