1 million five-years-old own a mobile phone

A recent study has found that one in 10 schoolchildren, as young as five years old, have their very own mobile phones.

07:45 25 August 2013

A recent study involving 1,420 parents revealed that around 10per cent of children, as young as five years old, already have their very own mobile phones.

Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at uSwitch, said: "I'd imagine that many parents have bought their kids smartphones just to stop them commandeering their own when bored.”

The study also revealed that parents typically spend £125 on their kids’ devices and that 42per cent of them don’t monitor their children’s use of the said devices.

 

Meanwhile, it was found that only 25per cent of parents put a cap on their children’s contracts, as referred to in one report by The Independent.

Ernest Doku said that placing caps on kids’ mobile bills is very sensible. Ernest Doku said, as referred to in the same report by The Independent: "Asking networks to place caps on their mobile bills takes about five minutes and is a very sensible precaution, especially if your child has a data-hungry smartphone.

“Make sure that when they’re at home, your kids are browsing the web using wi-fi instead of consuming data by connecting to the internet via 3G or 4G."