Kids And Laptops

[Beach Hut]

Junior replaced his laptop last weekend with his own money as it was slow and somewhat dated - fair play his money, he is 15 and does a paper round.

Mini is only 10 and has the money to buy one and wants one. Fair play to him as he is thrifty with his Birthday and Xmas money and rarely spends half of it and we save £10 a month for each kid as well.

He has a very dated PC in his room so is 10 too young for a laptop ? He has requested a mobile phone from Santa but he won't be getting one as pointless - if taken to school has to be handed in so waste of time. However he has friends on MSN and does use this other PC though very slow.

Any other parents with a view on this ?

 

[Starry]

my son is the same age as mini and he has a laptop.
he doesn't know the password to get online and only gets online when he sits down with it with us in the living room or something. mrs starry is very anti it, but he is going away to school and will need one then so we figured he better get used to it before hand.

we didnt buy him a new one. he got one of our old ones when we upgraded.

he does not have msn or anything like that. mostly uses it for homework stuff and typing hate mail about his sisters to glue on his bedroom door to keep them out. he plays some games as well.

hje does not have a mobile either and will not be getting one.

 

[withdeanwombat]

MSN is the Voice of Satan.

 

[Race]

I dont think he's too young. Our mini (11) has free use (well, within reason) of the PC's here and chats to his mates on MSN and he uses it quite a bit for homework and research etc. A few of his 10/11 year old mates are getting PC's for their bedrooms for Xmas as well and quite a few have them in their rooms already, so if your mini wants to buy himself one go for it!

 

[Beach Hut]

He will have internet access as we have a wireless network and he has friends on MSN.

As Junior does not understand the issue of delete history we check every now and then what "interesting" web sites he visits and believe you me they are !

Therefore I suspect Mini would not understand either so we can check what he is doing so I am comfortable with him having internet access.

Agreed on the phone as this is pointless and Junior has a contract phone which is now locked down with no internet access and call barred abroad after the spectacular £146 monthly bill in June ! Strangely it appears to be turned off more than on although he answered it during a German leson the other day and failed to comprehend why he got a detention.

 

[Clothes Peg]

MSN is the Voice of Satan.

Soooo true.

MSN has wrecked my life on numerous occasions. NEVER consider having a serious discussion via that means as it's bound to get misinterpreted. It's also addictive for teenagers, and if they've got wireless, they'll be up all night with it under the covers.

I think that these parents need to make sure their kids have appropriate security on their Bebo/MySpace/Facebook profiles to prevent any dodgy types.

Plus, if they're going to spend a lot of time on a laptop, please buy them an external mouse, keyboard and make sure they use it with appropriate seating and desk. The amount of people I know who are giving themselves back and neck injuries through non-ergonomic laptop use is just incredible. Poor posture can lead to all sorts of pain, and is difficult to reverse.

 

[cjd]

my son is the same age as mini and he has a laptop.
he doesn't know the password to get online and only gets online when he sits down with it with us in the living room or something. mrs starry is very anti it, but he is going away to school and will need one then so we figured he better get used to it before hand.

we didnt buy him a new one. he got one of our old ones when we upgraded.

he does not have msn or anything like that. mostly uses it for homework stuff and typing hate mail about his sisters to glue on his bedroom door to keep them out. he plays some games as well.

hje does not have a mobile either and will not be getting one.

Yes....a big problem. We won,t let our 9 year old have one in his bedroom. The computer already encourages them to be less social in the household, so if he uses a PC, it has to be in the lounge.I had my desk, with my computer on it, built large enough to have two seating places, so I could keep an eye on what he,s looking at.
Glad so many other parents are anti them having mobiles too, at a very young age.

 

[RM-Taylor]

MSN has wrecked my life on numerous occasions. NEVER consider having a serious discussion via that means as it's bound to get misinterpreted. It's also addictive for teenagers, and if they've got wireless, they'll be up all night with it under the covers.

 

[rbridd]

Both our kids have had computers since they were 2.
Both however are in a communal area downstairs.
I cannot see a time soon when I'll be allowing computers in the bedroom.

Both Children, currently 9 and 6, have been instructed that the world is fundamentally full of bad people, Have been issued with a "safe" email address to use for signing up to everything, and are aware that mummy and daddy are shoulder surfing them all the time.

Better they should learn young, in safe harbours, than get a rude shock later on.

Lappies are just too portable.

 

[Shizuoka Dolphin]

Both Children, currently 9 and 6, have been instructed that the world is fundamentally full of bad people

That's a rather grim outlook. Granted, there's a lot of freaks, paedos and stalkers out there, but it's still a tiny fraction of the whole. Don't want them growing up fearing everyone and everything.

When I was 15 it would have taken my YEARS to save enough for a laptop!

 

[bhaexpress]

Computers are fine as long as you monitor the input. A 10 year old can be very impressionable and as you know a lot of what's on the Internet is not wholesome. Sure he could use a laptop but laptops are a lot harder to upgrade than desktop. They're also a lot easier to hide !

 

[Muhammad - I’m hard - Bruce Lee]

When I was 15 it would have taken my YEARS to save enough for a laptop!

when i was 15 there were no laptops

 

[Beach Hut]

When I was 15 it would have taken my YEARS to save enough for a laptop!

Agreed but the first PC I ever bought was £1,200 and the current one we have had for 4 years was £400.

You can get a very decent laptop for £400 now days.

 

[tedebear]

I've no doubt Arthur will need/want a laptop at some stage, maybe 12 maybe earlier - most parents have a gut instinct when their kids are ready for these things...but he'll have to deal with using it in the study. We don't have tv's or laptops or anything like that in bedrooms so I don't see the reason to change it for him. Might change when we get there but thats the plan at the moment.

 

[Napper]

slightly o/t but find it pretty scary. I work in I.T and had to contend with a BBC at school. Kids these days must be very very clued up on pc's at a ridiculously young age ?

 

[bhaexpress]

slightly o/t but find it pretty scary. I work in I.T and had to contend with a BBC at school. Kids these days must be very very clued up on pc's at a ridiculously young age ?

These days there's always computers in school unlike my day. I don't think it even ran to an Abacus.

 

[maffew]

slightly o/t but find it pretty scary. I work in I.T and had to contend with a BBC at school. Kids these days must be very very clued up on pc's at a ridiculously young age ?

yeah, there were some clued up kids on the beebs are our school though you had to be a bit more hardcore then to be good at computers
I remember ?&FEA1=132 used to completely lock the whole network, my bro nearly got kicked out for dicking with network stuff he shouldnt

 

[maffew]

These days there's always computers in school unlike my day. I don't think it even ran to an Abacus.

we had about 15 bbcs, some of the posher ones even had numeric keypads. Couple of random other acorn machines (torch?), 2 archimedes, and an old (now) tiny mac which was state of the art at the time. Got that was only 13 years ago, how different now

 

[bhaexpress]

we had about 15 bbcs, some of the posher ones even had numeric keypads. Couple of random other acorn machines (torch?), 2 archimedes, and an old (now) tiny mac which was state of the art at the time. Got that was only 13 years ago, how different now

Bearing in mind the first Computer I worked on had 240K of what would now be called RAM and with all of it's peripherals it took up the area of a basketball court yes. I might add that my mobile has more processing power and possibly one of my watches !

Of course that was over 30 years ago ......

 

[Cian]

I got one when I was 9.

Not sure if you can take that as a good or a bad thing...

slightly o/t but find it pretty scary. I work in I.T and had to contend with a BBC at school. Kids these days must be very very clued up on pc's at a ridiculously young age ?

A lot of kids can do fairly rudimentary stuff a lot better than previous generations can at a very young age, but unfortunately computing has got way more complex, not simpler since the days of the BBC (although its not like kids type in the code of programmes now); so theres still going to be a market for people who actually have more in-depth knowledge. Thank f***.