> These days many kids have cell phones. For better or worse, that's what parents are doing. I don't know why, I'm not a parent and I don't know any children, b

> These days many kids have cell phones. For better or worse, that's what parents are doing. I don't know why, I'm not a parent and I don't know any children, but I know that as a young kid a cell phone allowed me to walk home alone or with another kid at an early age, so I can imagine justifications. Our 11-year old travels to school on the train. Last week he set off to school on a day that (thanks to Covid19) he was supposed to be doing "home schooling" (there's a rather crazy timetable, he's got two [different!] days each week in school, three days at week home-schooling). So, we called him on his cell phone : "get off the train as soon as you can, we'll come and pick you up, you need to get back home ASAP" In the good old days he'd have been blissfully unaware of his(our) mistake until arriving at school, at which point he'd have asked an adult for help, and would (probably) come home by himself. I'm not convinced that kids carrying cellphones around is a net benefit, but here we are...