When should kids be allowed to use email?
When we went back to school shopping this year, I saw that “Data traveller” was on the supply list. I thought it was kind of silly to have one, as it is just something to lose. We own about three data travellers and I couldn’t find a single one. I am very cheap and I told my child, who is ten years old, to use her email to send herself files if she needs to do homework. After school had begun, Katy informed me that she was not allowed to use email. This seemed rather absurd to me. Why would the schools prevent kids from having email? I caved and bought a data traveller, which only works on my laptop. What good is it to have a data traveller that won’t work on her computer? So I had a conversation with the teacher about this new rule. It appears that the school division does not want kids using email in class, so their solution to this problem is to not allow kids to use email at all. She will allow my child to use email to send her homework assignments home, so common sense did prevail in this case. But it got me thinking.
I showed my kids how to use email as soon as they asked for it. I think Katy was about four or five when I helped her get her first hotmail account, which she still has. Same with my oldest daughter Hannah. Being the overly permissive parent that I am, I thought that they should have email if they want it. I told them how to use email safely and gave them the typical internet safety mom speech: “Never meet up with someone that you don’t know from the internet” and all that good stuff until they were giving me the mighty eyeroll and the exasperated “Mom! We aren’t idiots!”. I used to think that I should have their passwords and spy on the kids and what they do online. I did do that for a little while but then I realized that I trust my kids. They are smart kids and are not going to do anything stupid. And life is too short to spend all my free time spying on them.
I know some parents that do not allow their children to have email and I know many parents that do. It just makes me wonder what is reasonable. I really feel strongly that kids should be allowed to have email if they want it but maybe there is another angle that I am missing here.
