Cell Phones in Kindergarten?

With all the recent talk about kids being the next fertile market for cell phones and wireless services, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes a more critical look at the phenomenon.

David Linsalata at IDC commented on the potential social implications of younger kids using cell phones. He said, "For instance, when you have kids who have a lot of cell phones that means they can be text messaging and having a phone conversation with friend at the same time. They also might have no qualms about answering the phone while talking face-to-face with someone. When adults do that, it’s considered rude. So, there are implications for pushing down this age barrier in how the kids interact with each other."

On the subject of kids-specific handsets, such as the Firefly and Wherifone, Linsalata remarked, "Let’s say kids get the phones, even though they’re not designed for communicating between friends, they do have the potential to turn that kid into a separate customer. Suddenly the Firefly is too kiddish. Suddenly they want to download games. Suddenly they want different ringtones and text messaging."

This sounds like good news for carriers and handset manufacturers and not-so-good news for the makers of the kiddie handsets. As I mentioned several times in the past, today's kids don't want dumbed-down versions of mobile devices. They want the real thing...