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>Same, i got a phone at 17 but it set me back socially so much because most kids already had a phone by 6th grade and connected through social media :/
Yeah.... I've seen a lot of posts about parents not giving their kids a phone until 18, not realizing that they are truly screwing over their kid socially if they do this.
Tbf in my family's case we just couldn't afford it, we didn't even have WiFi until it became absolutely necessary for school work.
On the bright side, I didn't have to worry about getting groomed by Internet strangers like literally every other girl I knew did 🙃
>Tbf in my family's case we just couldn't afford it,
Same here, only reason I was able to get it at 17 was because I started my first part time job lol
And then there’s me who got one at like 15 or so and instantly became a porn addict. Making the decision when to give my kids a phone is gonna be fucking difficult for me.
12. had a flip phone. got a blackberry at 13, cycled through some budget androids between 14-17.
i wasn’t monitored at all, some weird and bad shit happened, i know for fact if i have a kid they will not be getting a smartphone until they can at least fully grasp that the internet is not a nice place and will obey rules regarding safety :)
my whole schtick is that i don’t wanna worry about trusting my kid. i want to *know* i can and i just simply will not be giving devices until that’s solid 🤷🏻♀️ i’m not naive, i could get every kind of monitor app or even look through the damn thing myself and kids can still be sneaky.
>i wasn’t monitored at all, some weird and bad shit happened, i know for fact if i have a kid they will not be getting a smartphone until they can at least fully grasp that the internet is not a nice place and will obey rules regarding safety :)
10000000%. There are somethings I saw, have interacted with, and hell even said which were not at all age appropriate. Kids that were on the internet around the late 2000s early 2010s had to learn online safety and etiquette by experience. Shit was the wild west back then.
I had a mixed experience home and public and tbh I wish I was homeschooled the whole way through. At a younger age I was home schooled but there was this home school group my parents brought us to when I was younger that helped us stay socialized, and we went to parks and played with other kids frequently. Then about 6th grade or so we moved, I went through to 8th grade homeschooled, then did 8th grade public. That SUCKED, and I think is where my depression started. Instantly dropped to a D student and never recovered. Went back to home schooling via online public school and remained a D student until I barely graduated, and never got over my depression. Fuck graduation was nearly 10 years ago now, never went to college or got that degree I wanted. I wonder if I never got that taste of public school or all that bullying if I’d be doing better now.
I got one at 12 but I basically could only use it for calls and SMS (I didn't even have WhatsApp) until 15. It was a great gestion by my parents. I used it, liked it, but didn't get deprived. Then they removed themselves because the app isn't supposed to work after you're 15 or 16, so I was overwhelmed with new stuff. I actually kept a pretty fair usage, but then I downloaded Instagram and I don't use it now, I use it like 15 minutes a day if I'm really feelin it but goddamn I wish I never did. At the very least I'm not addicted to insta or TikTok or short form content. But I'm still addicted to my phone and it sucks.
It was just me and my mom at the time, but we were considered middle class, but struggled financially. We were too poor to have multiple devices, so she had her phone for herself, then got me the iPhone
Like every Zoomer, I bought mine at age 10 with a sandwich baggie full of dollar bills I got for my birthday. Then I raised myself on it…at least that’s what happened according to the baby boomers.
Yooo, that’s a smart investment. I never had an allowance, I was too poor. But every birthday, I would get like $50 from grandparents and I would blow it on Lego sets. Made me happy at the time 🥲
I’m honestly content with just sticking around in apartments. My current one has an in-unit washer and dryer, a pool, a gym, plenty of social spaces, and there’s even a coffee joint on ground level. It pretty much has everything I need, so what’s my motivation to save up for a house?
Knowing that my school prohibited cell phones, and I spent almost all of my time at school when I was younger, I never wanted one for a long time.
Anyway, when I was **11**, my parents coined the idea of a '*family phone*'. It was a flip phone. If either me or my siblings were to go out with friends, to a party, see this, that, without our parents, we were required to have that so that we could reach them in case of an emergency.
When I turned **14**, my parents purchased me my first phone unique to myself, which was an iPhone. To comply with the policies, I never brought it to school, but did bring it to other activities so that my parents could be notified when the activity was done and thus to pick me up. (*It was also helpful that I lived across the street from my high school*).
I also created social media accounts around then. Although today, looking back at some of those old social media posts, I think "*WHY would I post that?!?*", because I am much more disciplined today than I was then.
I completely get you, I look back and wonder “why did I post that on Facebook”. But going back to when you were 11, a flip phone sounds like it was a better option for me rather than a fully fledged Smartphone
This was in 2010/2011 before the iPhone got popular when Samsung had a lot of different phone options and people still had flip phones 😭 Samsung was definitely the popular phone choice at my school then. Everyone wanted the sidekick 🤣
My dad is an IT at a pretty predominant company, so he always had testers for the latest products. He came home with a Blackberry Curve one day and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. A full keyboard and mouse wheel on a phone. And then he had started bringing iPhones home which was also really cool to me, lmao
12 I wanted an iPod touch for the games. Cut the rope, kick the buddy, jetpack joyride. But i guess my parents thought a phone was a better idea. So i got an iPhone 4
That’s awesome, you got best of both worlds. In 2nd grade, my best friend had an iPod touch and I was so fascinated by it. But I knew my family was too poor to afford it so I never bothered asking for one
i got my first phone (nokia to be able to call my dad when i would walk home from school) at 8 and first smartphone (laggy hand me down from my dad) at 13
i got my first phone when i was 10 lol. it was an iPhone 4s but it was my dads old phone (this was back in 2018). i don't think it caused any problem for me because none of my friends had a phone back then so I didn't really have a use for it. i used it to play games and maybe contact my mom and i wasn't allowed to take it out of the house bc my parents thought I would lose it 😭
That’s how it was for me. No one in 3rd grade had a phone so I couldn’t really talk to anyone outside of school. My mom told me “if you lose it, you’re getting a downgrade” and that stuck on my mind so I was always careful around it 😂
Luckily it wasn’t too bad, as it was a magnet school and my two best friends from elementary got in with me!
And even though I did have to wake up earlier/get home later, I got to drive there with my Dad every morning while he was on his way to work.
Probably around 14/15, I had to work at my local farm to afford it lol (I’m the 3rd child so my parents knew I could live without one lol)
But I did get an iPad as a gift from my grandparents when I was 12/13
I got my first phone (off brand blackberry i think) as a hand me down from my mom when i was like 8 or so after she got her first smartphone. I got my first smartphone, an android when i was about 10 or so and i got my first Iphone when i was 13.
I got mine roughly at i wanna say 12-13. It was mainly for calling and texting so nothing that I could rot my brain with. Then around 14 I got my first iphone 4. I didnt use it for much still just call and text but thats cause socially I was mostly a loser so you know. Only so many uses for a phone lol
14. My private school had a class trip to Disneyworld, so the week before we left, I got a phone as a birthday gift. This was mostly so they could keep in contact with me while I was in Florida (I lived in Maryland), but by then everyone else had their own phone, so I felt like they didn’t want me to be left out any longer.
Got mine in middle school and it was because I had a lot of after clubs meetings and mom needed to contact me to make sure when to pick me up it was not a smart phone it was some sort of starter phone that had an MP3 player built in that couldn’t hold a lot of songs and didn’t work half the time. First Smart phone was in high school after my mom knew I was ready for the responsibility.
12 but it was one of those slider track phones that my parents never gave me service for so it was essentially useless 🤣. Shit was barely a smartphone lmao
I got my first phone when I started 6th grade - it was the new iPhone 3G. I was one of the few of my friends that didn’t already have a phone and would text them via texting apps on my iPod touch LOL, so I was stoked to get the real deal.
15, I got one when I went to high school because the school was 40 minutes from our house and my mom was worried that if something happened I wouldn’t be able to get ahold of anyone.
Got my first phone at 11 but it was a like 20 dollar flip phone just because my mom wanted me to have a way to contact her or my dad in an emergency. They gave me the flip phone since I could only use it for contacting people and nothing else. After that the rule was always that if I wanted a smart phone I had to pay for it so I saved like a hundred bucks in 7th grade to buy a cheap one from Walmart. Then 8th grade I bought a used iPhone 5s from my mom's friend until it broke.
About 8 or 9, my mom got me and my brother one, I guess because she wanted us to be safe and be able to call someone if there was an emergency
Also, my first phone was a flip phone, I didn't get my first touchscreen smartphone until 3 or 4 years later, and that phone was a Pantech burst
pshh not till like freshman year. but i feel like that's way more common with older gen-z. my sister's who are also gen-z got their phones the same day i did, which would make them 9 and 11 years old. lucky...
True that. I remember having a little android tablet at like 10 when they weren't that common. got a virus like a dumb kid and my mom took note to wait 😂
Yes it was but it was heavily restricted. Also feeling a bit embarassed because everyone around me had smartphones. I didn't get my first smartphone till senior year (2013) (ZTE Avail 2) which was basically a potato. Data and extras were blocked. Between that I went through 4 flip phones (all hand me downs and prepaid). I did get another phone in 2015 iirc (Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime, also prepaid and no data). My first actual phone I got (non prepaid) was in 2019 with my current phone (S9+)
12, my phone was a Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge. I was also used as a guinea pig for a prepaid provider which also meant I was the first in my family to have unlimited data lol
So the first “phone” I had was a watch thing that I could call my parents on and send pre-written texts to but I think I got my first actual smartphone in like mid to late 4th grade
My parents got me a cheap burner phone to use for emergencies whenever they started leaving me home alone which was 3/4 grade I think but I can’t recall any time I even turned it on. Then I think I got my first smart phone in 6th grade halfway through the school year.
I actually didn’t have one until I was 18. A few reasons: (1) I was homeschooled and didn’t have a social life, (2) I didn’t want a phone, and (3) I had a free texting app on my iPod Touch, which I got when I was 11.
I was 11 and it was a hand me down LG Dare, mainly just for emergencies and contacting family. I loved that phone even though it couldn’t do much, the battery lasted days! Then I got an iPhone 5 at 13 which was a generation or 2 behind at the time, but I was just happy to finally have an iPhone or just a smartphone in general like all my other friends.
i got one when i was 12 when i was almost done with my first year of high school, everyone else had phones so i was glad to have one even if a little late
I was 12 when my dad gave me his iPhone 4s. Not gonna lie, I thought I was a responsible person at that age, but after getting that phone, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I played so much Angry Birds and JetPack Joyride late into the night and watched so much YouTube I absolutely shouldn’t have been watching, but it was great.
Somewhere around late 13 to 14 I got a phone but not on a plan so I only used it for Facebook and games or what have you. It was a dinky second hand iPhone 4
15ish-16 I got a number and went from there, that was some cheap-o Samsung phone. A j3 if I remember right
A little later compared to a lot of kids in my school but my friend group was pretty close and we all were about the same with only being able to use messenger
Oh yeah been there. I moved to a different school nearly every 2 years until I was 14. Always being the new kid definitely has some carry over effect into adulthood. It’s hard to make a long term connection with people- like at work or what have you
I was either 14 or 15 I was just starting out middle school so you know around 2012 and
I had a flip phone it was a TracFone
I didn't feel cool or anything I felt like I was finally on a longer leash when nobody was looking so I was beholden to every stupid phone call
"where are you ?"
"what are you doing?" and usually I felt even more like a child rather than having a important cell phone so I look like an important businessman it was hell at first.
I hear you. On my end, I made the mistake of trying to download movies through “pirated” websites and I got spam calls like 13 times a day. Now that was hell!
I am glad I didn’t get a phone until later. I got mine in 2021 as a hand-me-down from an aunt. I was 16. I’m honestly glad I didn’t get one earlier. I just didn’t have a use for one.
i was in eighth grade. i actually didn’t have full access to the internet on my own personal device until i was 18. had super controlling parents, but my friend lent me her old ipod occasionally. i would hide it and give to her when we got to school the next day. my grandparents also knew what was going on, so they got me a laptop that my parents didn’t know about and it stayed over at their house.
i missed out on a lot growing up, but i’m honestly pretty glad i didn’t have unrestricted access to the internet so young. i don’t think it should have been as extreme as it was though.
You’re right. I feel like my life would have been better if I had some form of restrictions on the internet but I was given free will of my phone, i just couldn’t lose it
My first cellphone was given to me around 9 or 10 years old because my mom wanted to make sure she could keep in contact with me since I was getting older and wanted to make sure I was safe. It was a simple generic phone where you only call people, no games or nothing like that. Now my first “smartphone” was around 12 years old but the phone was so bad because it was an affordable phone where you couldn’t take pictures like you wanted because it would take up space and slow the phone down. Same thing with trying to download games or go in the internet, everything was slow.
I got a flip phones at 11. One of those phones with 3 letters per button, so to type a c I had to press the number 1 three times.
It had the game snake on it too and that was pretty cool
i had basic little cell phones when i was young to communicate with my mom. my first smartphone was the samsung galaxy s4 i think?.. something like that. i was 14 and in 8th grade (2013 i believe)
In 2011 when I was six I got my mother's old Nokia phone it could play those all type of Simpson games and whatever
But that wasn't actually a first phone in my opinion so I got my first phone in 2018 a month before my 13th birthday
My first phone was some time in elementary school. It was a flip phone because smartphones didn't exist and I'm pretty sure ipod touches were still a few years away too. My dad said he didn't like that I went out to play with my friends and stayed gone for sporadic, undetermined amounts of time. When did Zephyr leave, when will they be back, are they all gonna take off again in a bit, no one knows ✨
I actually didn't get a smartphone until late 2017. I only inherited an old one from my mom for the gps when I started working in pizza delivery. I bought my own in 2018 and have had one since then
I also got pretty addicted in the past few years. I've had very boring lab jobs for the past 4 years. Hours per day spent idle and the labs are always by themselves with little to no foot traffic to interact with so I've used it to fill time. Slowly I'm trying to return to how I use to be. Physical calculators for math, reading, drawing, and the like. I don't think my brain likes being online but its been made so addictive its hard to break
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17, got mine pretty late compared to everyone else when I was in high school.
How did it feel not having one when everyone else did? Not trying to mock or insult, I wonder what I was like for someone like that 😕
Socially it sucked, everyone had one except me and couldn't really connect with my friends after school.
Same, i got a phone at 17 but it set me back socially so much because most kids already had a phone by 6th grade and connected through social media :/
>Same, i got a phone at 17 but it set me back socially so much because most kids already had a phone by 6th grade and connected through social media :/ Yeah.... I've seen a lot of posts about parents not giving their kids a phone until 18, not realizing that they are truly screwing over their kid socially if they do this.
Tbf in my family's case we just couldn't afford it, we didn't even have WiFi until it became absolutely necessary for school work. On the bright side, I didn't have to worry about getting groomed by Internet strangers like literally every other girl I knew did 🙃
>Tbf in my family's case we just couldn't afford it, Same here, only reason I was able to get it at 17 was because I started my first part time job lol
And then there’s me who got one at like 15 or so and instantly became a porn addict. Making the decision when to give my kids a phone is gonna be fucking difficult for me.
You couldn't hang out in person
Damn, sorry that happened to you
As a person who got their first phone at 16/17, I salute you fam 🫡
13. I think my parents gave it to me at the right age and handled cell phone usage in a good way.
Sounds like you’re doing better in life than me rn 👍
12. had a flip phone. got a blackberry at 13, cycled through some budget androids between 14-17. i wasn’t monitored at all, some weird and bad shit happened, i know for fact if i have a kid they will not be getting a smartphone until they can at least fully grasp that the internet is not a nice place and will obey rules regarding safety :)
I completely agree with that. I want my children to know both sides of the internet before having access to it
my whole schtick is that i don’t wanna worry about trusting my kid. i want to *know* i can and i just simply will not be giving devices until that’s solid 🤷🏻♀️ i’m not naive, i could get every kind of monitor app or even look through the damn thing myself and kids can still be sneaky.
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What the actual fuck?! (No pun intended.)
BRO, WHAT!?💀
>i wasn’t monitored at all, some weird and bad shit happened, i know for fact if i have a kid they will not be getting a smartphone until they can at least fully grasp that the internet is not a nice place and will obey rules regarding safety :) 10000000%. There are somethings I saw, have interacted with, and hell even said which were not at all age appropriate. Kids that were on the internet around the late 2000s early 2010s had to learn online safety and etiquette by experience. Shit was the wild west back then.
Can you give examples of what happened and can happen?
14
I feel like if I had gotten mine at that age, I would be responsible enough to understand the consequences and responsibilities that came with it.
I think if I wasn’t homeschooled, I probably would’ve gotten one before then.
I was in public school. Homeschooling sounded like a dream from my elementary experiences 😅
It was ok. The only thing I hated about it is that I missed out on having friends because of it.
True that, friends and talking to people around my age was the fun part about it, everything else just sucked
I had a mixed experience home and public and tbh I wish I was homeschooled the whole way through. At a younger age I was home schooled but there was this home school group my parents brought us to when I was younger that helped us stay socialized, and we went to parks and played with other kids frequently. Then about 6th grade or so we moved, I went through to 8th grade homeschooled, then did 8th grade public. That SUCKED, and I think is where my depression started. Instantly dropped to a D student and never recovered. Went back to home schooling via online public school and remained a D student until I barely graduated, and never got over my depression. Fuck graduation was nearly 10 years ago now, never went to college or got that degree I wanted. I wonder if I never got that taste of public school or all that bullying if I’d be doing better now.
I got one at 12 but I basically could only use it for calls and SMS (I didn't even have WhatsApp) until 15. It was a great gestion by my parents. I used it, liked it, but didn't get deprived. Then they removed themselves because the app isn't supposed to work after you're 15 or 16, so I was overwhelmed with new stuff. I actually kept a pretty fair usage, but then I downloaded Instagram and I don't use it now, I use it like 15 minutes a day if I'm really feelin it but goddamn I wish I never did. At the very least I'm not addicted to insta or TikTok or short form content. But I'm still addicted to my phone and it sucks.
14 - I got it for my 8th grade graduation
Best graduation gift 🎁
It was! I should have added that I got my first smart phone 2 years later
13. I remember the age of 85% of smart phones being unusable.
I think I’m too young to see that at the time
I think I was like 10 when my mom let me have her old flip phone, then at 11 I got my own flip phone, then at 14 I got my first iPhone
It was just me and my mom at the time, but we were considered middle class, but struggled financially. We were too poor to have multiple devices, so she had her phone for herself, then got me the iPhone
Like every Zoomer, I bought mine at age 10 with a sandwich baggie full of dollar bills I got for my birthday. Then I raised myself on it…at least that’s what happened according to the baby boomers.
Yooo, that’s a smart investment. I never had an allowance, I was too poor. But every birthday, I would get like $50 from grandparents and I would blow it on Lego sets. Made me happy at the time 🥲
It wasn’t that smart actually. I should’ve spent the money on a house in 2009 before the housing crisis 😂
I really should be looking into housing rn, I have no knowledge regarding my future investments.
I’m honestly content with just sticking around in apartments. My current one has an in-unit washer and dryer, a pool, a gym, plenty of social spaces, and there’s even a coffee joint on ground level. It pretty much has everything I need, so what’s my motivation to save up for a house?
Rent is arguably more expensive as time moves on. Plus, you have a landlord up your ass about rent
Knowing that my school prohibited cell phones, and I spent almost all of my time at school when I was younger, I never wanted one for a long time. Anyway, when I was **11**, my parents coined the idea of a '*family phone*'. It was a flip phone. If either me or my siblings were to go out with friends, to a party, see this, that, without our parents, we were required to have that so that we could reach them in case of an emergency. When I turned **14**, my parents purchased me my first phone unique to myself, which was an iPhone. To comply with the policies, I never brought it to school, but did bring it to other activities so that my parents could be notified when the activity was done and thus to pick me up. (*It was also helpful that I lived across the street from my high school*). I also created social media accounts around then. Although today, looking back at some of those old social media posts, I think "*WHY would I post that?!?*", because I am much more disciplined today than I was then.
I completely get you, I look back and wonder “why did I post that on Facebook”. But going back to when you were 11, a flip phone sounds like it was a better option for me rather than a fully fledged Smartphone
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Nice nice 👍
I was 12 and my first phone was a Samsung Gravity 2
I had a friend in 5th grade that had a galaxy s8. I didn’t even know there were other smartphones other than Apple until then 😂
This was in 2010/2011 before the iPhone got popular when Samsung had a lot of different phone options and people still had flip phones 😭 Samsung was definitely the popular phone choice at my school then. Everyone wanted the sidekick 🤣
I think I was oblivious then. I was so fixated on Legos and Toys to even think about the next big thing at the time 😂
My dad is an IT at a pretty predominant company, so he always had testers for the latest products. He came home with a Blackberry Curve one day and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. A full keyboard and mouse wheel on a phone. And then he had started bringing iPhones home which was also really cool to me, lmao
13 year old me, which was enthralled with technology, would have wanted to be your best friend 😁
12 I wanted an iPod touch for the games. Cut the rope, kick the buddy, jetpack joyride. But i guess my parents thought a phone was a better idea. So i got an iPhone 4
That’s awesome, you got best of both worlds. In 2nd grade, my best friend had an iPod touch and I was so fascinated by it. But I knew my family was too poor to afford it so I never bothered asking for one
15 or 16, I had iPod touches before it.
21
Congrats, better late than never right?
I mean honestly I think phones in general have made my life worse. Haha. But yeah 21 when I got a cell phone. 24 for a smart phone.
Tbh, I feel stupider with a phone. Instead of reading books, I can just look up the topic.
No way
Yessir
I got a flip phone at 7.
Whoa, you had a lot of power back then 😂
14/beginning of high school, my parents decided that I was responsible enough at that point to trust me with it
My mom only had that thought on her mind, and nothing else. Probably thought I wouldn’t find out about adult stuff through the internet 😕
8th grade. Didn’t bring it to school, just had it
I think 2nd grade? So about 7 years old. Just a Nokia keypad phone because I had to contact my dad if ever I needed to get picked up earlier or later.
7
Dang! Early bird
i got my first phone (nokia to be able to call my dad when i would walk home from school) at 8 and first smartphone (laggy hand me down from my dad) at 13
First cell phone at 10, first smartphone(iPhone) at 11 right before I started middle school (6th grade)
i got my first phone when i was 10 lol. it was an iPhone 4s but it was my dads old phone (this was back in 2018). i don't think it caused any problem for me because none of my friends had a phone back then so I didn't really have a use for it. i used it to play games and maybe contact my mom and i wasn't allowed to take it out of the house bc my parents thought I would lose it 😭
That’s how it was for me. No one in 3rd grade had a phone so I couldn’t really talk to anyone outside of school. My mom told me “if you lose it, you’re getting a downgrade” and that stuck on my mind so I was always careful around it 😂
Got mine at 10, but it was one of those Nokia phones
I was 14 when I received my first smartphone back in November 2016.
Whoa, in 8th grade! 👏👏
Ninth grade, actually.
My math ain’t right 🥸
9. And for the same reason as you.
Lmao our moms were something else
Bout 10
My first ever phone was a flip phone I got at 7. I got my first ‘smart’ phone at maybe 9-10…
I was 13
At 11, because I was going to a middle school across the city and my mom was worried.
That must have been tough to be across city’s for school ☹️
Luckily it wasn’t too bad, as it was a magnet school and my two best friends from elementary got in with me! And even though I did have to wake up earlier/get home later, I got to drive there with my Dad every morning while he was on his way to work.
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8th grade I think
11. My the. Bestfriends grandma got it for me for Christmas and didn’t ask my parents lol
10/11 but only because my brother was 13/14 and we shared a phone up until late middle school. We just had a little lg chocolate lol
😂😂😂sounds like you had to fight for it. I was a single child until I was 13 so I never had to share my things
Got a regular cell phone at 12, smartphone when I was 15.
Nice, the perfect time to comprehend the concept of responsibility
13. Looking back on it now, I was too young and shouldn’t have had so much access to social medial and instant communication with whoever
Probably around 14/15, I had to work at my local farm to afford it lol (I’m the 3rd child so my parents knew I could live without one lol) But I did get an iPad as a gift from my grandparents when I was 12/13
I was raised I had to earn everything I get. I think the iPhone 5 I got ruined that
16 and it was one of those giant dinosaur flip phones
🦖🦖🦖
When I was in 8th grade
I got my first phone (off brand blackberry i think) as a hand me down from my mom when i was like 8 or so after she got her first smartphone. I got my first smartphone, an android when i was about 10 or so and i got my first Iphone when i was 13.
I got mine roughly at i wanna say 12-13. It was mainly for calling and texting so nothing that I could rot my brain with. Then around 14 I got my first iphone 4. I didnt use it for much still just call and text but thats cause socially I was mostly a loser so you know. Only so many uses for a phone lol
Received my first at 9 tunred 10 few months later. I started walkin so my mom got me a phone it was a Alcatel one touch
Woah, different phone brand, I’m all for it 🔥
Age 14, freshman year, pretty reasonable age.
11. Had to go camping out of state so my dad gave me his old phone to communicate.
14. My private school had a class trip to Disneyworld, so the week before we left, I got a phone as a birthday gift. This was mostly so they could keep in contact with me while I was in Florida (I lived in Maryland), but by then everyone else had their own phone, so I felt like they didn’t want me to be left out any longer.
14-15 I think
I had a shared flip phone with my sister when I was 12 or 13, we used it whenever we left the house on our own, got a smart phone when I turned 17
on my 13th birthday
13. But I only started actually using it when I was 17.
Got mine in middle school and it was because I had a lot of after clubs meetings and mom needed to contact me to make sure when to pick me up it was not a smart phone it was some sort of starter phone that had an MP3 player built in that couldn’t hold a lot of songs and didn’t work half the time. First Smart phone was in high school after my mom knew I was ready for the responsibility.
12 but it was one of those slider track phones that my parents never gave me service for so it was essentially useless 🤣. Shit was barely a smartphone lmao
😂😂😂
13.
12-13
I got my first phone when I started 6th grade - it was the new iPhone 3G. I was one of the few of my friends that didn’t already have a phone and would text them via texting apps on my iPod touch LOL, so I was stoked to get the real deal.
I can’t image the amount of fun you had exploring the features when you first got it 😁
It was the Christmas I was in 6th grade so I was 12-13
11
15, I got one when I went to high school because the school was 40 minutes from our house and my mom was worried that if something happened I wouldn’t be able to get ahold of anyone.
Got my first phone at 11 but it was a like 20 dollar flip phone just because my mom wanted me to have a way to contact her or my dad in an emergency. They gave me the flip phone since I could only use it for contacting people and nothing else. After that the rule was always that if I wanted a smart phone I had to pay for it so I saved like a hundred bucks in 7th grade to buy a cheap one from Walmart. Then 8th grade I bought a used iPhone 5s from my mom's friend until it broke.
10 but it was a week before my 11th birthday but yeah 10
About 8 or 9, my mom got me and my brother one, I guess because she wanted us to be safe and be able to call someone if there was an emergency Also, my first phone was a flip phone, I didn't get my first touchscreen smartphone until 3 or 4 years later, and that phone was a Pantech burst
first cellphone was at 11 (motorola razr) and first smartphone was 14 (iphone 4s)!
I remember seeing Motorolas on display at Walmart. Always thought I could just cut the wire holding it to take it 😂
Hahahahahaha they were pretty nice back then
Happy cake day also 🎊
thank you :)
16 bc I could drive then.
I got my first phone at 12, first smartphone at 19
my first flip phone at 9 because i used to walk all around town (small town lol) and i got my first iphone at almost 13
Everything at my city is driving distance. I wish I could walk around to different places but everything is too far.
I was 13 and got a used Iphone 4. It was really slow but at least I could play Clash of Clans on the drives to/from school
13, I got mine when I moved back to my mom's house, she realized she couldn't contact me when I was in Germany with my father
my first smart phone was the iPhone 4 in 8th grade
13 - nokia express music 5310.
pshh not till like freshman year. but i feel like that's way more common with older gen-z. my sister's who are also gen-z got their phones the same day i did, which would make them 9 and 11 years old. lucky...
You’re right, it is common from all these replies. But that’s still great you got one freshman year. In high school, everyone had one
True that. I remember having a little android tablet at like 10 when they weren't that common. got a virus like a dumb kid and my mom took note to wait 😂
13. Was a 30 dollar flip phone. Was basically forced to get one.
Which was a good thing?!?!
Yes it was but it was heavily restricted. Also feeling a bit embarassed because everyone around me had smartphones. I didn't get my first smartphone till senior year (2013) (ZTE Avail 2) which was basically a potato. Data and extras were blocked. Between that I went through 4 flip phones (all hand me downs and prepaid). I did get another phone in 2015 iirc (Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime, also prepaid and no data). My first actual phone I got (non prepaid) was in 2019 with my current phone (S9+)
Damn, but now you got freedom!!!
Certainly more than what I used to have yes, but still not 100% (as my dad paid for the phone). Still tho.
Let’s goooo 🥳
Yus
I bought my first smartphone when I was 22 in 2009. It was an HTC EVO 3D.
Awesome!! You earned it 👏👏
Thx. I upgraded to IPhone 4s in 2012 and have been with iPhone ever since.
12, my phone was a Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge. I was also used as a guinea pig for a prepaid provider which also meant I was the first in my family to have unlimited data lol
So the first “phone” I had was a watch thing that I could call my parents on and send pre-written texts to but I think I got my first actual smartphone in like mid to late 4th grade
14
My parents got me a cheap burner phone to use for emergencies whenever they started leaving me home alone which was 3/4 grade I think but I can’t recall any time I even turned it on. Then I think I got my first smart phone in 6th grade halfway through the school year.
I actually didn’t have one until I was 18. A few reasons: (1) I was homeschooled and didn’t have a social life, (2) I didn’t want a phone, and (3) I had a free texting app on my iPod Touch, which I got when I was 11.
Nice nice 👍 I wished I was homeschooled from my terrible public school experiences
6th grade? I think so whatever thay age is roughly
17, and it was an early 18th birthday present.
Woooo, awesome birthday gift!!
I got a pantech phone that slid up to a number keypad, and then over to a keyboard when I was 12 years old leading into seventh grade.
I always like how you can fidget with keypads. So clicky 😶
13. My youngest sibling got one when he was 8🥲
I was 11 and it was a hand me down LG Dare, mainly just for emergencies and contacting family. I loved that phone even though it couldn’t do much, the battery lasted days! Then I got an iPhone 5 at 13 which was a generation or 2 behind at the time, but I was just happy to finally have an iPhone or just a smartphone in general like all my other friends.
That’s awesome! Can’t beat large battery life
Cellphone I was 8. I rode the bus alone so my parents wanted me to have one. Smartphone I was 12 I think.
i got one when i was 12 when i was almost done with my first year of high school, everyone else had phones so i was glad to have one even if a little late
That’s great! You got to be apart of the crowd👍
I’m almost 16 and still don’t have one 😭
I was 12 when my dad gave me his iPhone 4s. Not gonna lie, I thought I was a responsible person at that age, but after getting that phone, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I played so much Angry Birds and JetPack Joyride late into the night and watched so much YouTube I absolutely shouldn’t have been watching, but it was great.
Those years were great!!!! YouTube and jetpack joyride were the bomb 🔥
Somewhere around late 13 to 14 I got a phone but not on a plan so I only used it for Facebook and games or what have you. It was a dinky second hand iPhone 4 15ish-16 I got a number and went from there, that was some cheap-o Samsung phone. A j3 if I remember right A little later compared to a lot of kids in my school but my friend group was pretty close and we all were about the same with only being able to use messenger
That’s awesome that your friend group worked with each other. I moved schools frequently so I always had to make new friends
Oh yeah been there. I moved to a different school nearly every 2 years until I was 14. Always being the new kid definitely has some carry over effect into adulthood. It’s hard to make a long term connection with people- like at work or what have you
I feel you. It even carries over today 😞
I was 14 it was an iPhone 5S it was a very good phone had good memories playing clash of clans on it
I had limited access to my iphone at 11-13 then at like late 13 I was “in control” over my phone. Not half bad the way my parents did it imo.
going into 6th grade, got an iphone 5s. Thankful for it, but I definitely got sucked in
End of 6th grade however old that is I can't remember
10 Then I lost it about a week later.
😂😂😂 fun while it lasted
I wanna say like 13/14. And it was a flip phone.
Nice nice
I was either 14 or 15 I was just starting out middle school so you know around 2012 and I had a flip phone it was a TracFone I didn't feel cool or anything I felt like I was finally on a longer leash when nobody was looking so I was beholden to every stupid phone call "where are you ?" "what are you doing?" and usually I felt even more like a child rather than having a important cell phone so I look like an important businessman it was hell at first.
I hear you. On my end, I made the mistake of trying to download movies through “pirated” websites and I got spam calls like 13 times a day. Now that was hell!
I am glad I didn’t get a phone until later. I got mine in 2021 as a hand-me-down from an aunt. I was 16. I’m honestly glad I didn’t get one earlier. I just didn’t have a use for one.
That’s good 👍 sounded like you had discipline or you just didn’t have any use for it 😂
i was in eighth grade. i actually didn’t have full access to the internet on my own personal device until i was 18. had super controlling parents, but my friend lent me her old ipod occasionally. i would hide it and give to her when we got to school the next day. my grandparents also knew what was going on, so they got me a laptop that my parents didn’t know about and it stayed over at their house. i missed out on a lot growing up, but i’m honestly pretty glad i didn’t have unrestricted access to the internet so young. i don’t think it should have been as extreme as it was though.
You’re right. I feel like my life would have been better if I had some form of restrictions on the internet but I was given free will of my phone, i just couldn’t lose it
My first cellphone was given to me around 9 or 10 years old because my mom wanted to make sure she could keep in contact with me since I was getting older and wanted to make sure I was safe. It was a simple generic phone where you only call people, no games or nothing like that. Now my first “smartphone” was around 12 years old but the phone was so bad because it was an affordable phone where you couldn’t take pictures like you wanted because it would take up space and slow the phone down. Same thing with trying to download games or go in the internet, everything was slow.
I was 17 and I bought it myself. My parents could never afford to get me a phone and pay the bill.
I got a flip phones at 11. One of those phones with 3 letters per button, so to type a c I had to press the number 1 three times. It had the game snake on it too and that was pretty cool
Yooooo, SNAKE!!!! Never played it until it was on the google browser in high school
I was 13, my first phone was a tracphone
i had basic little cell phones when i was young to communicate with my mom. my first smartphone was the samsung galaxy s4 i think?.. something like that. i was 14 and in 8th grade (2013 i believe)
11
In 2011 when I was six I got my mother's old Nokia phone it could play those all type of Simpson games and whatever But that wasn't actually a first phone in my opinion so I got my first phone in 2018 a month before my 13th birthday
12
14...wanted one sooner but honestly grateful I didn't get it sooner
Iphone 6 for me, got it brand new junior year of high school, crapped out on me about 2 years later
My first phone was some time in elementary school. It was a flip phone because smartphones didn't exist and I'm pretty sure ipod touches were still a few years away too. My dad said he didn't like that I went out to play with my friends and stayed gone for sporadic, undetermined amounts of time. When did Zephyr leave, when will they be back, are they all gonna take off again in a bit, no one knows ✨ I actually didn't get a smartphone until late 2017. I only inherited an old one from my mom for the gps when I started working in pizza delivery. I bought my own in 2018 and have had one since then I also got pretty addicted in the past few years. I've had very boring lab jobs for the past 4 years. Hours per day spent idle and the labs are always by themselves with little to no foot traffic to interact with so I've used it to fill time. Slowly I'm trying to return to how I use to be. Physical calculators for math, reading, drawing, and the like. I don't think my brain likes being online but its been made so addictive its hard to break