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Cellphones for Tweens

No no no no no no no. That’s my initial reaction to just about any story that involves marketing to ‘tweens’ (the demographic bracket for people who until recently would have been called ‘children’. This article at the New York Times about marketing cell phones to kids in the 8 to 12 range goes too far. Why do kids this age need cell phones?

I’ve heard that some of the kid phones (specifically the Disney models, I think) have some parental surveillance features that Michel Foucault would be proud of. Parents can go online to see no only who their kids have been calling, but where the calls were made from. This could be useful in the event of a kidnapping or other such crisis event, but I imagine that parents are using them for much more trivial spying. Yuck.