Mobile phones, children and safety

A few months ago I wrote about children and mobile phones:

The reason that we worry about children having mobile phones is not safety at all. It is because we feel that it is somehow not fitting that they should have them. They are too young. But to say so sounds so hopelessly old-fashioned that we treat it as a question of safety instead.

It is interesting, then, that there is a transcript of a phone-in contribution on the BBC website in which a father gives his reasons for being in favour of his son to have a mobile phone:

I decided to give my son a mobile phone last year.

All his friends had a mobile phone and he was asking for one. When I upgraded my phone, I gave him my old one.

The reason we gave it was because of safety.

He's going to a secondary school and he has to go to school on his own, so if there was a need for him to call us at any time, then the phone would be there available for him.

It is not just that we talk about safety a lot when it comes to children these days. We hardly talk about anything else.