Adults in this kid’s life (parents) hand them a phone as a toy/treat/distraction (usually the last one). Or maybe they have something similar at home for themselves. So, a bored kid sees adult using a phone, so kid asks adult for phone.
I used to do this way before cellphones. When at a house where there was a personal computer sitting around, I was usually very disappointed at being told “no” after asking to play games on it. But I always asked. To a little five-year-old-warp-core, that’s just what those were for.
Edit: ubiquitous portable computing (modern phones) would have probably rendered me inconsolable after a while.
Not exactly - it’s way more simple than that:
Adults in this kid’s life (parents) hand them a phone as a toy/treat/distraction (usually the last one). Or maybe they have something similar at home for themselves. So, a bored kid sees adult using a phone, so kid asks adult for phone.
I used to do this way before cellphones. When at a house where there was a personal computer sitting around, I was usually very disappointed at being told “no” after asking to play games on it. But I always asked. To a little five-year-old-warp-core, that’s just what those were for.
Edit: ubiquitous portable computing (modern phones) would have probably rendered me inconsolable after a while.
Not only was I not using a cell phone, I didn’t even have one on me at the time. Kid was just fishing.