OK, I think that I’m going to be ill. Marketing cell phones for children as young as six, for goodness’ sake, is just plain wrong. And I can hardly be accused of being a luddite. Just a techno-weenie and mom who doesn’t think that shoving technology into our children’s hands as early as possible is necessarily the best thing (for the children - it’s brilliant for the manufacturers’ bottom line).

Of course, our child doesn’t have a GameBoy either, poor deprived thing, and the only things on our PS2 are interactive music, dance, and singing games.

But I digress, because this rant is about cell phones for kids. Meet “Firefly” and “TicTalk”, two cell phones aimed squarely at children, and coming to a store near you - if not now, then definitely in time for Christmas.

The Firefly, developed by Firefly Mobile, is just so gosh darned cute, you almost want to pick it up and hug it. The oval Firefly has just five big buttons: a button to start a call, a button to hang up, an address book button, and “call mom” and “call dad” buttons.

The Firefly site tells us that the Firefly is…

[Continue reading Firefly and Tic Talk: Cell Phones for Kids?]