Last weekend our family went for its annual Thanksgiving Walk, a two-hour hike through Awenda Provincial Park above Georgian Bay. Behind me were my stepson and his 11-year-old daughter. Their conversation twisted and turned through as many subjects as they did navigating the fallen trees and winding forest paths. I was listening idly to their back-and-forth when I heard: “But when can I have a phone?”

I won’t say the skies clouded, but the mood changed at this, the most insistent question of our age. Because asking mom and dad when you can have your first phone has turned into asking them when you can have your first shot of heroin.

Clearly, this was not the first time she’d asked, and I was impressed by her father’s patience as he calmly listed all the reasons an 11-year-old shouldn’t have a mobile phone. “But Mary has one, and she’s 12!”

Read on…