Probably. I was born closer to the millennium and in the US. I don’t remember my peers having phones until at least middle school (11-14 years old)
Teens definitely had them. But elementary school kids no. Not like now for sure. Maybe a few did but (if I recall, obviously I wasn’t paying bills then) US phone plans were quite expensive with many paying PER TEXT SENT. So for the kids that did have them probably couldn’t do much but call, so I never saw them taking them out or anything during class.
It wasn’t uncommon for kids to play around with old PDAs or phones, but no active service so more a camera/shitty games.
Then again maybe I just didn’t go to the higher income schools lmao.
Per text and per minute plans were the norm at least here for a long time, I had one until mid 2010’s IIRC. A single text cost something like 0.069 €. Parents kept their kids from overspending with prepaid plans, which were the norm for elementary students. In Europe people typically don’t pay to receive calls, so your parents could still call you even if you ran out of phone credits.
We got unlimited data plans before widespread unlimited texting, which meant people mostly stopped texting by early 2010’s. I remember my phone plan getting unlimited 3g in 2010 for 0.99 €/month (approx 1.40 $ back then), albeit slow AF (256 kbps). Most switched to e.g. Kik or later WhatsApp after that.
Probably. I was born closer to the millennium and in the US. I don’t remember my peers having phones until at least middle school (11-14 years old)
Teens definitely had them. But elementary school kids no. Not like now for sure. Maybe a few did but (if I recall, obviously I wasn’t paying bills then) US phone plans were quite expensive with many paying PER TEXT SENT. So for the kids that did have them probably couldn’t do much but call, so I never saw them taking them out or anything during class.
It wasn’t uncommon for kids to play around with old PDAs or phones, but no active service so more a camera/shitty games.
Then again maybe I just didn’t go to the higher income schools lmao.
Per text and per minute plans were the norm at least here for a long time, I had one until mid 2010’s IIRC. A single text cost something like 0.069 €. Parents kept their kids from overspending with prepaid plans, which were the norm for elementary students. In Europe people typically don’t pay to receive calls, so your parents could still call you even if you ran out of phone credits.
We got unlimited data plans before widespread unlimited texting, which meant people mostly stopped texting by early 2010’s. I remember my phone plan getting unlimited 3g in 2010 for 0.99 €/month (approx 1.40 $ back then), albeit slow AF (256 kbps). Most switched to e.g. Kik or later WhatsApp after that.