Should children as young as 8 own mobile phones?

YES: ‘Phones offer great advantages to kids’

A RECENT edition of RTÉ’s Reeling Back the Years covered 1995 and it showed a fresh-faced Denis O’Brien beaming at the camera after getting news that he had won the battle for the country’s second mobile phone licence.

Wielding a brick-sized phone, he looked straight ahead and predicted that “every child over 10 will have one of these within the next five years”.