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176 Heather A. HorstEarendil, reflected upon his parents’ boundaries concerning violentgenres of video games with Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans): “Ah! But whenwe all hit about thirteen years old, mom didn’t worry about whether wecould distinguish fantasy violence with real violence and allowed morecomputer use!”As has been well established in the literature on youth and mobilephones (Baron 2008; Goggin 2006; Horst and Miller 2006; Ito, Okabe, andMatsuda 2005; Katz 2006; Ling 2004, 2008; Matsuda 2005; Miyaki 2005),giving kids possession of a mobile phone also involves a determination ofkids’ judgment. As a general rule, few elementary-school students ownedmobile phones and there was a general sentiment among parents thatthey should avoid buying a mobile phone for children while they are inelementary school. An exception to this rule was single parents and working-classparents who buy their kids phones in the interest of safety, sincethey tend to navigate independence at an earlier age (Chin 2001; Lareau2003). Families who could not afford the cost of after-school and otherenrichment programs also felt compelled to give their children mobilephones, or access to a mobile phone, while they were away from home.As CrazyMonkey, a fourteen-year-old white middle school student wholives in a single-parent household in Silicon Valley (Horst, Silicon ValleyFamilies), recounted, “I’ve had a cell phone since fourth grade because Ihad to start figuring out my rides home . . . to and from school . . . well,just from school to home almost on a daily basis, and so my mom wantedto be able to reach me easily.” But rather than owning the swanky newmobile device desired by most teenagers, CrazyMonkey had a thick, blackphone that she used as her mobile to arrange for rides and check in withher mom, who could not be physically present to take her from point topoint. In such cases, the mobile phone becomes a safety gap when kidstake the train or bus or walk to and from school, work, or home.In middle-class families, the decision to give kids a mobile phone typicallyoccurs during middle or high school as teens start to invest more timein their peer worlds. As Jennifer, a white seventeen-year-old in Lawrence,Kansas, recounts to danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics),“‘Cause junior high you start, you do more stuff, your parents let you domore stuff so they were like, well, we’re not gonna know where you’re atall the time, so you should have a phone just in case something happens,so their reasoning was.” Kids in middle-class families tend to acquire