[jethro_tell]

For a 12 year old maybe. My 5 year old wears one because she want's to walk home from school (requires a 5 mi bus ride in a major metropolitan area). She had crossing the street figured out at about 3 or 4 and seems to be abnormally aware of her surroundings. (Her brother is not, he's just in his own world. Basically a danger to himself and everyone withing 100m of him)

It let's me keep track of her progress and gives here a simple phone that calls mom, dad, and her 4 grand parents. She set the alarm and gets out of bed when it goes off, dresses herself, basically does all the things you'd do with a phone which has very similar attack vectors. This is the kind of thing you'd expect in a world where kids can't call you at work from the home phone.

There's no device that makes or breaks trust, that is a people problem not a technical problem. It sucks that there's not much on the market in the way of good devices. We've removed the camera and do voice only calls when needed. It's a calculated risk and it's probably never to early to start teaching kids how to be aware of security risks in the tech around them. I mean, or we could just wait until they are about 16 and we have all the bugs worked out. Just let them go crazy then.