Kids and Cell phones

If you've looked around or talked to friends recently you probably noticed that more and more younger kids have cell phones, but just how many more are there?

Well, there has been an increase of +68% of kids with cell phones in the past five year, according to MRI's recently release America Kids Study. Specifically, 20% of US Kids 6-11 owns a cell phone, this is up +11.9% from 2005, with the biggest increase among K10-11, which is up +80.5%, in the five-year period.

Not surprisingly boys were later to the cell phone ownership game, with the last three years showing the biggest growth among boys up by +47.6% since 2007, versus an increase of +17.2% among girls.
MRI believes that some of the increase, particularly with boys, is the result of wireless providers targeting parents and kids with kid-friendly phones and I'd add in the increase in kid-targeted wireless mobile content. So, what are kids doing most with their cell phones?
Survey Says... Top Cell Phone Activities for Children Ages 6-11:
Activity %
Call my parents 88.1
Call friends 68.1
Emergency purpose 55.7
Text messaging 54.1
Play games 49.0
Take pictures 47.8
Listen to music 34.4
Picture messaging 24.2
Download ringtones 16.5